Why the drugs you’ve been prescribed may not work well
The Telegraph • • health
Key Points:
- Prof Nick Barber, with 50 years of experience in pharmacy, highlights that many medicines are poorly prescribed, inconsistently taken, and often cause stress, harm, and waste despite being a trillion-dollar technology.
- Over half of UK adults, especially those over 65, take multiple medications daily, driven by advances in drug technology and expectations from both doctors and patients for prescriptions during brief GP appointments.
- Drugs are often "off the peg," not personalized, as clinical trials historically underrepresent women and fail to account for individual factors like genetics, body size, and metabolism, leading to variable effectiveness and side effects.
- Nonadherence to medication regimes is common due to forgetfulness, reluctance, cost, and fear of side effects, which can be exacerbated by the nocebo effect where symptoms arise from expectations rather than the drug itself.
- Barber advises patients to take control by questioning diagnoses, exploring alternatives including lifestyle changes, utilizing pharmacists' support services like the NHS New Medicine Service, and insisting on annual medication reviews to assess ongoing need and risks.
