Despite drug interactions being intimidating to those who take regular prescriptions to the point of avoiding their medication, you can prevent and manage this by learning how you can minimize the interaction risks. Drug interactions mainly occur to those who take multiple drugs. Doctors, healthcare providers, and pharmacists are trained well to check and prevent drug interaction, but you can also utilize online tools such as drug interaction checker to assess the risks you can be exposed to.
- Frequent communication with your healthcare practitioners.
You should inform your doctor or pharmacist of every medication, as well as the vitamin supplements, herbal supplements and over-the-counter drugs that you start or stop taking. Therefore, you have to keep a list of the medicine you take.
- Just like prescription drugs, non-prescriptions drugs can interact and have severe consequences. An example is the OTC supplement called St. John’s Wort which is used as an antidepressant. When combined with other depression drugs such as the sertraline (Zoloft) or fluoxetine (Prozac), it causes serotonin syndrome which is rare but fatal. Symptoms include changes in blood pressure, seizures, hallucinations and even death.
- Read your prescription labeling and medication guide every time you have a refill or a new prescription. There might be some changes in your prescription drugs guides as the FDA changes the instructions on the medication drugs constantly. If you are concerned with, or you fail to understand the instructions, ask your doctor or pharmacist for clarity.
- If you realize that you have drug interaction, call your doctor. It might be a mild case hence no action needed but will have to look for an alternative or avoid the drug entirely. Do not stop or change your medication before informing your doctor.
- Research on your medications yourself.
Engage yourself in your health matters and learn about your medication. Utilize drug interaction tools that are reliable such as drug interaction checker application. The application will help you understand every drug’s mechanism and level of significance (minor, moderate or significant) regarding interaction. Additionally, some apps recommend what to do to manage the drug interaction. You can view all potential drug interactions just by inputting the name of the drug and by clicking the “check for interaction” button. The app will display the interactions both at the professional and consumer level. The professional display has references for more details.
- Refrain from taking drugs recommended for someone else.
Doctors prescribe medication based on the patient’s weight, age, medical history and medical condition. Therefore, your dosage or type of drug might differ from someone else’s medication. Furthermore, you will not have a health care provider who can review the safety or potential interaction per your medical conditions.
- Take all warning seriously
When prescribing drugs for you, the doctor or the pharmacist will ask about the foods you consume. He can also specify a drug and state that you avoid or cut down certain foods or beverages because they can cause drug interaction when combined with your prescriptions. Common foods that can cause food interaction include those with vitamin K (Brussels sprouts, broccoli, beef liver) when mixed with blood thinners such as warfarin can cause clotting. Clotting can eventually lead to strokes. Foods with calcium can prevent absorptions when combined with some drugs.
Grapefruits combined with drugs can cause interaction by increasing the level of drugs in the system. Too many drugs levels lead to drug toxicity. Statins (simvastatin lovastatin or atorvastatin), a cholesterol drug, leads to rhabdomyolysis- severe muscle injury when combined with grapefruits.
- Inform your doctor or pharmacist of any illegal drugs, alcohol or caffeine you are using
Alcohol can make drowsiness worse. When mixed with sedation drugs, it can put a patient at high risk of causing accidents. When combined with anxiety treatments such as benzodiazepines or opioids painkillers, alcohol can cause respiratory depression which is life-threatening.
Some medication drugs can be dangerous when combined with Illegal drugs. When cocaine and Heroin are mixed in one syringe, the results are fatal.
The human liver can manufacture cocaethylene when alcohol with cocaine are pumped into the system together. The cocaethylene increases the effects of euphoric caused by cocaine, therefore, a sudden death.
When caffeine is used with other stimulants such as the beta-2 agonist albuterol (asthma medication) leads to rapid heart rate which is fatal to patients with heart problems. The interaction can cause sleep interruption and addiction to decongestants too.
- Follow all the instructions as per recommended by the healthcare provider.
You will notice that the Prescription bottles contain directions for taking the medicines. You will be required to take a certain amount of medication after a specific time. The timing is to allow your body to have enough amount of the drug to avoid overdose. Antacids, for example, can bind other medications in the stomach which can be dangerous for your stomach lining. Such drugs are taken four hours after or two hours before taking other medicines.
Antacids raise the stomach pH which leads to a premature dissolution of enteric coatings such as those on ibuprofen which are supposed to dissolve in the intestines. If such coatings are dissolved in the stomach, it will result in severe bleeding in the stomach.
If the doctor instructs you to avoid some medication, ensure that you follow this instruction. You should not change the dosage unless the doctor tells you to.
- Maintain a single pharmacy for your prescriptions
Take all your drugs from one pharmacy to ensure that all the medicines you are obtaining can be checked for interaction and review electronically. Tell the pharmacist or the doctor of discontinued and new medications even from other healthcare providers.
You can ask the pharmacist for the interaction report so as when you require the drug again, you can check for interaction yourself.
In conclusion, drug interaction has risks ranging from mild to fatal effects and therefore learning how to maintain them will help you avoid these effects. Talk to your doctor and healthcare provider and use online interaction checker application to enlighten yourself.
