The positive effects are why they are medicine…
Actual answer is: this does happen, but then that becomes the reason to prescribe it.
Ozempic was a diabetes medication until the weight loss and addiction effects were observed.
Viagra was originally meant to treat hypertension.
Finasteride was for your prostate then it also became hair loss medication
Viagra was a heart medication during trials, until they realized the heart benefits were minimal compared to the raging boners.
The positive side effects are usually just the effects.
And the ones that aren’t are usually called “off-label”. ;)
I mean, usually the side effects have qualifiers like „Common: mild headaches“ „Very Rare: become a vessel for satan to roam the earth and sow chaos“. Wouldn’t it indeed be nice to have this for the positive effects too?
Normally if there are postive effects from a drug, they get studied further and re-marketed as such. If I remember correctly, Viagra was originally a medicine for heart conditions.
Would you rather a) die of your heart condition or b) always have a boner
and it’s used to manage pulmonary hypertension in infants.
Or at least not legally required to be listed to avoid liability.
GLP-1 drugs were originally developed for diabetes. A side effect was weight loss.
Most drugs with fun side effects get marketed for the fun side effect.
Heroin was developed as a painkiller and cough remedy.
Nowadays it’s only sold for the fun side effects.
Probably 3/4 of the people I know on GP1s are either reporting mental health/addiction benefits, or are taking it exclusively for that reason. Helped me quit weed, helping a friend of mine quit vaping right now. Shuts off my gut-wrenching anxiety. I hate jumping on bandwagons but it’s a bit of a miracle drug, hopefully it doesn’t cause your DNA to turn inside out after 10 years or something.
My (now ex-) wife developed diverticulitis after a few months of mounjaro… Apparently that’s not uncommon…
Sometimes they do. Case and point, viagra
Then it would be the main purpose of the drug
Not necessarily… Several of the new weight loss drugs are primarily something else, and the weight loss is an “off-label” use. My (now ex-) wife was prescribed mounjaro for her type 2 diabetes, and proceeded to lose a considerable amount of weight. She wanted me to do the same, but insurance only covers the primary use, I wasn’t/am not diabetic, so I’d have to pay out of pocket, and that shit is expensive.
Well that’s more the insurance companies finding ways to get around paying bills, isn’t it?
It is definitely that, but the justification for it is it’s not the intended use of the drug.
Viagra was not originally made for what it’s mostly known for these days. Its effects on the male reproductive organ were a positive side effect.
Was here to say this. When ever they find out some unexpected benefit of a drug, they often invent a disorder and then offer up the treatment.
Things like erectile dysfunction are not really a disorder. It’s normal for men to find it more difficult to get and maintain an erection as they exit their 20s. And it will keep reducing.
Imagine if 50 year old men still walked around like 15 year old boys. My gawd. The world couldn’t survive.
Other drugs with invented dysfunctions.
Male pattern baldness. Again natural and normal for men.
Eye lash thickness. Yes there is a prescription drug to treat your thin eye lashes.
There is a prescription sex drug for women. And here is the best part. It just makes women relaxed and sleepy. Yeah … so think about that.
Our society is fucked.
Natural changes as part of development being labeled as things that need treated.Treat those wrinkles.
Treat that hair loss.
Treat those thin eye lashes
Treat that flat ass syndrome
Aging sucks though.
I mean the body pain sucks. The loss of energy. Muscle tone.
But wrinkles ? Hair loss?
Our capitalistic culture decided it needed people to pay for vanity comforts. Have made it so people are depressed about natural changes that aren’t health related.
Makeup and cosmetic companies used to say you had to stay youthful and pretty or your husband would leave you for his young secretary. Now they tell you, you need lip filler and Botox at 25 "for yourself ". So you can feel good about yourself.
Bitch, please.
Propaganda to first make you feel like shit then offer you a solution that cost money.
And now we have women with swollen faces and lips everywhere, like some platypus fetish, and hair transplants look like shit once the rest of the hair thins out.
Side effect of the side effect of Viagra is blindness.
thinking with the wrong head?
What do you call ‘alternative’ medicine that’s been proven to work?
Medicine.
Desirable ‘side’ effects are just effects.
Side effects are just effects.
Every material we can ingest (or apply on skin, etc) will have effects
Since there are a many more ways for things to go wrong, and very few ways for something to go right, the chance that you get a “negative” side effect is higher than that it’s a positive effect
There’s also off-label usage for drugs where a doctor will prescribe a medication for a different effect than what is originally intended, that’s basically a positive side effect.
Once I was prescribed low-dose antipsychotics to help me fall asleep. They made me energetic, productive, I actually started enjoying life. Then my dr said it wasn’t supposed to happen so cut them off.
