One of the many perks of being in the hive learners community is the unending opportunities to learn new things each and every passing day. For this prompt, I'm sure everyone have their different perceptions as to why certain drugs fail to do the work they've been originally produced to do.
But as a medical student, my perception may differ a little bit from what you might be thinking. First of all, with the level of corruption in the country, it is often hard to tell if the drugs we take are original, or just a mix of chalk and adhesives, especially the ones we get from our local chemists. So when drugs fail to do their work, the first question to ask is "is it original or perhaps fake?"
Now, for the second reason, we humans mostly contribute to this problem. You might be wondering why I said this. Let's take malaria drugs for example. In a country where even the slightest headache is diagnosed as malaria, we most times tend to buy malaria drugs that we'll never finish. When malaria drugs are prescribed, it comes in doses, which we're advised to finish, but instead of doing this, we tend to take them until we feel a bit better. After that, we dump the drugs till another symptom presents itself, but this is simply drug abuse, and when drugs are used this way, overtime, the body system gets used to the drugs, and they stop doing their functions. That does not mean that the medicine you have taken is bad. Another person might take it and feel better, while in some cases, the sickness might even get worse for you. This is because you've abused it over a period of time, and the parasites it's supposed to fight have gotten used to it, making it useless when the need arises.
The same goes for the use of antibiotics. Research has shown that frequent intake of antibiotics can be detrimental to one's health. For women, this antibiotics might even predispose us to infections when taken frequently.
Before I got into the medical field and came to understand drug interactions, I often took antibiotics, especially flagyl at any slightest belly discomfort. At first, the drug worked perfectly, but overtime, it stopped working. The same flagyl someone else might take and feel better, when I take them, things often even get worse. But I came to learn that it could be that I have been taking the wrong drugs for the wrong reasons, and this is why self-administration of drugs is not advised.
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Picture drugs as a new talking stage. The first few times you start talking, things tend to be a bit smooth because you're still strangers. But once that comfort comes in, and you get used to each other, other problems may spring up. It is the same for drugs. Once our systems get comfortable with a particular drug, the chances of it remaining effective reduces.
In conclusion, drugs might be fake and become ineffective because of that. But asides that, we can prevent this issue by taking drugs the right way. To be on a safer side, it is important that drug prescriptions are gotten from a doctor after proper testing and checkups. Over-the-counter medic should not be our go-to whenever we feel sick. You could be taking drugs for the wrong illness, and because of that, it won't be useful to you.
