The Forums › Forums › Ask The Community › Depression medications adversely effect working memory? › Reply To: Depression medications adversely effect working memory?
Hey, ANYTHING you consume—whether a drug or food or whatever—can either help you or hurt you. It all depends on the substance, the dose, and the person.
We all need Vitamin A to survive, but if you take too much, it’ll kill you. It’s the same with salt. Digitalis (which comes from the foxglove plant) can save the life of a heart patient, but kill someone who takes it when they don’t need to. Even drinking too much water can kill you!
So a more accurate question would be, “What are the potential side effects of this particular medication that my doctor has prescribed for me, and how likely is each of those side effects?”
The key word is “potential“, because the same med can affect different people differently.
Remember the media circus about all those horrific bad reactions to Prozac? And yet, millions of people have been helped tremendously by Prozac…but we never seem to hear about them, do we?
You and your doctor & pharmacist need to determine if the potential benefits of taking a particular drug outweigh the potential risks of taking it, in your particular situation, with your particular health status.
With anti-depressants, a very common side effect is elevated blood sugar. However, my doctor & I decided that it would be far more dangerous for me NOT to take an anti-depressant to control my severe depression, than it would be for me to risk potentially developing diabetes. Unfortunately, I *did* eventually develop Type II Diabetes. But at least I’m still alive, so we made the right choice!
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