As a young individual, you may not find yourself taking too many prescription drugs, let alone some every day. However, as you get older, you may have to rely on medicines and supplements to remain in good health.
According to the CDC, over 40 percent of older adults take at least five prescription drugs every single day. For many seniors, this task can be a tedious one, especially when they have trouble tracking what they have taken and what they still need to take. To make things worse, some drugs are not made to be taken with other drugs. Consecutive consumption can hurt their effectiveness and even cause adverse symptoms.
In other words, the large number of prescription drugs taken by older adults can become quite troublesome. For that reason, medication management is a must-have to ensure no drugs are missed to ensure good health.
Here are some top tips to help improve you or your loved one’s medication management system:
Understand the labels
An important step to properly taking your medication is to read what is written on the label. This is because there are plenty of cases where an individual has misread a label. This can lead to ineffective medicine usage or inadvertently worsening side effects you could have easily avoided.
If you are unsure of what is being said on the label, always review it with your healthcare provider. They will help you understand what you need to do to effectively use the drugs.
Follow the prescription
Although it may seem like common sense to follow what is prescribed to you by the doctor, here are some statistics that might surprise you. For one, medication is not taken as prescribed over half the time! Yet, it is imperative that the prescription is followed carefully to ensure the effective use of the medication.
With that, take the time to carefully follow instructions on how to take the medicine. If you face any unwanted side effects, do not be afraid to reach out to your health care provider to ask for any alternatives or adjustments to the prescription.
Review the medications
Whenever possible, review the medications you have with your physician. This includes creating a list of all the medications you are on and even bringing the bottles and bags for them along. This way, you can discuss with your physician what you are taking and how you are taking them, allowing your doctor to figure out whether they are safe to be taken together or adjustments need to be made.
Remember—the fact that you were prescribed a medication by one doctor and another one by a different doctor does not mean that they are safe to take concurrently. Reviewing your total set of prescriptions with your general practitioner or pharmacist will ensure maximum effectiveness and no adverse effects.
Conclusion
It may sound like a lot of hassle on your end to follow the tips we’ve shared, but trust us when we say that it is for your good. Whether you are doing it for yourself or for your loved one, properly managing medication is vital to ensure the user enjoys maximum benefits. At the same time, risks are minimized to the fullest. With that, there are plenty of medication management tools you can use, all of which are geared towards helping you stay on top of your meds. Use them if possible, and you will find tracking your meds each day to become a much simpler task than before.
MedManage is a cloud-based medication management system that caregivers and patients can use to stay on top of medication-related tasks and needs. If you are looking for a medicine tracker in the US to assist in your efforts, check out our application!