Lifestyle drug - Definition and Overview

Lifestyle drugs are drugs created to improve the patient's quality of life by addressing relatively minor non-life threatening conditions such as head colds, headaches, baldness, impotence, wrinkles, and obesity. Antidepressants are also sometimes called lifestyle drugs.

Conditions that are a normal part of the human condition (e.g. acne, baldness and impotency) have always been targeted by major pharmaceutical companies, who see a huge untapped market in the aging population and its disposable income. The marketing departments of these companies have spent tremendous amounts of money to create the public perception that these conditions hitherto associated with the normal aging process and human experience are, in fact, diseases which can be treated medically (e.g. the massive advertising campaign for Viagra which sought to redefine impotence as a disease called erectile dysfunction.)

Some social critics question the propriety of devoting huge research budgets towards creating these drugs when far more dangerous diseases like cancer and AIDS remain uncured. It is sometimes claimed that lifestyle drugs amount to little more than medically sanctioned recreational drug use. Proponents point out that improving the patient's subjective quality of life has always been a primary concern of medicine, and argue that these drugs are doing just that.

Example Usage of Lifestyle