Basically, humans can’t survive without drugs. Drugs serve a lot of essential purposes for living a healthy life. Whether it is to ward off an illness or to suppress an allergy, we just need drugs.
Medications are usually prescribed to us by pharmacists once in a while. And we also do our part by adhering to the medication and taking it religiously. We also try to avoid making these mistakes while taking medications.
However, you can also do much more than just that. There are certain ways you can make your medication work better and improve your health.
That is exactly what you shall be learning today.
Ways To Make Your Medication More Effective
1. Take note of any drug-food interaction
An important way to maximize the effectiveness of your medication is by taking note of food interactions with the drug. But first, What are drug-food interactions? Drug food interactions are interactions that occur between the food you eat and substances in the drug you are taking. Which could lead to the drug functioning poorly?
An example is coumadin (warfarin), which is a blood-thinning drug and leafy vegetables. Coumadin interferes with vitamin K dependent clotting factors.
Consuming green leafy vegetables, while taking coumadin, can decrease the ability of blood-thinners to prevent clotting. Since leafy veggies are high in vitamin K.
It’s important to take note of how the drugs you are taking could affect the food you are taking. If you don’t know-how, you can ask the pharmacist or an expert medical professional.
2. Regular intake of drugs, even after symptoms seem to reduce.
Sometimes, after the symptoms of an illness has begun to get better, we are very quick to ditch the medication and start rejoicing. However, it is wrong and could slow hamper with the treatment.
If a drug is prescribed to be taken for about a week, you shouldn’t stop taking it till the end of the week, so that the drug can take its full effect.
3. Take your drugs with clean water.
Any good pharmacist will advise you to take any medication with clean drinking water, which is due to the fact that taking it water will enhance the drug’s effectiveness. Why is that so?. Because when you take a drug with water, there is going to be no molecular interference, and there is also likely to be no drug interaction (in the mouth). Do not get me wrong it is not really bad to take a drug with any other substance. Sometimes we can take a bitter drug with a sweet drink to aid swallowing. Also, some substances can react with some certain drugs used to ingest them. But it is much more preferable and healthy to take a drug with clean drinking water.
4. Avoid skipping drugs
If you are given a drug with a dosage prescription like three times a day, and you skip the dosage and maybe take it two times in 24 hours, you are actually decreasing the drug effect. Every drug has a half-life, which determines how long its effects last. For example, a drug with a half-life of 12 hours will be taken twice daily. Missing a prescription routine could really hamper your recovery. It is advisable to set a schedule for taking the drugs and sticking to it.
Conclusion
A good drug will definitely be effective in aiding you to attain recovery, but making your recovery fast and possible depends on you. So please make sure you adhere to these tips that will make your medication work better.
