How to Remember to Take your Medicine
Section titled “How to Remember to Take your Medicine”To get the best value from supplements or medications, you need to take them consistently at the prescribed times of day. With our active lives, it can be difficult to remember. The results of missed pills vary from less-than-ideal supplementation to real health risks. To give just one example, a friend forgot to take his morning blood pressure pill, went hiking up a mountain, and ended up with an alarmingly high pulse and visual distortions. Over the years I've learned some secrets for remembering to take your pills. This month, those secrets are revealed. Special thanks to pharmacist Don Hoglund for fact-checking this newsletter.
The Special Spoon
Section titled “The Special Spoon”When taking a once-a-day liquid, such as cod liver oil, the Special Spoon can make the difference between success and failure. Since the usual dose of cod liver oil is two teaspoons, choose a Special Tablespoon. This Special Spoon never goes into the tableware drawer. Keep it at your place at the table, so that when breakfast or suppertime comes, the Spoon reminds you to get your oil out of the refrigerator and take it. Next, the spoon goes into the dishwashing process. When it's clean, the Spoon does NOT go into the drawer but right back to your place at the table, ready to remind you once again to take your medicine! Your Special Spoon looks like no other. When you see its bright orange color or its odd shape, you will know what to do.
The Toothbrush Trick
Section titled “The Toothbrush Trick”For medicine you must take at bedtime, keep the pill bottle next to your toothbrush.
Several Dose Set-up
Section titled “Several Dose Set-up”There is no law that you must keep your pills in the bottle they came in. Say you need to take an antibiotic three times a day for ten days. Take ten pills out and put them into a labeled container next to your toothbrush. Keep the original bottle at your place at the table. At breakfast and supper you'll see the bottle there to remind you of your medicine. At bedtime, the extra labeled bottle next to the toothbrush will bring you your last pill of the day.
Different memory techniques work for different people. Find one that works for you. For more tips on how to remember to take your medicine, check out the "How to Remember to Take Medication" article on WikiHow.
Advanced Planning Techniques
Section titled “Advanced Planning Techniques”If you depend on medication for your daily well-being, you do not want to run out and realize it after the pharmacy is closed and your doctor is gone for the day. You can take a few steps to prevent such an eventuality.
The Prescient Prescription
Section titled “The Prescient Prescription”If you are on ongoing medication for asthma, high blood pressure, glaucoma, or other long-term conditions, ask your physician for a spare prescription to keep with you when you travel.
Drugs in the Deep Freeze
Section titled “Drugs in the Deep Freeze”Some pharmaceuticals, such as liquids and creams, don't survive freezing well. Tablets and capsules do. Time will stand still for those meds in your freezer. If you have a condition for which you absolutely require daily medication, ask your doctor for some extra medication. Keep it in the freezer for those times that you have difficulty getting that refill on time, or your doctor is unavailable, or the regular pill bottle is eaten by the dog or accidentally dropped into the toilet.
All About Labels
Section titled “All About Labels”Labels Save Lives
Section titled “Labels Save Lives”For you, those iron tablets make the difference between dragging through your day and dancing in the supermarket aisle. But let a two-year-old get hold of those shiny colored tablets and you will be spending time in the hospital dealing with iron poisoning. Poison control centers are all too familiar with this story: "the medicine was in my purse where I always keep it, and I never dreamed the hair stylist's son would find the bottle and take them all."
One man's meat is another man's poison. Keep your prescription medication out of reach of children. Keep all prescription medication in labeled containers; otherwise you may endanger adults as well.
Understand Expiration Dates
Section titled “Understand Expiration Dates”The conservative Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics addressed pharmaceutical expiration dates in 2002. They concluded that most tablets or capsules stored under reasonable conditions in unopened containers retained 90 percent or more of their potency for at least five years, and at least 70 to 80 percent of their potency for 10 years or more. Once the container was opened, if the humidity was relatively low that potency was retained for at least one or two years past the expiration date. The exceptions were nitroglycerine and paraldehyde, which degrade within hours of exposure to the air. High humidity may impair the ability of some drugs, such as the anti-seizure drug carbamazepine, to dissolve in the stomach. The only documented toxicity of degraded pharmaceutical agents was from tetracycline.
Our regulators, in their wisdom, have decreed that pharmacists shall inscribe a date one year from the time of dispensing as the expiration date. If the pharmacist has stuck the label onto the manufacturer's original packaging, you can usually find the manufacturer's expiration date on that packaging.
Should you leave your medication on the dashboard of your car on a hot summer day, all bets are off; stick with the date given.
You're the Manager of Your Medications
Section titled “You're the Manager of Your Medications”Those little pills you've got in your hand are powerful medicine. Like any form of power, they take wise management. Your doctor does his or her best to prescribe the medicine that will help you. You can partner with your doctor by paying attention to how your body reacts and by taking your pills on time.