Are Your Prescriptions Killing You?

How to Prevent Dangerous Interactions, Avoid Deadly Side Effects, and Be Healthier with Fewer Drugs

Bill Hogan

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781451608403
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451608410
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

In an epidemic of overmedication, who can you turn to for help?

You most certainly know someone whose life depends on the prescription drugs they take: it may be your husband, who takes sleeping pills to counteract the anxiety his heart medications cause him, or it may be your aging father, who takes upwards of twenty pills a day for everything from arthritis to high blood pressure. But we’ve all read the headlines: prescription drugs can kill you. If that’s the case, why are so many Americans, particularly those sixty and older, given so many pills, with no regard to how they interact with one another?

Fifth-generation pharmacist Armon B. Neel, Jr., is on a mission to help patients understand how the medications they take can affect them—for better or worse. As a consulting pharmacist, he visits hospitals and nursing homes daily and counsels patients on how their prescriptions may be interacting dangerously with one another, and how they can reduce the number of medications they’re taking. Armon’s recommendations have been estimated to save $2.5 million a year in health-care costs, and more important, he’s saved thousands of lives. In 2010, the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists gave Armon its annual achievement award. The organization then announced that Neel so personified excellence in the field that the award would be renamed for him.

In Are Your Prescriptions Killing You?, Armon reveals what you and your loved ones need to know about the risks, dangers, and benefits of prescription drugs. He explains what needs to be taken into account when prescribing medication to older patients and the catastrophic results that can occur when they’re not. Writing with veteran journalist Bill Hogan, Armon gives you the information you need to be certain that you’re getting the right dosage of the right medicine, and he arms you with the most effective questions to ask doctors.

Armon also provides his own prescription for changing what he sees as the broken health-care system in the United States. Rich with real-life case studies, this groundbreaking book offers older people, who are most at risk—and the boomers who often care for them—a road map to better health. This gripping narrative provides essential information for anyone who depends on prescription medications, and reading it may save a loved one’s life.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Praise
• About Armon B. Neel, Jr. PharmD, CGP, and Bill Hogan
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Prologue: The Pharmacist Who Says No to Drugs
• Introduction: A Pharmacist’s Journey
• Chapter 1: Good-Bye and Good Luck
• Chapter 2: Things Change
• Chapter 3: Piling On
• Chapter 4: Off-Limits for Older People
• Chapter 5: Off the Charts
• Chapter 6: Phantom Killers
• Chapter 7: Proton Pump Inhibitors
• Chapter 8: Statin Roulette
• Chapter 9: Down and Out
• Chapter 10: The Bone-Scare Drugs
• Chapter 11: Does Dad Really have Alzheimer’s?
• Chapter 12: Taking Charge
• Chapter 13: Prescription for Change
• Epilogue: Miss Lillian
• Taking Stock
• Resources, Readings, and References
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Footnote