Topic
Every Healthy Aging Secrets article tagged medication — 8 pieces across 4 sections.
Heart & Metabolic
Guidelines have shifted twice in a decade, and the right number for an older adult depends on more than age. What matters is frailty, standing blood pressure and how many other drugs are in the box.
Preventive Care
Prescriptions accumulate over decades and are almost never subtracted. By the mid-seventies, the drugs themselves have become one of the commoner causes of hospital admission.
Brain & Memory
Waking at four in the morning is not necessarily insomnia, and treating it as though it were is how a lot of older people end up on drugs that make them fall over.
Nutrition After 50
The thirst mechanism blunts with age, kidneys concentrate urine less well, and several common medications increase losses. Dehydration is one of the more frequent avoidable causes of hospital admission.
Preventive Care
It is the most common gastrointestinal complaint in older adults, a frequent cause of hospital admission, and one of the more common reasons a person with dementia becomes suddenly agitated.
Heart & Metabolic
A drop in blood pressure on standing affects a large minority of older adults, causes falls and fainting, and is missed because blood pressure is almost always measured sitting down.
Preventive Care
Some interactions are dangerous and well known. Others simply stop a drug working, produce no symptoms, and lead to a dose increase that should not have been needed.
Heart & Metabolic
A falling eGFR alarms a great many people who have nothing seriously wrong, while the test that better predicts trouble is frequently not done at all.
