Lifestyle drug is an imprecise term commonly applied to

medication A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to medical diagnosis, diagnose, cure, treat, or preventive medicine, prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an imp ...

s which treat non–life-threatening and non-painful conditions such as

baldness Hair loss, also known as alopecia or baldness, refers to a loss of hair from part of the head or body. Typically at least the head is involved. The severity of hair loss can vary from a small area to the entire body. Inflammation or scarrin ...

wrinkles A wrinkle, also known as a rhytid, is a fold, ridge or crease in an otherwise smooth surface, such as on skin or fabric. Skin wrinkles typically appear as a result of ageing processes such as glycation, habitual sleeping positions, loss of bo ...

erectile dysfunction Erectile dysfunction (ED), also called impotence, is the type of sexual dysfunction in which the penis fails to become or stay erect during sexual activity. It is the most common sexual problem in men.Cunningham GR, Rosen RC. Overview of male ...

, or

acne Acne, also known as ''acne vulgaris'', is a long-term skin condition that occurs when dead skin cells and oil from the skin clog hair follicles. Typical features of the condition include blackheads or whiteheads, pimples, oily skin, and po ...

, which the speaker perceives as either not medical problems at all or as minor medical conditions relative to others. It is sometimes intended as a pejorative, bearing the implication that the scarce medical research resources allocated to develop such drugs were spent frivolously when they could have been better spent researching cures for more serious medical conditions. Proponents, however, point out that improving the patient's subjective quality of life has always been a primary concern of

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practice ...

, and argue that these drugs are doing just that. It finds broad use in both media and scholarly journals.

Concept and impact on society

There is direct impact of lifestyle drugs on society, particularly in the developing world. Implications associated with labeling of indications and products sales of these lifestyle drugs may be varied. Drugs can, over time, switch from 'lifestyle' to 'mainstream' use.

Bioethics and medical policy debate

Though no precise widely accepted definition or criteria are associated with the term, there is much debate within the fields of

pharmacology Pharmacology is a branch of medicine, biology and pharmaceutical sciences concerned with drug or medication action, where a drug may be defined as any artificial, natural, or endogenous (from within the body) molecule which exerts a biochemica ...

and

bioethics Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, med ...

around the propriety of developing such drugs, particularly after the commercial debut of

Viagra Sildenafil, sold under the brand name Viagra, among others, is a medication used to treat erectile dysfunction and pulmonary arterial hypertension. It is unclear if it is effective for treating sexual dysfunction in women. It is taken by m ...

. The German government's health insurance scheme has denied insurance coverage for some ''Lifestyle-Medikament'' ("lifestyle drugs") which they deem spurious. Critics of pharmaceutical firms claim that pharmaceutical firms actively

medicalize Medicalization is the process by which human conditions and problems come to be defined and treated as medical conditions, and thus become the subject of medical study, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment. Medicalization can be driven by new evid ...

; that is, they invent novel

disorder Disorder may refer to randomness, non-order, or no intelligible pattern. Disorder may also refer to: Healthcare * Disorder (medicine), a functional abnormality or disturbance * Mental disorder or psychological disorder, a psychological pattern ...

s and

disease A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that ar ...

s which were not recognized as such before their "cures" could be profitably marketed, in effect pathologizing what were widely regarded as normal conditions of human existence. The consequences are said to include generally greater worries about health, misallocation of limited medical research resources to comparatively minor conditions while many serious diseases remain uncured, and needless health care expenditure. This

medicalization Medicalization is the process by which human conditions and problems come to be defined and treated as medical conditions, and thus become the subject of medical study, diagnosis, prevention, or treatment. Medicalization can be driven by new ev ...

of some element of human condition has significance, in principle, as a matter for

political discourse Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse Analysis (discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event) ...

dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is ch ...

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.values or morals. Social critics also question the propriety of devoting huge research budgets towards creating these drugs when far more dangerous diseases like cancer and

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ma ...

remain uncured. It is sometimes claimed that lifestyle drugs amount to little more than medically sanctioned

recreational drug use Recreational drug use indicates the use of one or more psychoactive drugs to induce an altered state of consciousness either for pleasure or for some other casual purpose or pastime by modifying the perceptions and emotions of the user. When ...

Examples of lifestyle drugs

Modafinil Modafinil, sold under the brand name Provigil among others, is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant medication used to treat sleepiness due to narcolepsy, shift work sleep disorder, and obstructive sleep apnea. While it has seen off-label ...

(when used off-label or for shift-work); Modafinil is indicated for the treatment shift-work sleep disorder, sometimes dubbed a lifestyle condition. In this aspect, modafinil is already recognized as a lifestyle drug by the FDA. Modafinil's off-label use for increasing productivity is another example of its use as a lifestyle drug. Modafinil has been used to support lifestyles requiring long and irregular working hours (such as in shift-work), frequent memory recall throughout the day (amongst students and academics), and unfatigued decision making capabilities (such as amongst U.S. air force pilots, where modafinil is an approved " go pill"). Compared to other productivity drugs, users of modafinil for this purpose more often report possessing prescriptions for modafinil. *

Finasteride Finasteride, sold under the brand names Proscar and Propecia among others, is a medication used to treat hair loss and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) in men. It can also be used to treat excessive hair growth in women and as a part of hor ...

(when used to treat balding); The use of DHT blocking medications like finasteride for the treatment of balding without the intent to treat dangerous pathologies can be considered lifestyle-enhancing use of the medication. *

Minoxidil Minoxidil, sold under the brand name Rogaine among others, is a medication used for the treatment of high blood pressure and pattern hair loss. It is an antihypertensive vasodilator. It is available as a generic medication by prescription in o ...

; The use of minoxidil and other topical vasodilating medications for the treatment of balding without the intent to treat dangerous pathologies can be considered lifestyle-enhancing use of the medication.

References

External links

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