Overmedicating and Drug Interactions

Posted by: Curt | Under: 50's/fit, General Fitness, Health, Seniors/fit | (0) Comments

This is really more in the health/medicine category than fitness, but I suspect that we all have a family member in the same situation as the lady in the article who is taking multiple prescription drugs and not really knowing what they are doing and if they are really hurting instead of helping. My mom fits in this category and I’m going to encourage here to press her doctors to see if some of the drugs she is taking can be eliminated.

In the big picture, the goal of a healthy lifestyle including exercise, diet, and quitting smoking is to keep from having to take drugs as we age. From MSNBC Health-

Polypharmacy is most common among people over age 65, about one-fifth of whom take at least 10 medications a week. Because the body absorbs, metabolizes, and rids itself of drugs more slowly with age, a dose considered safe for a middle-age woman can be toxic to her parent. In fact, the Institute of Medicine estimates that at least 1.5 million adverse drug events occur in the United States every year, thousands of them fatal. Studies indicate that about one-third of these drug reactions among senior citizens — and 42 percent of serious, life-threatening, or fatal events — are preventable. Doctors often mistake the ensuing physical response — memory lapse, fatigue, abdominal pain, swelling, or other ailments — as a sign of worsening disease. This can lead to a “prescribing cascade,” says Jeffrey Delafuente, FCCP, a professor of pharmacy at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The solution is to reduce the number of drugs. Adding more just exacerbates the problem.”