4-2: Polypharmacy and Addiction
Southern New Hampshire
Joy Jordan
Polypharmacy means that you are taking several medications to treat one condition, It also
means that you take takes several or many medications for this one condition and do not know
the adverse reactions it could have on the condition or your body. You could also be considered
polypharmacy if your taking many medications for different conditions. Example would be if
you have insomnia and you are prescribed Ambien for sleep but you are also taking things such
as melatonin or going to a different provider and receiving another medication such as trazodone
on top of the Ambien you were prescribed is polypharmacy.
Many elderly folks are on many medications due to aging and disease that come with the
aging process such as, diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. So many of them take
supplements at home and don't always tell their physician that they are taking these due to they
may not know that many natural supplements due effect prescribed medications. They also may
be seeing a specialist for a condition and for get to tell, or don't realize the importance tell the
specialist or their primary physician that they were prescribed a medication for that already,
therefor that doctor prescribes them a medication for the same condition.
Some way to is to talk to the patient and teach them to keep a list of all the medications they
take, let them know that the importance to keep them safe and keep their medications working
properly for their condition is to keep a list off all the medications. Make sure they know to add
any new ones if they are prescribed any from another physician at any time and bring that to their
office each visit.
In my case I do take several medications one for Hypothyroidism, high cholesterol, and for
insomnia. I do take an occasional Tylenol, or natural herbs, that I make sure to discuss with my
provider, I know that a lot of OTC supplements can interfere with my thyroid medications and If
I want to take them I have to make sure it's hours apart.
I choice Polypharmacy over Addition the reason is I feel that if we can get the polypharmacy
under control, it would help the addition problem among the elderly. I know that most addictions
are from opioids, but I see that addition in elderly can simply be habit of taking all the
medications they were given or told to take, even if they were told to stop one or more of them
With the elderly you have to take in account that their memories start fading, and if they don't
have someone keeping a eye on them and their health it is easy for them to harm their health
without even knowing