Can Self-Medication Help Treat Disease?

Self-medication many times might be more harmful than helpful. Hence, self-medication with prescription medicines, especially for patients of hypertension, should not be undertaken, according to medindia.

"Hypertension should never be considered a minor health problem. The disease itself causes heart attacks, paralysis, renal failure, thickening of the arteries and several other diseases if ignored. A patient in such a situation should never think of self-medication," said Pradeep Gadge, Chief Diabetologist at Mumbai's Gadge's Diabetes Care Centre.

Gupta explained that people tend to resort to self-medication under the misunderstanding that hypertension is an old age disease, and that it can be controlled with simple drugs. They also believe that women are less likely to get blood pressure, and just reducing salt will help the patients.

On the other hand, "Do-it-yourself" blood pressure measurements and medication are better than visiting  doctors for every check-up, a study of older adults in England found, according to cbc. 

Patients who took their own tests of blood pressure at home and adjusted their medicine showed healthier blood pressure levels after a year than those who visited doctors regularly.

However, it is important that changes made by patients should be part of a plan that is given the green signal by doctors. However, the patients don't need to consult doctors every time they increased the dose, if it was part of the "original treatment plan" according to cbc.

Gagdge, a visiting diabetologist at Breach Candy and Seven Hills Hospital, said to medindia that "If hypertension is left untreated it can cause aneurysms, heart attacks and strokes without giving any early signs and symptoms. Hypertension isn't usually accompanied by any symptoms, which makes it mandatory for the patients to go for a check-up at least once in a week."

Nearly one in every thee US adults show high blood pressure, measuring 140 over 90 or higher. But just 50 per cent of the patients have it treated regularly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Hypertension is currently causing 7.1 million global deaths annually. The highest number of high blood pressure patients are in South Africa.