The Time of Your Life by Margaret Trudeau

Author:Margaret Trudeau [Trudeau, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781443431859
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2015-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

POLYPHARMACY

More and more, I notice an increasing reluctance in people to take pharmaceutical drugs in favour of alternative approaches to health. While I support any choices a woman makes to be healthier, I firmly believe that pharmaceutical drugs play a major role in keeping us healthy. That said, I know that, especially for those over age 60, a confluence of health complications means that many of us have enough pharmaceuticals in our drug cabinets to restore the health of a small army. And this is precisely why polypharmacy—the use of multiple drug medications—is such a cause for concern for older adults. Certified geriatric pharmacist Carla Beaton says that a person’s risks for adverse health effects increase as prescriptions are added. “The more drugs you take, the more interactions you are at risk of seeing.”

According to the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), adverse drug events result in more than 770,000 injuries and deaths each year.

Polypharmacy reflects an overarching theme within the health care system of adding drugs but not necessarily taking others away. Beaton explains the cycle: “You experience a health problem, so you may add one drug. This causes a side effect, so you add another drug to address the side effect, which causes something else.”

It’s not uncommon for polypharmacy to happen gradually, as in the scenario Beaton explains above. But there’s another source of potential polypharmacy—a hospital visit to address a specific health issue. For instance, perhaps you have fallen and broken your hip. The hospital is concerned with fixing your hip and treating your pain—which is why the doctors might miss the fact that you’re on thyroid medication. While you’re in hospital, they stop giving you thyroid medication (it simply slips off the radar in the wake of the crisis of breaking your hip), and put you on powerful painkillers. You get out of the hospital, return home and take both your thyroid medication and the painkillers—and within a week or two you suffer an adverse drug reaction.

The best way to protect yourself from the ills of polypharmacy, Beaton says, is to meet with your pharmacist at least once per year to review all your medications. And if at any point you are prescribed another medication, meet with your pharmacist again for another review. “You want to develop a relationship with your pharmacist and see them as part of your health care team,” she says.

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