Too Many Meds May Be More Problem Than Cure
With people taking growing numbers of drugs, risks are multiplying, experts warn
 THURSDAY, Nov. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Barely a week goes by, it seems, without some company announcing a new pill designed to help you live a longer, healthier life. Medication can, indeed, do a lot toward curing, preventing or easing many ills. But taking a fistful of pills each day creates its own set of medical risks, prompting concern among a growing number of physicians and pharmacists that people are simply taking too many medications for their own good. "As you keep increasing the amount of prescriptions, that increases the chance of having a drug interaction or major side effect," said Sophia De Monte, a pharmacist in Nesconset, N.Y., and a spokeswoman for the American Pharmacists Association. "It's exponential. The more you add on, the more chance you'll have something bad happen." It's a concept called polypharmacy, the use of more medications than someone actually needs. And that means not just prescription drugs but also over-the-counter medications and dietary supplements. The average American is prescribed medication about 13 times a year, according to a report last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation. But the likelihood of polypharmacy increases as people age. Studies have found that seniors make up 13 percent of the population but account for 30 percent of all drug prescriptions. When elderly patients transfer from hospitals to nursing homes for rehabilitation, it is common for caregivers to have to keep track of nine or more prescribed medications for each person, according to a long-term care report. The more medications people take, the more likely it is that they'll experience a problem in three key areas, said De Monte and Norman P. Tomaka, a pharmacist in Melbourne, Fla., including: - Drug interactions. Drugs can work against each other in strange ways, and the more medications added to a daily regimen, the greater the risk for an interaction that could affect the person's health.
- Drug compliance. Trying to keep track of multiple medications can become too much of a burden, causing people to give up trying to comply with the directions for medication use. "We've found that compliance drops 40 percent when you add a second drug to a patient's regimen, even if they are both once a day," Tomaka said. A lack of compliance to prescription directions can create a serious health risk. "For example, if you use blood pressure medication sporadically, you may set your blood pressure up to become drug resistant," he said. Sporadic use of antibiotics can cause infectious bacteria to develop immunity to medications.
- Side effects. Every medication a person takes comes with its own risk for side effects. Multiple prescriptions and remedies mean a multiplied risk. And once side effects occur, it can be more difficult to track down the problem. "Sometimes those drugs can mask each others' symptoms," Tomaka said. "If you get an adverse reaction, you don't know which one caused it. Then you have a quandary."
But though the trend has been toward more prescriptions, steps are being taken to safeguard patients' health. Doctors and pharmacists are working together to create systems by which patients' prescription lists are reviewed, with an eye toward minimizing the medications they take, De Monte said. "The whole goal is to try to fine-tune it," she said, "working with the patient to get the best medication with the best effects at the minimal amount." Researchers also are working on ways to combine drugs that work well together into a single dose, reducing the number of pills people have to keep track of as well as the risk for drug interactions, Tomaka said. "The history of HIV treatment is a good lesson in this," he said. "In the 1990s, most HIV patients took anywhere from six to 24 medication tablets. Sometimes there would be as many as 65. Today, it's thoroughly realistic that a patient will only have to take two pills a day." In the meantime, De Monte and Tomaka suggested a few steps people can take to make sure the multiple medications they are on don't cause more problems than they cure: - Take each medication with water. If you add an acidic beverage, like fruit juice or soda, to the mix, it's just one more thing for your medication to interact with.
- Read all the information provided about any medication, either prescription or over-the-counter, looking for potential problems that might crop up for you.
- Review your medication list with your doctor and pharmacist.
- Report symptoms that occur once you begin taking a new medication.
In the end, dealing with polypharmacy entails some work on the part of patients because only they know about their specific health condition and how each medication makes them feel. "Medications are tools," Tomaka said. "We have to get away from looking at drugs as anything other than a tool used to help repair a patient's body. The key is working with your physician on your specific condition and realizing that one size does not fit all." More information The Institute for Safe Medication Practices has more on the safe use of medications. 
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Loneliness Linked to Sleepless Nights
People who felt more isolated tended to wake frequently, study found
 TUESDAY, Nov. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Loneliness can be harmful to a person's sleep and health, according to a new study. Researchers examined levels of loneliness and sleep quality among 95 adults in rural South Dakota. None of the participants was socially isolated, but those who had higher loneliness scores due to perceived feelings of being "alone" woke much more often during the night and were deemed to have what the study authors called fragmented sleep. There was no connection between loneliness and total amount of sleep or levels of daytime sleepiness, the investigators noted. The findings, published in the Nov. 1 issue of the journal Sleep, suggest that fragmented sleep may be one of a number of ways that loneliness can harm health, according to the researchers. "Loneliness has been associated with adverse effects on health," lead author Lianne Kurina, of the department of health studies at the University of Chicago, said in a news release from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. "We wanted to explore one potential pathway for this, the theory that sleep -- a key behavior to staying healthy -- could be compromised by feelings of loneliness. What we found was that loneliness does not appear to change the total amount of sleep in individuals, but awakens them more times during the night," Kurina explained. "Whether you're a young student at a major university or an older adult living in a rural community, we may all be dependent on feeling secure in our social environment in order to sleep soundly," she added. This type of research may improve "understanding of how social and psychological factors 'get under the skin' and affect health," Kurina added. More information The University of Calgary has more about loneliness.
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Modern Technology Reveals Clues From Egyptian Mummy
It was a child from a wealthy family who died young, researchers report
 WEDNESDAY, Nov. 2 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers using modern medical technology to examine an Egyptian mummy have so far determined that it was a child of a wealthy family from the Roman period in Egypt around 100 A.D. The mummy, owned by the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois, underwent X-rays and CT scans in 1990, and more scans with updated CT technology this year. Researchers also analyzed fragments of cloth, insects and hardened resins collected from the mummy. The scans showed the mummy's bone structure and also revealed that the embalmers left the brain, heart and lungs in the body. The child's long bones were still growing and there were still some baby teeth, which suggests that death occurred around 7 to 9 years of age, according to Sarah Wisseman, project coordinator of the mummy studies and director of the Program on Ancient Technologies and Archeological Materials at the Illinois State Archeological Survey. There are a number of indications -- such as a cracked skull with no evidence of bleeding and the presence of carrion beetles in the body -- that suggest the embalmers "did a crummy job or this body was lying around for a while before it was treated," Wisseman said in a university news release. This could be because the child died during an epidemic, which would have forced the embalmers to rush the job or caused a delay in preparing the body, Wisseman suggested. "All of the evidence, however, suggests that this is a child from a wealthy family," she noted. "They're using expensive red pigment from Spain. They're using gold gilt decoration. This is a fairly high-class kid." The cause of death is unknown. Another major question is whether the mummy was a boy or girl. Its hands are positioned in front of its collapsed pelvis, preventing researchers from determining its sex. DNA samples have yielded no answers so far. The researchers will discuss their findings at the Spurlock Museum on Wednesday. More information The Smithsonian has more about mummies.
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