Medications Conflicts and Concerns for Those with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia

At the first sign of symptoms, it is hard to know if you are sick or it is just allergies or asthma, and it is often difficult to know how to treat your maladies. If you suffer from any other illness that you feel some symptoms that might be normally confused with the cold or flu, such as asthma or allergies or migraines or Chronic Fatigue, it might be hard to know if you are getting sick or just having a flare-up of your underlying condition. Even tell tale signs like feeling cold or achy all over are the norm for many people with chronic illness. This may lead you to take your standard asthma or migraine or pain reliever medication before realizing you are sick and then you take something for your cold or flu. This can easily lead to medication conflicts. You may recall with Anna Nicole Smith that even with a drug abuse history, she thought other maladies were wrong with her before realizing she had the flu, and she took prescription medications for each other malady prior to medicating for the flu itself, so many medicines were found in her system. Medication interactions are not uncommon in non-drug abusers who get a cold or flu or other malady, and the results can potentially be deadly if you mix medications too quickly. A specific concern for those with chronic health issues is some of the symptoms of illness - achiness, headache, sore throat, chills and exhaustion are a part of everyday life, so determining if one should take their pain meds or cold meds if often a difficult decision. If medications are mixed or taken too early, results can be very dangerous. Often people at the onset of symptoms think an illness might be something else, and it is especially difficult if you have fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome. How many prescription medications are too many when you aren't feeling well? How long can you self-medicate? Can you continue to take your regular prescription medications and over the counter medications at the same time?

A problem with illnesses like the flu is the onset of symptoms are often vague before you feel really bad, and the person may wrongly self-diagnose and medicate for something else - perhaps an over the counter treatment for stomach upset, or Nyquil for coughing, perhaps allergy medication, or migraine medication, ibuprofen or even just aspirin. At the same time, most people do not realize that their prescription medications may conflict with over the counter cold and flu medications. Also, some medical conditions such as a recent concussion, previous neurological trauma, such as brain injury or stroke may make you more sensitive to medication, sedatives and alcohol. Many of these medications intended to dry out your runny nasal passages and mildly sedate you to sleep comfortably, but they can be dangerous in tandem with prescription medications or other flu medications for other symptoms. For instance, cough medicines often stop coughing by sedating the gag reflex in the brain. If you took one medication for coughing during the day and then take another one to help you sleep comfortably, a conflict could exist since both sedate you. If you take a prescription pain medication like Vicodin and a cough suppressant at the same time, this may be TOO much of a sedative for your system, even though you can take both types separately. Some people have reason to take anti-anxiety medications and even some of the prescriptions that are commonly used by people for a host of problems including vertigo spells, seizures, muscle spasms and other common complaints. So someone may not realize they are taking multiple sedatives and that if they are de-hydrated, this makes the effects of any medications all the worse. If you have some sort of injury that causes muscle pain or achiness, at the start of the flu you might just think you are hurting from your injury and take a medicine like Valium before realizing it is the flu and you want to take a flu medication. How long to wait between medications is something that is hard to gauge if you are not a professional. Some foods also heighten the affects of medications, for instance, grapefruit juice makes sedatives like Valium more potent, and orange juice can make ibuprofen less so. The beverage you have with your medications, even if not alcoholic, can alter the affect of the medications in your system.

I know an asthmatic who took an over-the-counter cough medication when sick, had a conflict between the asthma medication and the over the counter cough medicine and in tandem with being dehydrated, had a bad reaction that is a well known contraindication even though there were no indications on the bottles. When a doctor gives you a sample medication, make sure to ask if this conflicts with any medicine you are already taking since most pharmacies would check that in their prescription database for new medication conflicts, but samples are not entered to know if there is a conflict. Yale did a study on young women who took a certain recalled cough medicine and had deadly reactions and realized they had strokes due to medicine conflicts that were not readily observed from the list of medications they were taking.

I have also felt better drinking lots of cold soda when I am sick with congestion and a fever; it makes me feel more alert and less congested. For some people, caffeine relieves the achiness of the flu. But the caffeine can also be dehydrating and prevents you from drinking water based beverages that could replenish fluids and help you get over your illness. High doses of caffeine or NoDoze use need to be included in your list of medications when speaking to a doctor about your medication options and if you drink lots of caffeine when you are sick try to include more water as well.

When you vomit when you get the flu, what do you do about your daily medications that you might have thrown up - such as asthma medications or blood pressure or heart medications - do you take them again or do you skip them for the day? If you take them again, are you overdosing and what happens if you take two doses of that medication? While your doctor or pharmacist can tell you the answer, if you are sick you might not bother to call, perhaps thinking you will call later on after you get some rest. Consult your doctor to know what to do if you vomit after taking medication before you presume that medicine you took was purged from your system after throwing up and you take any more medication to avoid over or under dosing.

We live in a time when many illnesses are no longer deadly in of themselves due to medical advances, but when self-medicating without consulting a physician or pharmacist, we can all easily take medications that interact with each other or last in your system longer than you might think. Do not just go by the directions on the bottle, contact the pharmacist or doctor with a full list of what medications and vitamins you take for whatever reason - even intermittent use - and let them tell you how long you have to wait before switching medications. Surprisingly, several medications can last in your system for days and cause a potential conflict long after the bottle indicates it is time to take another dose. While the bottle might indicate it is time to take the next dose of the same medication, it might be too soon to switch to another medication. When you first realize it is the flu and not something else, it is very easy to be caught in the situation that you have already set yourself up for a dangerous medication conflict if you do not wait long enough to take another medication.