1 in 4 seniors take between ten and 19 pills every day.
America’s seniors are being overwhelmed by the number of prescription drugs they take on a daily basis. According to a new national survey of more than 1,000 people ages 65 and older who use medications, more than half (51 percent) take at least five different prescription drugs regularly and one in four take between 10 and 19 pills each day.
The challenge of managing multiple medications is clear – nearly three in five (57 percent) of those polled admit that they forget to take their medications. Furthermore, the more drugs they use, the more likely they are not to remember to take them. Among those using five or more medications, 63 percent say they forget doses; a higher rate as compared to 51 percent among people who take fewer medicines.
“It’s usually the patients who are in worse health who are taking large numbers of prescription drugs. For these people, especially, taking their medications properly and regularly is critical,” said Dr. Woody Eisenberg, vice president and chief medical officer of Medco Retiree Solutions. “The problem is that the more medications prescribed, the harder it is for older people to manage them well and know essential information that can help prevent medication-related harm.”
Continue reading Seniors Struggle with Too Many Medications…
This is a problem of enormous proportion but very few logical answers to it seem to ever arise. In my San Francisco practice I see seniors ever day who take varying numbers of Rx’d and OTC meds. Our goal is to reduce the toxic burden on them by finding alternatives to the medications and in many instances working toward eliminating the need for some meds altogether. This is easier than it seems. As a San Francisco chiropractor, I work with the aging population and with eldercare / nursing facilities to their residents’ and clients’ benefits. Improving just ambulation with simple chiropractic care frequently has a cascading positive benefit alone. The other benefits are too many to mention but do include pain reduction and balance improvement to name a couple.
my dad is a chiropractor and he often amazes me how he could treat my sprains.~:”