grow older better

Tag: seniors and medications

  • Grapefruit Juice and Your Medications

    Do you drink grapefruit juice? 

    Do you take medications?


    If you answer yes to both – please read this whole article to see if your medications are among those that interact with grapefruit juice.

    For some medications:

    Taking one tablet with a glass of grapefruit juice is like taking 20 tablets with a glass of water," Bailey said. "This is unintentional overdosing. So it's not surprising that these levels go from what we call therapeutic to toxic.

    And if you have friends or family members who love their grapefruit and/or grapefruit juice – please let them know about this article.

     

    Thoughts? Comments? Thank you!

  • Do You Know What Your Med Mixtures Do To You?

    More about seniors and medications…

    CHICAGO (Reuters) – Older adults in the United States are popping prescription pills, over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements in record numbers, and in combinations that could be deadly, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

    They said more than half of U.S. adults aged 57 to 85 are using five or more prescription or non-prescription drugs, and one in 25 are taking them in combinations that could cause dangerous drug interactions.

    “Older adults in the United States use medicine and they use a lot of it,” said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau of the University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

    “While medications are often beneficial, they are not always safe,” she said in a telephone interview.

    She noted a recent report that estimated U.S. adults over 65 make up more than 175,000 emergency department visits a year for adverse drug reactions, and commonly prescribed drugs accounted for a third of these visits.

    Full article

    They did not ask the question about why these people were taking so many prescription drugs but that is one that needs to be asked in a study. Do these people go to several physicians to get the medications? Do they not tell each physician what they are already taking? Or worse – does their one primary care physician not realize the interactions of all the medications that are being prescribed?

    These are important questions and need to be asked… and so maybe I should get back to doing research….

    After the new year I will put forth a questionnaire here [and elsewhere] for readers to respond to.

    glyconutrients, healthy aging, growing older, aging, nutrition, exercise, eating properly,