Common mistakes when taking medications

When we are sick, we often expect to get better medicine, but if used incorrectly, the drug may have completely different effects. Here are common mistakes when taking medications.

Break the pill to make it easier to drink

This can cause problems if the medicine you are taking is a slow release or a long-lasting effect. These drugs are usually wrapped in a slowly-dissolving shell so that the drug is released slowly. If this shell is broken, the body will receive a large amount of medication at once.

One of the most commonly used drugs in this way is a once-daily blood pressure medication containing diltiazem HCL or isosorbide mononitrate, effective for 24 hours. Many elderly people find the pill difficult to drink. But breaking the pill can cause blood pressure to drop suddenly, fainting. Usually, patients will take medicine upstairs in the morning and fall when they get down.

Epilepsy drugs are also another long-acting group of drugs that crushing or crushing tablets can lead to high doses of toxic drugs. If you can't swallow the pill, ask the doctor if there is any other form.

Paste high, then take a shower

Skin patches are often used to put many drugs into the body such as pain relievers, hormones and anti-motion sickness drugs. The advantage of the patch is that the drug is absorbed slowly and stably.

However, if the area around the patch is too hot, the blood vessels will dilate and the medicine may enter the body too much. In most cases, this leads to itching around the patch due to warm skin irritation, or side effects due to a slight increase in drug levels in the body, for example using an estrogen patch during sun exposure. can cause hot flushes.

In the case of fentanyl pain relievers, excessive amounts of medication can be lethal at the same time. In 2011, a 67-year-old woman in Leicester, he died after a hot bath while pasting a fentanyl patch. Check the safety of bath water, hot water bottles, electric blankets and even sun drying if you are using a patch on the skin.

Take medicine and exercise

Any pain reliever that is used before exercise also obscures the pain and increases the risk of injury. Furthermore, Dutch researchers have found that taking ibuprofen before heavy exercise, such as running fast or racing, can damage the stomach lining.

The list of 'bad' combinations between medicine and exercise is very long. For example, beta blockers that interfere with blood pressure increase during exercise, but this increase in blood pressure is necessary to bring more blood to organs - including the brain - during exertion. If not, you may faint.

Or another medicine is ciprofloxacin antibiotic - often used to treat urinary tract infections or bacteria that cause food poisoning, such as salmonella or campylobacter - that can cause tendon weakness, leading to tendon damage, even tendon rupture If you perform strong movements or heavy lifting.

The sudden onset of heavy exercise while taking statins (a group of high cholesterol medications) may increase the risk of muscle pain. The cause may be the drug breaks down mitochondria - the plant that produces energy for cells - in the muscles.

In many cases, exercise can improve the condition that the medicine is dealing with, so don't quit practicing. But ask your doctor if you need to change your practice.

Use too many creams

Creams and lotions are less likely to cause side effects, but if they contain active ingredients they can cause overdose. There have been deaths associated with an excessive amount of topical cream containing topical analgesics such as methyl salicylate (an analogue of aspirin in some muscle massage products), especially when combined with other types of reducing medications. Other pain like pills or patches. With paracetamol, taking one extra pill can also lead to a risk of death.

Applying too much steroid cream to treat conditions like eczema can make your skin thin and cracked. Estrogen and progesterone creams also cause excessive levels of hormones when applied, leading to pain symptoms in the breast area.

Therefore, with topical cream treatment, like all other medications, it is necessary to apply the right amount and the right amount of time as instructed.

Take pain medicine to treat colds or flu

Treatment really makes symptoms last longer.

Ibuprofen works to reduce inflammation and with this effect, it can also affect an important part of the body's response to infection.

For example, in the case of a cold, the inflammatory response that causes a runny nose will wash away the infection, so preventing these phenomena is probably not what the body wants.

Using paracetamol to relieve pain and fever is not a good idea if you have the flu. The virus will not multiply rapidly in high temperatures - which is one of the reasons the body creates fever to destroy them.

Because pain relievers often reduce fever, it is theoretically more likely to spread the virus than usual. In fact, a group of Canadian researchers have calculated that 5% of flu cases will be reduced if we stop taking these drugs when infected.

Topical steroid cream on skin

Doctors often prescribe topical creams containing steroids (corticosteroids) to reduce inflammation in cases of itchy rashes or insect stings.

If you scratch the itch and scratch your skin, you should not apply it to the area. Steroids reduce immunity because they reduce the concentration of inflammatory substances. The problem is that the body needs these substances to fight bacteria or viruses, so if the skin is scratched, the application of steroid cream will make the wound more susceptible to infection.

Add paracetamol

The highest amount of paracetamol you can take in 24 hours is 4g - mainly in 500mg tablets not more than 2 tablets at a time.

Any amount added can lead to liver damage.

People often think that 'one extra pill is okay' - but with paracetamol, it can kill you.

The reason is because the drug accumulates in the liver. An analysis by the University of Edinburgh in 161 paracetamol overdose patients found that some only took 2 or 3 more pills than the recommended maximum dose for 4 or 5 days to self-treat problems such as toothache or back pain before hospitalization.