I mean, what if the better quality sleep was causing those effects? That does seem unfortunate you had to stop using something making you feel better. I wonder if there was a different, more dangerous side effect they were worried about.
“euphoria” was among possible side effects. I guess the worry was it was getting me high.
Oh fuck that. I would get a second opinion. At least now you know to underplay it. “I think it’s working, yes. Sleeping better and feeling a little better, no side effects that are bothersome, this one seems good, thanks.”
Oh no, they shouldn’t make you feel too good!
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Sometimes antidepressants can unmask bipolar disorder and cause manic episodes but I’ve never heard of anything similar with antipsychotics. In fact they’re often used as sedatives as OP alluded to.
Sometimes antidepressants can unmask bipolar disorder and cause manic episodes
Unless mania or hypomania was present previously in a patient, this would be more about the drug’s effects than revealing a pre-existing condition.
I’d find a new doctor and tell them what was working for you
Doctor was like, I am sorry but you are not supposed to enjoy life.
uh thats stupid? what even was the logic?
The underlying reason is that someone who has a dramatic shift to either extreme often comes with negative behaviors. Bipolar mania for example could result in blowing through money or seeking pleasure outside a relationship and a bunch of other stuff with negative outcomes.
I would hope their decision making was more nuanced than basic correlation.
I am not satisfied with that answer. You got bipolar mania from an increase in happiness, which doesn’t sit right with me. And he was prescribed antipsychotics, which are treatment for mania. It seems to me to be a case of an unexperienced doctor ceasing treatment because he was afraid of an unexpected result.
You don’t have to blindly accept what the doctor is saying, challenge them. It is after all your body and your life
LOL have you ever challenged a doctor? Expect more empathy from ICE.
Most doctors I’ve spoken to have been quite happy to work with me rather than against me.
The unfortunate trick is you need to self educate to speak a bit more in their language. You also need to accept they are often working within rules that are unintuitive.
E.g. I prefer a particular brand drug Vs the generics. (The delivery method was slightly different) I had to cycle through the generics so they could tick them off in the system. Otherwise it would try to automatically shift me to a generic.
You’re adorable.
I’m guessing you just mouth off at doctors, and so get treated like an idiot.
Guess again! I hope you never have to deal with what I deal with, but in a way I do. Suffering is a great teacher.
If you smell dog shit, check the ground. If you constantly smell dog shit, check your shoe.
Most doctors are trying to help as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. 80-90% are fine to work with you, within their workflow. If every doctor you encounter is in the 10% then either you’re VERY unlucky, or you are the problem element.
You’re pathetic
You’re a psychopath. An excellent candidate for medical school. Did you apply?
Doctors are the last people who care about you. They have procedures they memorized and their job is to fill out forms and push you along the system.
Sometimes they do. Viagra was originally a heart medication that they figured out did something else.
Botox was for eye muscle disorders, now it’s used cosmetically, for migraines, and a bunch of other diseases.
Apparently 20% of drugs are prescribed off-label. It’s kind of an extension of “what do you call alternative medicine that works?”
Botox is the toxin in botulism that kills.
It’s right there in the name!
Wait, migraines? Are you able to give me (what would technically legally be non-medical) information on that? Migraines run in my family and every family that comes into contact with my little brother. Aside from the botulism poisoning method, how does that work?
There is a positive feedback loop between psychic tension and scalp muscle tension. The more psychic tension aka stress you’ve got, the more migraine you’ll get, if you’re prone to migraine. Relaxing the scalp muscles with botox (or needles aka acupuncture or massage - botox is just far more efficient) will lead to less psychic tension will lead to less migraine.
I’m not sure whether it works in the long run if you do not work on reducing stress in other ways as well. I don’t know whether there are other mechanisms, though.
I get quarterly botox injections from my neurologist for my migraines. It’s 20+ little injections in my brow, jaw, neck, and shoulders. Before insurance would allow it, we had to try all other available treatments/medications, including a monthly at-home injection you give yourself. For me, at least, it’s been way better than the earlier treatments. I used to have 2-4 migraines per week at a pain around a 5 or 6 with a couple a year that would hurt more like an 8 or 9. Now I get 0-2 per week, usually no worse than a 3 on pain. It’s pretty common to go a few weeks without any, then just get one a week in the last month before my next injection.
Results vary a lot, probably because there are a lot of potential causes and even how we experience our migraines can vary so significantly. Efficacy can fade with time, too. But for me, at least, it’s held out for several years, and worked better than I or my doctor even expected.
It’s actually a labeled use nowadays. Just Google it on a burner phone (once advertised think you have migraines you’ll see nothing but migraine ads for months)
Viagra also alleviates PMS. Not approved for it, even though it’s prescribed for recreation to men.
