Could Your Prescriptions be the Culprit?

This is so true. In my father-in-law's case, he had medication crisis at least 4 times! This time he took this drug for blood pressure too long. I think it is also common for seniors who are older than 85 who have taken the drugs for a real long time. Their bodies cannot tolerate too many drugs anymore. For Alzheimer's patients, it is worse as we would have to know why. Sometimes we thought it was the Alzheimer's disease, not the drugs! But it was the drugs all the time. One day he will soon be declining with Alzheimers into the last stage, but for now it is always about his medications.

However, this does not mean that patients should not take the prescriptions ordered by the doctors. It still helps preventing certain diseases like heart disease or stroke.

It seems there is a limit for older people, so one needs to take pre-cautions.

That is why my parents always worry about side effects of their drugs.

Regards,

Nina

Hi Carol thanks so much for your post.  There are many day-to-day kinds of issues that one with Alzheimer's and certainly caregivers have to manage.  When it comes to medications it seems we just don't keep track the away we should.

On another of our HealthCentral.com sites, I read about keeping a medical journal - tracking everything from behaviors to medications.  Obviously this would need to be done with great care and supervision for someone with Alzheimer's or dementia, but it could be helpful when visiting doctors.  At a minimum, listing all medications and the scipt's details (dosage, date, etc) could be helpful in preventing interactions that could be fatal.

Hope this helps - all the best, sue

You hit the nail on the head with too many drugs potentially interacting with one another in ways  that are unpredictable especially in the elderly. That's why a patient should always take all their medications with them when making a doctor visit. This should include all over the counter non-prescription drugs and all supplements. Make two lists of all pills; prescription and non prescription. Give one to the receptionist or nurse to put on the chart for the doctor to see when he picks up the chart and you keep the other for you own records to help keep up with what you are taking. Some patients are surprised when they write down everything they are taking daily. Having the medications with you makes it easy for the doctor to check out any pills ingredients, etc., if there is a question of what they contain. It can be a mistake to rely on memory alone when recalling the list of meds taken daily. It's common to forget one of more you are taking which can potentially result in disaster. It's also a good idea to ask your doctor if there are any meds you can discontinue or may no longer be necessary.

Right now my father-in-law's medications including nmenda and exelon have all been stopped due to his sleeping in the morning and dizziness and low blood pressure at times. The doctor said he would just monitor hm. He is 87 and I am not sure if this is going toward the direction of slow medicine. But if medications are bad, then he cannot have them all. I thought this is quite unusual. Is this common for very old people?  I thought one should not stop namenda in the course.

Take care,

Nina