8/06/2007-
It's a tempting idea.
You wake up in the morning, look at your daily prescriptions and wonder.
Every day, there's new news about a different medication. Amid the allegations of increased heart attack risk with Avandia, a popular anti-diabetes drug, the general cost of prescription drugs and the horror stories of fake medicines from overseas, you may think about missing a dose.
Maybe you want to save a few dollars. Many of those pills can be costly, and we're all on fixed incomes of some sort these days.
Maybe taking a certain prescription makes you nervous. While you haven't talked to your doctor about it yet, you're seriously considering taking matters into your own hands and leaving that dose out of your medicine box.
Don't.
Not without talking to your doctor and your pharmacist and preparing a further plan for your medical care.
The National Council on Patient Information and Education has printer-friendly lists of questions patients can discuss and fill out with their doctors and pharmacists concerning their prescriptions.
It's important to ask the right questions and share the right information when having that face-to-face time in the doctor's office or at the drugstore, so we can keep top-of-mind the important facts about our medications.
Until advised by your health care provider, take the medication on which you've been put. Stopping certain medications suddenly can cause complications, and isn't it worth the time and effort of a phone call to your physician's office before placing your health in danger?
There's a reason doctors and pharmacists have extensive years of study regarding the human body and the effects of drugs on that body.
For those of us who don't really know what we're doing, tinkering with medication is never a good idea.
It's best to consult an expert.
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