When you’re taking various medications, you may find that staying on track with all of your prescriptions is challenging. Aside from the need to organize your meds, you also need to remember the right times to take a certain medicine. Moreover, you will need to remember when to restock to avoid unexpectedly running out of your meds.
Nevertheless, taking your prescriptions properly is essential to your health and well-being. It enables you to manage your health conditions successfully. Furthermore, it helps you avoid the harmful side effects of missed or improper drug dosage.
If you have been struggling to manage your medication effectively, here are three practical tips you can follow:
1. Take Your Meds as Prescribed
While this may seem common sense, a lot of people still take this guideline for granted.
It helps to remember that you can only get the most of the medicine you are given by taking them exactly as prescribed. Considering this, you should never start, increase, decrease, or stop taking a certain med without your doctor’s advice.
Your physician will advise you on the best way to change your dosage according to your health. If you feel like you need to cut a certain medication because of its severe side effects, first let your doctor know. He will be able to guide you on how to approach this change without bringing further adverse effects.
Finally, remember that you shouldn’t stop taking a particular prescription just because you’re feeling better. Always consult with your doctor first!
2. Invest in Pill Boxes
If you’re taking quite a few medications at once, investing in a pillbox will help you stay on top of your meds.
Pillboxes available today usually have seven compartments, representing the seven days of a week. Some even have 30 to 31 compartments, which helps cover an entire month conveniently.
Using these pillboxes is an effective way to ensure that you don’t run out unexpectedly of your meds. This is especially valuable if you will be away on a trip. Placing them in their respective compartments will easily let you know when you need to refill prescriptions.
Ultimately, using these boxes to store your meds helps you avoid confusion of whether or not you have already taken a certain medication.
3. Set Alarms
Some people choose to depend solely on their memory when they need to take their meds on time.
However, it helps to remember that human memory isn’t that reliable. You may remember one thing at the moment and completely forget about them the next. On top of that, things in your daily life may pop up throughout the day and take your mind off of your medications.
The best way to ensure that you stay on track with all of your medications is to set alarms and reminders. You can either set labeled alarms on your smartphone, use alarm clocks, or download a medication tracker app.
Doing any of these can help ensure that you take your pills on time, even if you’re having a busy day or have simply forgotten about them!
Conclusion
Taking your medications are not enough to improve your condition. You also need to make sure that you’re taking them properly. This can be a challenge, however, if you are taking various prescriptions for your health conditions. Following the three practical tips listed above can help you overcome this challenge, organize your meds efficiently, and manage your health better.
MedManage is a robust yet easy-to-use medication calendar app that can help you stay on top of your medications. You can use this to create alerts and schedules for complex drug schedules or store your medication status. Get in touch with us at 1-845-588-5376 to learn more about our app.