Navigating Your Medications: Five Questions To Ask Your Pharmacist Or Doctor

Mrs. T, age 79, suffers from diabetes and hypertension, among other conditions. Like about one in three older Americans, she takes more than five medications on a regular basis--in her case, nine. On a recent phone call with Nurse Alicia Schwartz, Mrs. T mentioned taking a medication that her nurse knew was no longer among those prescribed for her. "I wasn't feeling well, and this helped me before," Mrs. T. said. Alicia explained that the doctor had replaced the discontinued medicine with another prescription that addresses a similar condition, and the two together can cause dizziness and a severe drop in blood pressure. "That must be why I was dizzy last week," Mrs. T confessed. Over the next several weeks, Alicia, who has been coordinating care for Mrs. T for several years, was able to "negotiate" with her over the phone to get rid of old medications, advising her to put them in a bag and dispose of them. "It's like many things in nursing," says Alicia. "They have to build up that confidence in you, that you're telling them the right thing." Medications play an increasingly big role in the daily lives of older Americans and those with chronic conditions. Some 15% of Americans regularly take five or more medications (known as polypharmacy), according to a recent article in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. This is up from about 8.2% a decade earlier. For Americans age 65+, the figure for polypharmacy was even higher--39% (up from 24% a decade earlie...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news