However, the trial ended prematurely as investigators did not meet their sample size, so the funding was discontinued.
How? Why? This kind of study should be trivially easy to complete. The medication is already on the market, generics are super cheap, administration is super simple and non-invasive and I’d guess there are plenty of women suffering from PMS. That sounds like the kind of study that a grad student could pull off on a DIY budget.
According to Google, generics are ~€0.50 per dose and they administered a single dose per patient. Let’s say placebos cost the same as the generics, then the cost for these 25 participants was less than €15.
Weirdly, they administered sildanefil vaginally. You’ll need a pharmacist and a laboritory to create sildenafil vaginal suppositories, so a bit above grad school level.
The reason they cite for the decline of funding - “PMS doesn’t exist” - shows that the real reason is misogynistic managers.
Weirdly, they administered sildanefil vaginally. You’ll need a pharmacist and a laboritory to create sildenafil vaginal suppositories, so a bit above grad school level.
Still something that any pharmacy can do for a low price. They only need to grind up regular sildanefil pills and put the powder into vaginal suppositories.
Our pharmacy did something similar for anal suppositories for our baby when there were covid-related shortages for ibuprofen suppositories.
My only wild and reaching guess, beyond simple cruelty and hatred, is marketing was afraid of associating the drug with periods because “men would get grossed out” and potentially impact that share of the market.
Probably something like that… Sucks.
And it’s kinda stupid too. PMS is well known to not be conductive to female libido, and female libido is conductive to Viagra sales. So why not sell it to women too (=more sales) which might increase the occasions to sell it to men as well.
IDK if i have a partner i want them to be comfortable. Idk whether there’s just a lot of incels in powerful places or men have historically just hated the women they’re with. Either way that’s one reason I don’t identify as a man.
I wonder if actually helpful PMS medication would cannibalize e.g. pain medication sales. Generic viagra is super cheap, and in the study they used just one dose. So if that’s the actual dosage required in the end, that could cost the pharmaceuticals industry money.
Similar to with vas occlusive contraception. It’s really easy, simple, dirt cheap, lasts long, is reversible, non-hormonal, no side effects male contraception. It’s basically the perfect contraception and it’s the only reversible long-term contraception that men can use.
But it was dropped because it would pretty much annihilate the female contraceptive industry, which makes a huge amount of money each year.
Quote from the Wiki article on RISUG, the form of Vas-occlusive contraception that came closest to getting to market:
Despite this, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to lose market share of a thriving global market for female contraceptives and condoms which bring billions of dollars of revenue each year. Initially, RISUG attracted some interest from pharmaceutical companies. However, considering that RISUG is an inexpensive, one-time procedure, manufacturers retracted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance
Yeah i generally assume decisions like these are profit/hate driven. If you can make a market case, even mildly convincing that profits will be hit, it’s going to be researched enough to get copyright and bury as long as possible.
Just can’t imagine being one of those researchers(if they knew/weren’t duped), board members or marketing fucks going home to someone who thinks they’re loved, watching them writhe in pain, and think, “yeah I’m gonna be so rich!”
TIL 😀
I mean a fair amount of my friends had endometriosis (not sure if that’s a geographic oddity or something worse) and now I’m curious if that could have (whole lot of hysterectomies in the gang) helped.
I mean if it would that’s just that much more infuriating…
But I’m not that knowledgeable on the difference between the impact of a cyst and the mechanism that gives cramps. My ex had endo. Miserable experience. I wish your friends the best in managing it.
Weird, my ex had endo as well… Didn’t want sex for a long time, and I was doing my best to be understanding and not pester her… Then she unexpectedly ended up in the ER with extreme pain and heavy bleeding, bad enough she was on morphine and needed a blood transfusion… It took months, but I eventually found out she had cheated on me with our son’s best friend’s dad, and that apparently triggered the event. Hence why she’s now my ex.
Fuck that sucks. Relatable though.
Administered vaginally… “ooh I’m a bit crampy today! Time to pop a pussy pill”
Vaginal suppositories is common enough for eatrogen
Viagra will kill the shit out of you if you have a heart attack and the emergency room gives you nitroglycerin.
Well. Maybe you don’t die, but it won’t have the intended effect.
Drugs are exactly that.
Because then it’s just an effect and the medication is sold as treating weight loss or memory or whatever
Yup, it starts off as an observed effect, then gets documented enough to where it shows up in studies, and then doctors are willing to prescribe it for “off label” use, then trials are run to rigorously test for that effect, until the medical health authorities agree that there’s a strong enough scientific basis to use as a treatment for that condition to where it is approved for that use.
Because when they do it generally becomes one of the advertised effects. Lots of drugs were originally for something else but were later found to be useful for other things.
