What is Triple Therapy?

Triple therapy is a broad term used in treating different illnesses aggressively with more than just one drug or one type of injection therapy, whatever we're talking about. To elaborate further, let's take a person with type 2 diabetes that is not under control with diet and exercise any longer. The doctor may then choose to use an aggressive approach and use triple therapy. That means that the person may take:

Insulin injections for spikes in their blood sugar and their insulin resistance
Drugs like Metformin to help the pancreas process the insulin
Drugs like Actos which helps the pancreatic cells to react to the insulin in the body still being produced

That is a good example of triple therapy used by people.

Now, let's say that you have a bad stomach ulcer and need many drugs to not only clear that up, but also drugs to prevent acid reflux since that is what causes the ulcers most of the time. You might be placed on some triple therapy which requires something like this:

Proton pump inhibitors such as Nexium, Prilosec, and Prevacid are all examples of these types of drugs which you usually take one of per day. These medicines stop the stomach from producing tons of acid so that the ulcer can clear up as well as the reflux.

Medications like Reglan or Carafate for the ulcer itself will need to be added to heal the ulcer and block acids from causing reflux, (heartburn like GERD for example.

Your doctor will probably also recommend that you take Antacids for sour stomach and also to help your throat from the heartburn which is usually a severe problem for people that experience ulcers.

Triple therapy is sometimes hard to keep up with for people since it requires multiple drugs per day every day. But when used as directed, it really works to control whichever illness you are having. A person that has hypertension may often be prescribed triple therapy if their single pill dosages are not working well enough to keep their blood pressure under control. The doctor in this case would probably prescribe three different drugs to do three effective things. These would be:

Calcium channel blockers such as Cardizem CD, or Verapamil. These drugs work to avoid calcium from entering the heart. Therefore, blood vessels are made to relax and not work as hard. Adding angiotensin II inhibitors also relax the blood vessels so that the heart doesn't need to work hard to pump blood. The third drug for hypertension may also be a diuretic which is a water pill that also prevents fluid buildup in the body. These are also sometimes another portion of three way therapy.

Now you have a basic understanding of triple therapy. Your doctor will determine whether taking multiple medications for your condition is right for you or not, and whether benefits far outweigh the potential side effects involved.