I keep my medicines in a medicine cabinet in my
bathroom. Is this okay?
No. Although the bathroom medicine cabinet is one of the most popular
places for people to keep medications, it is also one of the worst.
Bathroom cabinets are warm and humid. Both, prescription and over-the-counter
medicines should be stored appropriately to maintain their effectiveness.
Read the label. Medications usually require a cool, dry location,
away from direct sunlight. Extreme temperatures and other conditions
may affect the way a medicine works. Improperly stored medications
may even become dangerous.
You should not keep medications in the bathroom,
in your car, or near the stove. The humidity and heat in these areas
may cause pills to disintegrate, accelerate a drug’s decomposition,
and/or lose their potency.
Instead, keeping your medicines in a cool, dry place,
away from a child’s reach is a safer guarantee of their effectiveness.
I let my family members use my left over antibiotics
when they get sick. Is this okay?
No. Here are a few reasons why:
• It is not okay to share prescriptions. In fact, in most
states it is illegal to do so.
• Different antibiotics treat different things.
You may be giving your family member an antibiotic that may not
appropriately treat their illness. It may mask the true illness,
making it much more difficult to diagnose properly.
• You should take the entire prescription
of the antibiotic as it is prescribed to you. The illness does not
go away with a few pills. Even if you feel well after the first
few doses, it takes the entire prescription to completely make the
problem go away. Therefore, taking less than a full prescription
could be useless.
• If you are keeping an old medication around,
there is a good possibility it has expired. Some medications can
be rendered completely useless, or even dangerous if they are expired.
For example, expired tetracycline (an antibiotic) can cause a dangerous
syndrome, which may result in kidney damage. In addition, the manufacturers
of some medications may not yet know what happens to a particular
prescription after the expiration date. For example, the manufacturers
of Amicar© cannot guarantee its effectiveness after a two-year
mark because it has not been tested past that two-year point.
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