It's Personal.

When my mom began feeling dizzy and depressed, it seemed easy to assume why. She has inclusion body myositis, a progressive muscle-wasting disease. Of course, she might feel down — living with a chronic condition is hard. But she had never been depressed before, and the timing was suspicious.

I did what I often do: I researched her medications. I’d already noticed her heart rate was unusually low, and when we mentioned it at a prior appointment, it was brushed off. This time, I pressed harder. I called her cardiologist’s office, spoke to the nurse, and was very specific about side effects. Based on what I’d found, I knew the likely culprit was her blood pressure medication, Bystolic.

That conversation reminded me of a lesson I’ve had to learn for myself, too: new symptoms should never just be written off as “aging” or “life being hard.” They can have a medical cause, and sometimes a simple adjustment makes all the difference.

Why We Need to Ask Questions

New dizziness, fatigue, or mood changes often get dismissed by patients and by doctors. Data show this is a serious problem, especially for women.

• 93% of women report feeling dismissed when seeking medical help.
• 84% of women say they’ve had times when their healthcare professionals weren’t listening.
• Women are 20–30% more likely than men to experience diagnostic errors in outpatient care.
• In one study of prescription records, 12% of patients were given drug pairs that interact, and women had a 60% higher risk of being exposed to dangerous interactions.
• Adverse drug reactions are among the leading causes of hospitalizations and deaths, even when medications are taken exactly as prescribed.

These numbers make clear: it’s not just in our heads. People — especially women — are dismissed, misdiagnosed, and often harmed by the very drugs meant to help them.

Advocate for Yourself (or Your Loved One)

It’s not only patients who assume symptoms are “just age” or “just stress.” Doctors can do it too, often without realizing. Again, women are more likely to have their complaints attributed to mood, menopause, or lifestyle.

That’s why it’s so important to advocate for yourself:

• Do your homework. You don’t need to be a doctor, but a quick review of your medications — or asking a trusted person in your life to do it with you — can help you spot possible side effects.
• Get a medication review. You can request this from your care team or your pharmacist. Pharmacists, in particular, are trained to spot interactions and side effect patterns.
• Track changes clearly. Ordering your medication history from your pharmacy can be more useful than digging through your medical chart. It lays out exactly when drugs were started, stopped, or doses changed. That timeline often holds the key to understanding new symptoms.
• Ask directly: Could this symptom be a side effect of medication?
• Push for assessment: Even if it’s “probably nothing,” you deserve a medical check.
• Don’t accept dismissal: If a provider brushes you off, ask again or seek a second opinion if possible. If the dismissal is ongoing, find a new doctor.

Advocacy doesn’t always mean demanding an expensive workup. Sometimes it’s as simple as adjusting a dose, switching a medication, or ordering a lab. But you only get those adjustments if you speak up.

Build a Care Team That Talks to Each Other

Complex conditions rarely fit neatly into one specialist’s lane. Yet too often, cardiologists, neurologists, and primary care doctors operate in silos, leaving patients to connect the dots.

One way forward: build a team of doctors who actually communicate. That’s what we’re working on for my mom. We trust her vascular neurologist to manage her stroke risk. Instead of guessing which cardiologist might be a good fit, we’re asking that neurologist to recommend a cardiologist they’ve worked with before — someone they trust to handle the heart issues while collaborating on the bigger picture.

This kind of intentional team-building helps prevent “single-number thinking,” such as chasing a perfect blood pressure reading at the expense of other essential factors, like sufficient oxygen delivery to organs and a general quality of life. Instead, the care team weighs the risks and trade-offs together, balancing factors such as stroke prevention, heart function, side effects, falls, and overall well-being.

Final Thoughts

New symptoms aren’t just “part of getting older.” They aren’t always “just stress.” You are not “hysterical” or a hypochondriac. Your symptoms deserve attention. Too many women, too many older adults, and too many patients with chronic illness are told to accept what could, in fact, be addressed.

Advocate for yourself. Bring new symptoms to your doctor. Ask if your symptoms could be side effects of a medication you are taking. Push for evaluation. And whenever possible, build a care team that collaborates, not competes. Be wary of physicians who claim and defend intellectual territory that is not even in their area of expertise - a cardiologist is not a trained expert in microvasculature in the brain, for example.

My mom’s dizziness and depression may turn out to be a medication issue. You don’t have to accept every new ache, mood change, or dizzy spell as inevitable. Sometimes, the answer is simple — but only if you ask.

Resources

NPR interview with Sharon Malone on women's health access issues, including some ideas on what individual women can do

50 examples of gender bias in healthcare, with supporting evidence

Harvard Health on what you can do to help prevent drug interactions

Sunshine Act database to see how much money your physician has accepted from pharma and other healthcare companies for meals, gifts, etc.

Check out my full website.

Explore my bookshop.org store for books on the biome and related subjects.

(This blog is not intended to diagnose or treat disease. I am not a physician. Please consult your physician for any medical advice. Thanks.)

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