Have you ever visited a facility where seniors gather for a meal and observed the little cases many people carry with rainbow assortments of pills inside?
I have, and I have even noticed at times that there are multiple plastic modules with the initials for the days of the week inscribed on top alongside some place settings. The meal doesn’t begin or end until everyone has taken all of their “meds.”
But are all of these pills necessary and more to the point, are they all healthy in the long run?
In the case of my mother, who moved to my home at the age of 91, and is still here at the age of 94, the less medication she is exposed to the better. Mom was in pretty good shape in 1999 when her husband, my father, died at the age of 83. And despite some minor medical issues that were easily resolved she was in good shape and drug free for several years after his death.
But in 2003 she had an operation that she regards as minor, but it did immobilize her for a couple of weeks. Six weeks after the operation she left her apartment, alone, got in her car and drove off to do some errands. She was involved in a minor fender bender, and was uninjured, but at the scene she suffered a mild heart attack.
Mom gained weight after Dad’s death mostly due to poor eating habits and a marked reduction in her daily exercise. In the middle of the last decade she was about 45 pounds overweight and her bad cholesterol was very high. That was all noted when she was recovering from her heart attack, and eventually she was prescribed the cholesterol reducing drug Lipitor.
Now I am not picking on Lipitor and by many accounts that particular drug may be good at what it does and it may work wonders for some people. But if you go to the Lipitor website and scroll down under the Important Safety Information, you’ll see that the first major side effect listed is diarrhea.
From the Lipitor website: “Common side effects are diarrhea, upset stomach, muscle and joint pain, and changes in some blood tests.”
Diarrhea is bad for everyone because it drains the body of not just fluids, but important vitamins, minerals, and electrolytes too. But it can be absolutely deadly for infants and the elderly.
When Mom moved to Connecticut her new medical doctor reviewed Mom’s previous records and was shocked to find that Mom had been on Lipitor for cholesterol reduction. “A person her age shouldn’t be on that kind of a drug,” she admonished.
Mom’s records showed that she was taken off of Lipitor after she complained to a previous physician that she had been suffering from diarrhea for a year. In that year she had lost some weight, but she also lost bone density and was left hunched over with a bulge in her upper back, the classic sign of osteoporosis.
What is really unfortunate about this is that Mom’s weight and cholesterol could have been brought under control very easily through good nutrition.
Mom’s weight is now down to the levels she enjoyed as a young woman and her cholesterol is well within the proper ranges now. This was all accomplished through good nutrition, starting with a good breakfast.
Six days out of seven Mom starts her day with cereal – usually some form of oats, either oatmeal or Cheerios, but she also substitutes Total, Wheaties or Corn Flakes for variety. She likes to cut up a banana and make designs on top of the cereal, (she substitutes various kinds of berries on occasion) she uses two percent milk, has a glass of juice, and a cup of coffee.
This nutrition program provides good sources of B vitamins, potassium and other essential nutrients. She takes a daily vitamin-mineral tablet too. Mom also likes yogurt at lunch, and dinner is always a combination of protein, complex carbohydrates, vegetable fat, and liquids including water and herbal tea. No drugs and no caffeine.
In discussing Mom’s nutrition program with her doctor, we also found that many sleeping aids commonly prescribed to the elderly aren’t good for their overall health because they also hasten the normal shrinkage of the brain that occurs with age. So an elderly person using sleeping pills may sleep better, but you also may notice a steady deterioration of mental faculties – that’s bad.
A better way to insure a good night sleep is a snack before bedtime consisting of a complex carbohydrate – an apple maybe, or a piece of whole wheat toast with butter. This has to be kept within the confines of the appropriate daily caloric intake, but the combination of complex carbs and limited fat from butter gives the stomach the job of digesting the snack.
This results in an increased blood flow to the stomach and intestines to aid digestion, leading to sleep. It’s like coming back to work after eating spaghetti for lunch and having a hard time keeping your eyes open, except in this case, it is the desired result.
We also hear way too much about the elderly being over-medicated in nursing homes. Ever since I wrote Granny Snatching and started touring to sell books I have been inundated with horror stories about the institutionalized elderly being needlessly drugged to keep them sedated, which obviously makes their daily care much easier.
I’ll be doing a future column on drugs in nursing homes – I have a great source down in Texas – and at that time we’ll go into this subject in depth. But for the moment, if you are an elderly person living on your own, or a caregiver, I would strongly suggest that you do your homework before taking or administering any prescription drug. Check the websites for side effects, and get a second opinion from a medical professional.
Properly administered legal drugs, have done wonders for the human race. Diseases have been brought under control, even eliminated; health has improved as has quality of life. But illegal and improperly administered drugs have had a negative impact on our lives too, and this should be taken into consideration before ingesting any form of antibiotic, narcotic, sleeping aid or pain killer.
When in doubt, just say NO, at least until you have thoroughly reviewed the entire impact of the drug in question.
