For many of us, medication is just part of our morning routine. We wake up, eat breakfast, and take our pills. But, when you're juggling several medications, it's easy to get tripped up. You either miss a dose, or take the same pill twice.
It is important to stay on top of your medication, and take the right dose at the right time. It seems the more you take, the harder it is to stay organized. There is a way to stay on track.
Right before you pop that pill, it hits you! Didn't you already take it? Can't remember?
"As you get older you end up taking 3,4,5, sometimes 8, 9 medications a day," said Little Five Points pharmacist Dr. Ira Katz.
Katz says there's a simple fix for those of us who are forgetful. It's a cheap, but handy pill organizer.
"Start simple. Okay? You can do a daily. You could do a weekly, okay," said Katz.
He says the good thing is a lot of medications today are being designed to be taken once a day. That makes it easier to remember to actually take them.
In pharmacy-speak, they call it "compliance." That means simply, "Is the patient taking the medication, on time, and regularly?"
"If it's twice a day, then all of a sudden the compliance goes down significantly. Three times a day, even further. Four, more. So it's very difficult to get patients to remember to get patients to take medication three or four times a day," said Katz.
That's where a pill organizer can help. You can go really basic with a daily organizer for about $2. Or you can get a multi-dose – weekly or even monthly, organizer, -- for about $20.
If you're juggling a lot of medications, and you're not sure how to put one of these organizers together, your pharmacist can help you. Take your medications to the drugstore, get one of these kits, and then ask the pharmacist to help you put it together.
So the next time you ask yourself, ‘did I take it, or not?' The answer will be sitting in the box.
You can get a pill organizer with all the bells and whistles: they come with alarms and timers that alert you if you miss a dose. They are but one of probably a hundred different options available.
Wednesday, May 22 2013 6:20 PM EDT2013-05-22 22:20:11 GMT
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