Your Side Effects Are Real

SNPs – The Elephant in the Treatment Room

As physicians, we are taught, first and foremost, not to harm. Primum non nocere. Unfortunately, this divine concept has been bent and twisted into the concept of risks versus benefits – where harm is acceptable. The elegant art of healing individuals has been reduced to a mechanical, trade-like intervention for the masses that anyone or anything with access to the proper algorithms may practice.

Pay attention and do not deny your observations about the effects or side effects of treatments you choose to engage in. This applies to pharmaceuticals and procedures of allopathic medicine, as well as the myriad of non-traditional healing options. If something does not feel right, PAY ATTENTION. Do NOT just accept that how you feel after a particular intervention is all in your head or a “healing crisis” or any of the rationales you might be given.

Perhaps you ARE a bit neurotic. Perhaps it IS a healing crisis. The point is to pay attention and listen to your own body. If a medication makes your skin crawl, just stop it. If your back feels better every time you go to a chiropractor and your neck feels worse, this is not your problem – the treatments need to be changed.

You Are Not Average

The DNA of any individual is only 99.6% common to all human beings. That remaining 0.4 percent accounts for all the exquisite variations of humanness we find in our world. These variations – called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs – mean that even one tiny mutation in your DNA can change how a protein functions in your body. Diminished, increased, or not at all.

This is why some people can take narcotics for short periods with no withdrawal, while others are addicted after a few doses. Why some have astounding tolerance and others are hypersensitive to the smallest amount. These variations are a direct result of DNA mutations creating proteins that respond differently in different bodies.

Rolling the Dice

When the FDA approves a medication, it states that, on average, a small number of tested people received some benefit and the side effects were usually tolerable. The concern is that although the medication may have been safe on average, it can at any moment be very unsafe for a non-average person. Unfortunately – or fortunately – we are all non-average.

When you pull out that medication information sheet and read the list of side effects, each one indicates how one or more non-average individuals’ bodies reacted. And remember, that was only a tiny sampling of humanity. Every time I give a medication, there is a part of me that feels like I am rolling the dice. It is not a great feeling.

Beyond Pharmaceuticals: The Wild West

One advantage of FDA-approved pharmaceuticals is that you know what you are getting. Once you navigate beyond that oversight, you enter the Wild West of ingestible and injectable healing modalities. Thirty billion dollars per year is spent on unregulated supplements alone.

Naturopathic and herbal remedies often combine many components in one dose, each composed of a vast number of different molecules. When you take a “natural” medicine, you may be exposing your system to a large number of unknown substances. Should you have an adverse reaction, you cannot ascertain which substance caused it.

And every time you add a drug, herb, or supplement to your regimen, there is not only the risk that the new agent will not work well with your particular uniqueness but that combining it with everything else you take may result in adverse interactions – medications working too well, or not at all.