Medication Safety

Ten tips to help keep yourself safe while taking medications - how to avoid problems with prescriptions, pharmacy errors, difficulties with generic medications, drug interactions and more.

This article discusses why generic medications can be sold at a far lower cost than their brand name counterparts, what the standards are for production of generic drugs, and why generics may cause problems not experienced with the brand name medication.

People who have bipolar disorder share their ideas for how to manage and remember to take daily medications. From the About Bipolar Disorder 'Speaking from Experience' series.

Any number of medications can apply to this question: Prozac, BuSpar, Tegretol, Verapamil, Prednisone and a host of others - even Viagra! There are a large number of other medications affected by grapefruit juice as well, including all the cholesterol-lowering statins and even some antibiotics and birth control pills.

Before taking any over-the-counter cold or flu remedy, you need to be aware of the possible cold medicine interactions with your prescriptions. Pretty much every class of drug used to treat psychiatric conditions – antidepressants, antipsychotics, tranquilizers, anticonvulsants, etc. – have potential cold medicine interactions that can complicate your disorder or even be dangerous.

Many medications prescribed for bipolar disorder and other conditions can make a person more susceptible to heatstroke and sunburn. In Part 1, the authors discuss heatstroke and medications in depth, along with prevention and treatment.

This article explains why there are dietary restrictions for people taking monoamine oxidase inhibitors - MAOI antidepressants. Also included is a list of foods to avoid, some foods to limit, and some interesting information about pizza.

Simple steps for keeping your medications organized and yourself educated about them, which is extremely important for people with bipolar disorder.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gives oversight to the current good manufacturing practices for medications, which includes their expiration dates. An expiration date is the point at which a manufacturer can no longer guarantee the strength or safety of a medication. How is this date determined?

Somewhere along the way I picked up the notion that medication expiration dates or beyond-use dates aren't really that important. Is this correct? Should we toss our old prescription and over-the-counter medications when the dates say? In this article, we look at some of the facts and the current research on this topic.

US Pharmacopeia recommends the practice of beyond-use dates. A beyond-use date is the date placed on a prescription bottle by a pharmacy noting when that prescription should no longer be used. How does this affect your prescriptions?

Most medications should not be flushed - we don't want them in the water supply. Here is information about a national drug disposal program, and instructions for safely getting rid of old or unused prescriptions yourself.

If you have a fungus problem such as athlete's foot, a vaginal infection, or jock itch, you'll probably be using an antifungal agent to treat it. There are also prescription drugs taken orally to treat conditions like thrush and other yeast infections. It's important to know that some antidepressants and antipsychotics in particular can react...