It seems like the more potent a drug/medication is, the more risks are involved with it, where as drugs with very little risk don’t help nearly as much.
In: Biology
There were mainly 2 reasons given in this thread and I’ll add a third one:
1) Body has many mechanisms that work on molecular level and most molecules affect multiple systems, or one system’s distruption could affect other systems. (Morphine causing constipation)
2) Too much of a molecule causes too much of an effect (Blood pressure medicine causes very low blood pressure and shock)
3) Balance mechanisms try to balance a drug’s effect when it’s in the body, and when drug is out of the body balance is distupted towards the other way (First you drink too much caffeine to feel over energetic and after a while you drink coffee to feel normal and feel tired more than usual when you don’t drink it)
If a drug had no side-effect, it would have no effect. A drug happens to have certain effect, and when applied to a certain condition one of them is not a side-effect.
If you were to use medication for heart rhythm problems to combat a common cold, a side-effect would be that it affect heart rhythm.
A clear example would be Viagra, which was originally developed for high blood pressure. You can guess what the side effect was.
Drugs usually target a certain pathway and receptor in our bodies when we give a drug, we alter or shut that pathway down to get the effect we want. Many pathways do multiple things though. Therefore when you shut down the pathway you get side effects from other things that pathway does. For example ibuprofen (NSAIDs) Block an enzyme called cox1 and cox2. This shuts relieves inflammation and pain but it also inhibits anti-apoptotic signals to gastric mucosa cells which is why once side effect of NSAIDs is stomach ulcers
Quaaludes apparently gave a euphoric 2 hour high with zero side effects. So much so i’ve seen multiple people say how much they miss them because they were the best thing ever.
Everything is connected in your body. Imagine giant dream catcher except all the strings are just one long string interwoven and perfectly symmetrical. If you pull at a string somewhere, something else moves. The bigger the change, the more something else is shifted. An illness is the dreamcatcher being uneven, and medication tries to fix the alignment.
Unfortunately thats why we have drugs to counteract other drugs. You want everything to be symmetric but if you move something you need to counteract it. somewhere else.
Because all processes in the human body are connected and you can’t affect one without affecting others. It’s like throwing a pebble in water, you may want to hit a precise spot with your pebble and you can but you can’t stop the pebble creating ripples of water as it hits the surface.
Drugs work by altering the production of neurotransmitters. For example, an antidepressant, an SSRI specifically, will inhibit the neurotransmitter serotonin in certain parts of your brain, but that inhibition causes the increase of serotonin in other parts of your brain, it increases it in the parts of your brain that will help with depression, but it also increases it in other unintended parts of your brain, that’s how side effects occur. Developing a perfect drug requires causing the increase of a/multiple neurotransmitter(s) in only the intended part(s) of the brain.
e: a word
Maybe I missed something in the comments. We may be on the verge of actually discovering something like this. Organic compounds such as cannabis and psilocybin have not been studied as much as others. Benefits do exist, but due to stereotypes and lack of funding, or government regulation, more research must be done.
A lot of people are making some very good points but have you ever heard of a PCSK9 inhibitor? They have very few actual side effects. They are tolerated extremely well. They have no real drug interactions that are known. They can reduce your LDL cholesterol from 400+ to 60 nearly instantly. Freaking amazing!
Consider that a drug is just a chemical compound that is introduced into an extremely complex chemical environment inside your body. It is just not possible to design a chemical compound that will precisely interact with one and only one area inside your body, ignoring everything else (unless we are talking about gene therapy or nanoscale devices – but that’s another story). The drug has to be absorbed somehow and circulated through your system until the active drug molecule finds its match. On top of that, chemicals in our system often share multiple different functions – so either reducing or increasing their levels to treat something is a delicate balance of compromises. Maybe the problem will be temporarily fixed, but at the same time another problem can be generated.
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