 | Glen Mathis has been the co-owner of Mathis Drug Store in Girard since 1983. For more information or to reach Glen, please call 620-724-4313. |
Health & Medicine
2011-03-01 10:26:00
“Expired medications”...not recommended
Question: If my symptoms are the same, is it safe to use prior medications months or even a year from when it was prescribed?
Answer: When getting sick, sometimes we may ask ourselves “are my symptoms the same as before?” For most of us, you diagnose yourself as having the same nasty bug you caught the last time. Rather than reaching for your car keys to drive to the drug store, you reach for the medicine cabinet and are suddenly relieved to discover that you still have some leftovers of the medications you used last year. As you glance at the label you discover that the date has long past the expiration. You think “What’s the harm?”, “It’s probably still just as good as before.”
It has been a common practice for most to ignore the expiration date on their medication. The danger of using expired medication is simply undeniable. Similar to expired foods, expired medication not only loses its effectiveness, it also can become dangerous to use these medications because the chemicals have been altered due to various exposures and these changes can be detrimental to your health. Also very similar to foods, although it may not be deadly, your body won’t accept the medication, it won’t do what it was intended to do, and it can even make you sick in a variety of ways.
The chances that expired medications are really just as good after their expiration date as before is highly unlikely. Depending on whether you’re dealing with over-the-counter medications or prescriptions, you may actually be hurting yourself by ingesting them.
People having health conditions should be very careful not to take expired medications. Usually what happens once the expiration date is passed, the medications are no longer potent or effective. This means that the symptoms for which they are prescribed could fluctuate out of control and require serious medical attention to correct.
As I’ve always said before, talk to your pharmacist about concerns you have for your medicine.
