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
Many systems in the body are regulated with various neurotransmitters, proteins, ions, and the like. They work like glorified keys in locks, where some are master keys that work in many locks, others with very unique keys that only work in one place.
The goal of any pharmaceutical therapy is to find a drug that acts on only the locks that are problematic, while affecting the fewest other systems. Unfortunately as before, there is a tonne of interplay between the systems.
Aspirin (ASA) thins the blood (because [reasons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin)). Have a headache or a heart attack? Take Aspirin, ASA thins the blood, allowing it to flow into constricted areas to reduce the pain or help deliver more oxygen. Have a bleeding stroke or bleeding disorder? Take aspirin and the thinner blood will…bleed even more easily. It’s not so much that aspirin is a ‘cure headache key’, it’s a ‘thin the blood’ key (among other effects).
To the original question – why isn’t there a perfect drug for a specific ailment? Because many body systems have overlap between their systems. The same thing regulating your blood pH balance can be responsible for digestive acid production and some other liver function. Affecting any one stage will carry on further down the line. Frankly, the fact that our bodies work at all is nothing short of astounding. Tens of thousands of chemical processes in delicate balance with slight perturbations causing disease and death.
There is a saying, ‘There is nothing strong enough to help you, that isn’t also strong enough to hurt you.’ A big part of medicine is making sure that the trade offs are understood and that the downside is outweighed by the positive effect. Since a core concept in medicine is ‘informed consent’ you have to be made aware of these… but people are bad at understanding the trade offs.
The body runs on a bunch of balances. Water is a good example, as you know, not enough and you die… but conversely if there is too much water to everything ratio, you also die.
Medicines change something that affects that balance. But often that then affects the balance of something else, something unintended. That is the side effect. In many cases the medicine might have another use where that side effect is actually the primary effect (say sleepiness with allergy meds) and the primary effect in the other case is now a side effect.
I’d say caffeine is pretty close to a perfect drug (when used in moderation). The primary routes of adminstration, coffee and tea, both show life extending properties. The only problems come from overdose or withdrawal, and even a perfect drug would have withdrawal.
Overly simplified –>
Its like a mathematical equation – you can’t just do one thing to one side of it. We’re all running in equilibrium, even if its not an ideal equilibrium, and when you take something you are knocking YOUR body out of equilibrium, so it will react in some way.
What starts with a C and ends with an annabis?
From Douglas Adams:
“The term `holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson.
“Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson?
No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye.”
In other words, your body is an interconnected whole, not a bunch of independent systems. You can’t tweak something in one place without affecting other parts of the system.
They cause an imbalance in the four humors of the body, if you minimize one humor another is certain to rise!
It depends on what you consider a side effect. For a young, healthy person, there are many drugs which won’t cause any negative effects at all. For instance, most people who take acetaminophen (paracetamol) at appropriate doses for a headache will not experience any negative effects. Same goes for calcium carbonate tabs for heartburn, non-sedating antihistamines for allergies, etc.
There are about a bazillion listed side effects for almost any drug, but this is from large studies – if you take thousands of people with different genetics, ages, and health conditions, someone is bound to get negative effects from almost any medication. Likewise, taking any substance at much higher than the recommended dose (e.g. overdosing) will almost always result in negative effects – this is even true of something like water or food!
That said, if something is said to have absolutely no effects other than the intended one, there’s a good chance that it’s utter BS and doesn’t even do that (e.g. homeopathy).
On the molecular level drugs are generally telling your body to do something different. That signal change usually tells a bunch of other processes to behave differently, which in turn tell a bunch of other processes to behave differently, and so on. You can have a drug that only changes “one” thing and a zillion functions behave differently.
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