Heart meds. Grr.

Two people in my life suffered unexpected heart events. Fortunately they survived, but the cocktail of drugs given to them caused severe quality of life issues.

One of them who had never taken any medicines routinely in his life was given 7 or 8 of them. Got an ICD after two Torsades events (yes, VERY lucky). He was a fit man, not overweight, and suddenly he could no longer walk to the front door of his house. Side effects are terrible. He talked to the doc repeatedly about reducing doses or dropping some meds, but it was all too slow. We suspected it was low magnesium all along, which seems to be ignored, maybe because it’s hard to measure accurately. Came to find out that one of the heart meds tends to rob people of magnesium. A couple months after discharge, he got fed up with the meds (which did not seem to be helping his EF, incidentally) and stopped taking them all except magnesium, and began gradually walking longer distances. After a couple more months he was enjoying very long walks and his EF climbed from 17% to over 50%. (In reading through medical papers I found a study that showed that 60%-70% of people taking one of the meds benefitted in EF, BUT for 30%-40% it had NO impact. Guess he was one of those. I can’t help but suspect there’s a nuance being missed.)

More recently, another family member suffered a first time heart event and was given many of the same meds and an ICD. Again, not overweight, but has taken cholesterol meds. Released, goes back to normal life, starts walking but has falls. Repeatedly, with serious consequences. Come to find out he has BIG drops in blood pressure (> 45 points!)when he stands, and that this is considered a side effect of one of the meds. No wonder he has falls! A medicine change and now he can’t even stand! Looking at list of “COMMON side effects” for one of the drugs I see falls, fainting, weak legs, trouble walking...

Erring on the side of medication... I get the feeling that even the brilliant cardiologists have too much faith in medicines’ benefits and too little awareness of the serious quality-of-life consequences that some of them cause. While optimizing for heart health, the consequences have been debilitating and it seems that with every side effect, more meds are added to the regimen. It’s very sad.