8 ways self medication can cause serious health issues

olamide olarewaju

February 1, 2017 3:57 PM

Do you buy drugs over the counter/use prescriptions without seeking professional help? Here are things you should know.

Self medication, a very common occurrence in Nigeria and other parts of the world comes with health issues!

This (self medication) happens when over-the-counter drugs or prescriptions are used without seeking medical help from a practitioner/professional (as the case may be). It arises in situations where people assume they know what's wrong and go on to treat what they assume is the problem!

(where usually serious health issues can pose in form of little discomfort here and there. For instance a persistent headache that people would ordinarily use painkillers for might be a sign of something serious coming).

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There are numerous danger associated with self medication but these ones top the list:

1. Addiction

With self medication there's always a risk of addiction. People pop pills they are used to ease pains, headache, backaches etc 'abusing' the drugs in the process and eventually becoming a habit and then a serious addiction which could have grave side effects in the end.

2. Wrong/Inaccurate diagnosis

There's a high chance of wrongly diagnosing oneself with self medicating and this is because most times people assume and convince themselves of a certain health issue which might be wrong especially if they didn't get a proper diagnosis.

3. Combining unsafe medication components

While self medicating, people tend to mix unsafe medication components. A lot of people don't know this but some medicines are unsafe to mix, the components don't work well together but someone who doesn't know this goes ahead to combine them all and eventually suffer the consequences/side effects.

4. Delaying professional help

With self medicating people are essentially delaying seeking help from a professional which can pose a serious health issue.

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5. Abuse

Just with addiction there's a high risk of abuse when self medicating becomes the only way to treat.

6. Overdose/ Inaccurate dose

With self medicating there's always a risk of taking less than required dosage or more; since there's no professional diagnosis there's a chance of not taking the right dosage for whatever the health issue is.

7. Suppressing the symptoms of a serious health issue

Self medication is an indirect way of suppressing a health condition (which may be fatal). Most times early diagnosis helps to cure an otherwise deadly health problem.

8. Death

Self medication can cause even worse health issues amongst other things and in some cases death!

olamide olarewaju