What Are the Serious Side Effects of These Common Drugs?
What do you have stored in your medicine
cabinet? You likely have your go-to brand of painkiller, maybe some
prescription medication and perhaps an anti-histamine. You may realize
that even the most standard-issue, OTC pills have side effects -
headaches, drowsiness, nausea. Here's a list of the crazy side effects
of common drugs.
1. Ibuprofen can burn you alive
Though incredibly rare, there are cases in
which five out of every million users experience what is known as the
Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), a condition which causes blistering all
over the body. Patients who continue to ingest ibuprofen after being
diagnosed with SJS can go on to develop something called toxic epidermal
necrolysis, which causes third-degree burns all over the body - and it
is fatal in 30% of cases.
2. Naproxen could make you look like you
drowned
This leading migraine medication is one of the most highly effective,
non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. But, it can cause blue lips and
fingernails.
3. Aspirin can leave you black and blue
Blood-thinning medications like aspirin are
the most common and can cause random bruises to appear on your body.
4. Penicillin could make you hallucinate
Penicillin is widely revered as the drug that heralded in the age of
modern medicine. What isn't known, however, is that it can cause
patients to experience - hear, see and feel - things that aren't real.
5. Eye drops can give you indigestion
From a physiological standpoint, it is
unclear how this happens. But common eye drops that are used for
itchiness, pinkeye and the like, has been linked to indigestion.
6. And can also cause serious mental anguish
In more serious side effects, ofloxacin can cause temporary confusion
about identity, place and time and can also impede the ability to use or
understand human language.
7. Testosterone will deplete your sperm count
The increasingly popular drug that's
supposed to make you stratospherically manlier has one of the most
ironic of side effects: it depletes your sperm count.
8. Prednisone can make you shorter
Prednisone is a common steroidal medication that is used to treat
everything from asthma to gout, to ulcerative colitis, can cause a
decrease in height.
9. Sleeping pills will make you do inadvertent cardio
Sleeping pills will put you into a deep
sleep - sometimes, so deep, you may develop a case of parasomnia, or
what is better known as 'sleepwalking'.
10. Prozac can make you thirsty
Prozac has one of the strangest side effects out there, even doctors
don't entirely know why it occurs. Prozac gives you a near unquenchable
level of thirst.