Council on Aging Upcoming Events:
- October 5th from 4:30 – 6:30 pm: Our 3rd Annual Pasta Dinner & Silent Auction to benefit the Celebration Park. Dinner will include pasta, sauce, meatballs, garlic bread, salad, brownie, and a beverage – all just for $8. Location: Hobbs Community Center.
- October 7th from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm: Community Shredding Event sponsored by Enterprise Bank. The shredding service helps customers safely shred their personal documents such as old banking statements, pay stubs, and medical records. Shredding items with personal information, like your social security number, is now a simple step to help prevent identity theft! Limit of 10 boxes of material per person. Paper only please and no binders. Paper clips, staples and elastics are acceptable. This free event being is being held in the parking lot of Hobbs Community Center.
- October 12th from 4:30 – 6 pm: We are thrilled to announce the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the gifting of four brand-new Pickleball Courts and a Celebration Park to our beloved town of Pelham. This project has been made possible through the generous donations and unwavering support of 8 non-profit agencies, 2 town departments, 20 local businesses and an astounding 139 individual donors. Notably, we are proud to share that no tax dollars were used in bringing this project to fruition, showcasing the unity and dedication of our community.
- October 21st 9 am – 12 pm: Pizza & Pickleball “FUN” DRaising Tournament: They say “Build it and they will come”. We did and you have come! We hope you will join our Fun Pickleball Tournament Jamboree for a donation of $25, which will include pizza and a beverage. Spectators are welcome. This event is sponsored to help fund the balance owed on the Pickleball Courts and Celebration Park.
Too Many Ills! Too Many Pills!
Some medications do not play well with others. This week I learned a new word – “polypharmacy.” Doctors define polypharmacy as the regular use of five or more medications. It is a common situation among us older adults because many of us take medicines for two or more chronic conditions. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but it can be. Multiple medications are absolutely necessary for some conditions, but the greater the number of medicines we ingest, the higher the safety risks. When multiple medicines cause a patient more harm than good, polypharmacy becomes “medication overload.” The Lown Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, argues in a 2019 report, “Medication Overload: America’s Other Drug Problem”, that Americans are experiencing an epidemic of medication that is particularly harmful to older adults. According to the report, more than 40% of older adults take five or more prescription medicines daily, and 20% take ten drugs or more.
The Safety Issue: The safety problem is that each additional medication increases the risk of suffering a serious, possibly life-threatening side effect. We’re not talking nausea or dry mouth; we’re talking delirium, impaired cognition, internal bleeding (including bleeds in the brain), and falling. Medicines are chemical compounds, and some chemicals just do not play well with others. Many harmful drug interactions are well documented, and alert physicians and pharmacists know to avoid them. Yet in spite of that, over one recent decade, serious adverse drug events sent older adults to emergency rooms or other treatment 35 million times. People over 65 suffer disproportionately – at only 14 percent of the population, older adults account for 56% of hospitalizations for adverse drug events. The Lown Institute report offers some credible explanations for why this happens
Fragmented Health System: If you only see one doctor for all your health needs, you should not have medication risk. (And if you do, you know who to blame.) But that’s highly unusual. More likely, you see specialists for specific conditions. Each specialist treats your particular condition separately, often without knowing your full medical history, other conditions you have, or other medications you’re taking. The older we get, the more likely we are to have multiple chronic conditions and multiple doctors. (Even mixing in over-the-counter meds with prescriptions can wreak havoc.) The risks multiply whenever a patient transitions from a hospital to a rehab center or nursing home. Drugs that were prescribed during the hospital stay for short-term, acute conditions may be continued long after they are appropriate. A full medical history may not be understood by the (understaffed and overworked) personnel of a long-term care facility. The patient has no advocate in coordinating the medications of multiple specialists. The result, patients end up taking more medicine than necessary, running the risk of adverse drug reactions.
Prescription Culture: We live in a society convinced that there is “a pill for every ill.” Aging is treated not as a natural process but as a disease, and death is the failure to cure it. We are also a society exceedingly fond of instant results. Resolving a problem by taking a pill is easier and faster than making long-term lifestyle changes. These tendencies have been exacerbated by decades of pharmaceutical advertisements that imply a cause-effect relationship between taking prescription drugs and blissful, pain-free living. The industry spends more than $20 billion annually marketing to the medical community and another $6 billion advertising directly to consumers. (The U.S. is one of only two countries that permit the latter.)
Information Gaps: After several decades of working out the kinks, electronic medical records have achieved their primary purpose: efficient billing. Recording and sharing clinical information on patients, however, is often less than smooth. Patient confidentiality is one of many obstacles to allowing access to all medical personnel. There are also gaps in what is known about medication overload, and particularly for older patients. One reason: Older adults are rarely invited to participate in clinical trials for new drugs.
Age Matters: All other reasons aside, there is another reason medication overload impacts older adults disproportionately. It is normal as we age for lungs, kidneys, and liver to work less efficiently. In short, our metabolism slows, and it takes longer for a dose of medicine to work its way through our system. What was a safe dose for years may increase the risk of adverse drug reactions as our bodies age. The Lown Institute report argues that physicians must do more de-prescribing – reducing the load of medications in patients by stopping medicines that are no longer necessary, or were never necessary, or were not beneficial. Also, the report notes, de-prescribing needs more attention in medical and pharmacy education.
My Bottom-Line: In spite of taking 4 prescription and 6 over-the-counter drugs every day, I consider myself pretty healthy. I am lucky that my doctors are both in the same medical system and have full access to my electronic records. But, my husband had an adverse drug reaction and a good friend was recently hospitalized for the same cause. She thought she was having a stroke. I haven’t had any adverse drug reactions – yet. But, if that changes, as my internal systems continue to rust, I will be prepared.
Submitted by Yvonne La-Garde