How to Think About Any Medication
A four-question framework for the age of health misinformation, from an Emergency Physician who sees what happens when it goes wrong.
A patient of mine stopped taking his medication because of a 30-second video.
An influencer with great lighting and zero medical training told him the pills were poison, that the whole thing was a scam, and that real health came in a supplement bottle instead. He believed it. He stopped. And a few months later, we met in my emergency department, dealing with the exact consequence we had been preventing all along.
I want to be clear about what this article is and is not. It is not me telling you that every medication is wonderful and that you should never ask questions. Good medicine welcomes hard questions. What I am giving you is a framework for asking the right ones, so that you can tell the difference between a legitimate concern and a fear that somebody manufactured in order to sell you something.
Why this matters more than it used to
Medication fear is not an abstract internet problem. It is a clinical problem I see on every single shift. Someone stops their blood pressure tablets because a post told them the side effects were being hidden. Someone halves their own dose without telling anyone. Someone swaps a proven medication for a supplement stack a stranger sold them. And the bill for that bad information comes due in my department, in strokes, in heart attacks, in things we could have prevented.
The source of that bad information is not always who you would expect. A 2026 analysis published in JAMA Network Open reviewed 309 popular health videos, all of them created by health care professionals. Fewer than 20 percent of the claims were supported by high-quality evidence. Around 62 percent rested on very little evidence or none at all. And here is the part that should stay with you: the videos with the weakest evidence pulled roughly 35 percent more views than the videos with the strongest.1
So a white coat on camera is not a quality signal. Confidence is not a quality signal. What you need instead is a way of thinking, and the good news is that you do not need a medical degree to use it.
First, learn the tricks
We are going to do this in a specific order. First I am going to name the tactics, because once you can see the move, it stops working on you. This is called prebunking, and it means inoculating yourself against a manipulation technique before you ever meet the claim that uses it.
This is not a soft idea. In a set of randomized studies and a field trial on YouTube involving more than 22,000 people, short videos that taught viewers to recognize manipulation techniques improved their ability to tell trustworthy content from untrustworthy content, and improved the quality of what they chose to share. The effect held across the political spectrum.2 Naming the trick works.
Tactic one. Natural equals safe.
Natural tells you where something came from. It does not tell you whether it is safe, and it does not tell you whether it works. Hemlock is natural. Plenty of the most powerful drugs we have started life as plants. Natural is a marketing word, not a safety rating.
Tactic two. The anecdote dressed up as evidence.
My cousin took it and got sick feels powerful, because stories are how human beings are built to learn. But a single story cannot tell you whether something is safe across millions of people. Real safety data comes from trials and large populations, not from a comment section.
Tactic three. The relative-risk headline.
This drug doubles your risk sounds terrifying. But doubling a tiny risk is still a tiny risk, because twice almost-nothing is still almost-nothing. So always ask: double of what? The honest number is the absolute risk, and it is usually far less dramatic than the headline.3 And accepting some risk is fine. We do that with every choice to intervene, and with every choice not to.
Tactic four. Cherry-picking.
If someone cites the one study that supports their take and ignores the fifty that do not, that is not science. That is a debate-club move in a lab coat. Real findings hold up across the whole body of evidence, not just the convenient slice.
Then, ask the four questions
Now that you can see the tactics, here is the constructive half. These are the four questions to ask about any medication, whether you are deciding to start it or being tempted to stop it.
1. What is this actually for, and what is the benefit?
Not in vague terms, in real ones. Is this treating a symptom, or is it preventing something serious down the line? Doctors think in terms of how many people need to take a drug for one person to benefit, a concept called number needed to treat.3 You do not need the jargon, but you can ask the spirit of it. How much is this likely to help me?
2. What are the real risks, and how common are they?
Every medication has side effects. So does every choice not to treat. The skill is separating the common-and-mild from the rare-and-serious. A leaflet listing fifty possible effects is not telling you that they are likely. It is telling you that they have been reported. Ask which ones actually matter, and how often they happen.
3. What happens if I do not take it?
This is the question that fear-mongering always leaves out. Stopping a medication is itself a decision, and it carries its own risks. Those risks are measurable. A systematic review spanning 14 disease groups found that medication non-adherence imposes a substantial burden, with disease-specific costs running from around 949 US dollars to more than 44,000 US dollars per person per year, driven largely by hospitalizations and emergency visits.4 Those emergency visits are my job. The influencer who tells you to quit never has to face the heart attack on the other side of that advice. You do. So weigh the downside of the drug against the downside of the disease, honestly, on both sides.
