As you grow older, you need to go through more than one medication to stay healthy. But taking more medicine at the same time can risk your life. In 2008, more than 680,000 people over the age of 60 were admitted to the emergency room because of adverse reactions between two different medicines.
This report shows that even if you take medication to cure your illness, not managing them properly is still as harmful as not taking your medications.
If you or your close ones are on multiple medications daily, the best approach would be to be proactive with your situation and evaluate the time between two successive medications.
Risk Of Taking Multiple Medicine
The more medicine you take, the more careful you need to be with your medication. If you are not careful enough, your medication can react with each other, deteriorating your health.
Here are a few risks that are associated with multiple medications.
- The first thing you will experience by consuming different medicine at the same time is the side effects. Consuming them together might initiate a chemical reaction, risking your health.
- You are at higher risk of a drug interaction. Drug interaction is a phenomenon that happens when one drug affects the other drug’s work.
- With multiple medicines, you might find it hard to treat the right to take medicine safely.
- You might get confused and take the medicine that you might not need at the moment.
Tips For Managing Multiple Medications
There is a possibility that you have several medical complications, and to keep those complications in check, you need to follow multiple medications. To get the most out of the medication, you must follow the medication as directed by your doctor without missing any doses.
Here are a few tips that will help you manage your multiple medications.
1. Stay On Schedule
Your doctor has prescribed you medicine to treat your medical condition in a specific way. Hence, you need to stay on your prescribed schedule for effective results.
The best way to stay on schedule is by:
- Reading the entire medication label.
- Taking your pill at the same time every day.
- Using a chart or pill calendar.
- Using pillboxes.
2. Avoid Drug Interaction
Drug interaction is the phenomenon when one medication reacts with the other medication. These interactions can cause unexpected side effects or reduce the potency of the medicines.
To stay safe, follow these steps:
- Let your doctor know all the medication you are going through.
- Keep all the medication information on the prescription.
- Fill your prescription at the same pharmacy.
- Use different color packages to segregate the medicines.
- You can even use medication swallowing gel to create a layer over the pills to ensure it doesn’t react with the other. Furthermore, the swallowing gel helps to smoothly swallow the pills.
3. Use Pillbox
Pillboxes are an inexpensive solution to keep your medication in check. With the help of pillboxes, you can ensure that you are taking the right medicine at the right time. The only thing you need to keep in mind while maintaining a pillbox is to fill it every time once the week is over.
4. Turn To Technology
Today technological gadgets are helping the patient taking medicine on time. For example, you can set the alarm to refill your pillbox and wear wristwatches to ensure you take your medicine as directed by the doctors.
5. Avoid Making These Mistakes
With so much medication, people are bound to mistakes. The easy way to rectify these mistakes is to carefully follow the doctor’s prescription. In addition, talk to your doctor about the medicinal cost concern, which might force you to skip the doses.
You don’t have to keep taking the medication even after you feel better. However, you do not have to stop taking medicine if you cannot see any result. Improvements are not shown right away.
Final Tip
While you are on multiple medications, you must ensure that you know the location where your medicine is stored. This is to ensure that you do not forget to take any medication.
Adopt these helpful habits:
- Put your medicine where you look every day.
- Keep a list of medicines.
- Stick a medicine calendar on the wall.
- Keep your medication bottle upside down when it is time to refill.
