Is Your Medicine Really Helping You, Or Hurting You?

My misfortune, mistakes and lessons

I subtract more things from my life than I add. That’s a formula that’s worked for me always.

Last year, a lot of things were kicked the hell out of my life. But one thing stayed put for the longest time — antibiotics.

Sneaky little thing.

I never suspected it. But in retrospect, there were so many signs — I developed food intolerances, and acne flare-ups became worse with antibiotics, not better. And I lost a significant amount of weight as I was unable to eat anything without discomfort.

My stomach and my gut started deteriorating. The whole time, I thought antibiotics were healing me.

But they were actually destroying all my good gut bacteria.

Switching doctors can be a setback

You know, like when your manager leaves the company before promoting you, and now you have to start from zero with your new manager.

I switched 3 derms last year, due to circumstances and other reasons.

And to each one, I informed of how the previous derm put me on antibiotics. (You’re not supposed to be on antibiotics for long or you risk developing resistance and destroying your gut health)

Yet, I was still put on different antibiotics. To the derm, my page started fresh — even if my stomach was far from fresh.

I never understood that, even to this day.

I’m not a math problem to be struck off and started on a fresh page again. My body’s got a whole history.

Towards the end of 2023, I did deep research and found the culprit — I quit antibiotics in the middle of my course. Guess what?

My acne healed dramatically.

I ditched it for good and filled my gut with probiotic-rich foods. So my stomach slowly recovered back to its regular digestive strength, and indigestion and inflammatory responses went down.

Voila, acne went down.

No doctor will heal your gut, your hormones or your bad lifestyle for you. Only you can

My last derm was a good one.

He suggested me to stay away from certain trigger foods (like cheese), but he still didn’t stop prescribing the antibiotics.

So nothing I did worked and new acne popped up everyday.

It felt like my stomach quiet-quit on its one job — digestion.

Not a single derm diagnosed my gut to be the problem, despite me repeatedly complaining of sudden food intolerances and acne emerging due to certain foods.

They only focussed on the acne, not the root cause.

In my research, I found 1000s of people who have felt the same agony as me — a problem that was not getting cured but being hit with more and more pills.

It’s only recently that Youtube channels on healing gut health are trending. Thank god for that.

Do not blindly follow prescribed medications without simultaneously researching natural methods for healing

There is no shortage of crazy medications for acne. I’m sure they exist for other health conditions too.

I call them crazy because they get prescribed for even mild acne. They damage you from the inside while projecting a false image of your health on the outside. Politics.

During my time in the west, it boggled my mind how birth control pills were given to every other woman, like candies to trick-or-treat kids on Halloween. These pills while solving one problem, cause 3 new problems. I saw the side effects up close on 4 of my female friends. They regretted it and eventually came off it, and their original issues snapped right back at them like a rubberband.

In today’s times, naivety can cost you your health.

Here in the East, birth control pills are extremely rare. A lot of hormonal issues are healed through dietary changes, natural supplements and physical activity. It’s a combination of all that does the healing. Even for the most severe acne conditions, Accutane (an oil-gland suppressing medicine) is given — but in low doses.

In the West, I’ve seen the simplest shit get escalated— me and my South Asian friends lost our minds. We weren’t used to being scanned for cancer just cause we told the doctor our butt hurts. But we did, and the issue turned out to be something far, far less severe. But the toll it took on us mentally was probably enough to manifest into another health condition.

Unfortunately, medical culture in my country is slowly getting more money-minded and untrustworthy too.

Some doctors want your money, others are stuck in their ways.

But mostly, nobody wants to look deeper into your lifestyle related health concerns.

One of my derms rudely told me that I wasn’t exercising first thing in the morning and that’s the reason for my hormonal imbalance and acne.

Well, I din’t have the privilege. I was working night shifts and sleeping at 2 AM.

She never cared to ask for my daily routine, yet thought she could fix my health concerns emerging from my daily routines.

I never went back to her.

My last derm was empathetic, even if he wasn’t perfect. He was probably the only derm who told me to not stress about my acne and appearance, and to embrace my skin while it heals. It felt comforting. But atleast, he broke my chain of derm visits because he half-healed me (the other half is me quitting his prescribed antibiotics).

When it comes to health, keep your eyes and ears open.

Do not delegate the responsibility of fixing your health issues to your doctors completely.

They do what they know to do, but they don’t know you.

And sometimes, that can be detrimental.

Turn off the auto-pilot and take control of your health and your life choices.