Your Medicine Chest

As we get older we are less likely to throw things away. This was a great problem with my mother, if she couldn’t use something well maybe someone else could.

I remember going into her medicine chest to get an aspirin and all of these bottles fell out, scary isn’t it?

Upon looking at her medications, I found that some were outdated others written by different doctors, they were also purchased at different pharmacies.

I had to convince her to let me toss the outdated medications, we also called the doctors and pharmacies to see if she was putting herself in harms way.

If you see more then one doctor you should always supply them with a complete list of your medications. The list needs to include vitamins as well as herbs, because they may react to other prescriptions, always use the same pharmacy.

When you are dealing with the elderly they usually have heart disease, high blood pressure or diabetes. We need to check their medications often to see that they are not outdated or going to react to each other, this could be life threatening.

So what is the risk of a medication interaction? It all depends on how many medications you take. Two medications have a 5% potential of an adverse drug reaction, five medications have a 50% chance, and eight medications gives almost a 100% chance that something will go wrong. But who takes eight medications? As it turns out, plenty of people do; many of them are elderly and have a variety of medical illnesses. A couple of blood pressure medications, another couple for diabetes, one for gout, an aspirin a day; then add an antibiotic, and the potential for problems is there. It just needs to be recognized.

We need to remember that our bodies are a breeding ground for drug interactions.

You will find more information by clicking here Medicine Chest.