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Finish the thought. This is why it is much better for all your doctors to know everything about your health issues. While specialties are needed (no one has time to learn and keep up with all the developments of medicine) you can’t treat the body as if the parts were all separated. All the systems affect each other and something off in one might indicate problems in another area, or obscure a problem.
Best example I ever saw of that was my nan. In her 70s, her doctors couldn’t figure out why she seemed to be getting weaker and weaker, with nothing specifically causing this. Eventually she was on more than a dozen different tablets each supposedly dealing with one symptom or other, but nothing was helping. So in a fit of pretty much desperation, they took her off everything.
She got better, left hospital within days and lived till her early 90s.
Chuckle. My standard instructions to the ambulance crews bringing older or chronically ill patients from home to the Emergency Department included having them (or the following family) bring ALL of the medications AND over the counter supplements that the patient was taking, SPECIFICALLY having someone check the bathroom (counter, drawers and medicine cabinet, the kitchen table, and the side table next to the chair the patient usually sat in.
It was NOT unusually, in the days before automated pharmacies systems that “talked” to each other across corporate shops (and now, often across corporate boundaries!), to find that two different specialists had ordered medications that either doubled the effects or otherwise interfered with each other.
It’s one place where having a good Generalist – General Internal Medicine or Family Medicine Specialist – coordinating the care of complex problems is a good idea.
Worse yet, most people don’t realize (and the pharmaceutical companies really don’t want you to know) just how many prescription drugs are based off a portion of the chemical composition of an herb. (yes, herbs have a chemical composition just like man-made things, the difference is just how that composition came about.) There is (and has happened ) the possibility of someone doubling or wiping out, their dosage by taking the prescription their doctor gave them and adding some natural remedy suggested by someone who thinks they are helping out. I recommend checking natural remedies potential interactions with you prescriptions online, tell your doctor all over the counter remedies you take, including food items like ginger, garlic, or licorice (check if it is made with real licorice root or anise, they have different reaction on the body) and it is best if you can build a trusting relationship with your pharmacist (those people are an amazing source of information that can help keep you safe.