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What kind of doctor or healthcare practitioner do you see to find out about side effects and interactions of meds?

Asked by Jeruba (55836points) April 19th, 2009

I take a rather complex assortment of meds, and I have been thinking for some time that there could be some undesirable results going on. Every doctor I see knows the list, but doctors are not especially trained in pharmaceuticals. A pharmacist can point out some possible conflicts and interactions but is not really available to sit down with me and go through my own actual symptoms and possible side effects in detail. A website such as Drugs.com can give me standard warnings based on chemical composition and statistics but not advise me on specific reactions and where to consider making changes.

Just for an example, one doctor prescribed for me a certain med for pain and an accompanying OTC drug to alleviate the side effects of the pain med. But the Drugs.com analysis of interactions calls out that specific combination as inadvisable and also recommends against combining that OTC med with a drug prescribed by another doctor.

I don’t like taking any meds, and sometimes I feel that I’d like to stop them all and just see what happens. At other times I think they’re what keep me going as well as I do.

Where should I go for someone who will actually help me study my set of prescriptions and figure out which are perhaps not working well for me?

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