4. Is there a non-drug option that is genuinely as good?
Sometimes there is, and a good doctor will tell you. For many conditions, lifestyle changes are real medicine, and regular readers know that the Tier 1 foundations are where I start every single time. But as good has to mean as good, not makes me feel more in control. Ask honestly, and be honest with yourself about the answer.
Four practical notes
• Do not stop suddenly on your own. Some medications are genuinely dangerous to quit abruptly. The right move is almost always to talk to your prescriber about a plan first.
• Your pharmacist is an expert. If you cannot get in to see your doctor quickly, ask your pharmacist. They are deeply trained in exactly this, they are easy to reach, and they like these questions. Use them.
• Interactions are real. A drug that is safe on its own can behave differently alongside another, which is why your team needs the full list of everything you take.
• Supplements are not exempt from any of this. Supplement is a regulatory category, not a safety guarantee. In the United States, supplements are not reviewed for safety or effectiveness before they go on sale.5 They can interact, they can harm, and they deserve the exact same four questions.
How should this modify your practice?
If you are a patient or a caregiver
• Write the four questions on your phone and bring them to your next appointment. A good clinician will be pleased you asked.
• Before you act on any medication claim online, name the tactic. Natural equals safe, anecdote as evidence, relative-risk headline, cherry-pick. If one of the four fits, slow down.
• When you meet a scary number, ask double of what. Chase the absolute risk.
• If you want to stop a medication, that is a legitimate conversation to have. Have it with your prescriber, not with a comment section.
• Bring a full list of everything you take, prescriptions, over-the-counter products, and supplements, to every visit.
If you are a student or a trainee
• Prebunk before you debunk. Teaching the manipulation technique generalizes across claims. Correcting one myth does not.2
• Lead with absolute risk and number needed to treat when counseling patients. Relative risk is where most medication fear is manufactured.3
• Treat a patient stopping a drug as a data point, not a character flaw. Ask what they read and who they heard it from before you correct anything.
• Remember that professional credentials on camera do not track with evidence quality, and that the weakest content often travels furthest.1 Audit your own claims against the hierarchy before you post.
The bottom line
The next time a confident stranger tells you to fear your medication, run the framework. Spot the trick, then ask the four questions. What is the benefit? What are the real risks? What happens if I do not take it? And is there a genuinely equal alternative? That sequence will protect you from far more harm than any single hot take ever caused.
And the antidote to medication misinformation is not a better influencer. It is a real relationship with people who know you. A primary care doctor and a pharmacist who know your history and whom you trust will out-perform any algorithm, every time. They are the ones who can answer those four questions for your specific body. Building that relationship is, once again, the highest-leverage health move that most people skip.
Less bad days, more good decades.
References
AMA style. Items marked with a red asterisk require verification against the source before publishing.
1. Kang E, et al. The Quality of Evidence of and Engagement With Video Medical Claims. JAMA Netw Open. 2026;9(1):e2552106. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.52106
2. Roozenbeek J, van der Linden S, Goldberg B, Rathje S, Lewandowsky S. Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media. Sci Adv. 2022;8(34):eabo6254. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abo6254
3. Barratt A, Wyer PC, Hatala R, et al. Tips for learners of evidence-based medicine: 1. Relative risk reduction, absolute risk reduction and number needed to treat. CMAJ. 2004;171(4):353-358. doi:10.1503/cmaj.1021197
4. Cutler RL, Fernandez-Llimos F, Frommer M, Benrimoj C, Garcia-Cardenas V. Economic impact of medication non-adherence by disease groups: a systematic review. BMJ Open. 2018;8(1):e016982. doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016982
5. US Food and Drug Administration. Dietary Supplements: What You Need to Know. FDA Consumer Health Information. Accessed 2026.
Disclosures
Dr Adrian Cois is an Emergency Physician and Assistant Professor. This article is educational content and does not constitute medical advice, nor does it establish a physician-patient relationship. Always consult a qualified clinician about your own medications.
No affiliate links appear anywhere on DrCois.com. Cronometer is referenced across this brand with no financial relationship of any kind. No commercial entity has reviewed, funded, or influenced this content.
