Finally the horrors of medicine and the elderly have been exposed in the mainstream media.

Reports have abounded of the huge volume of medicines prescribed to older people and how damaging these can be as a cocktail of what seem to be inconsequential tablets. However, if one tablet has minor side-effects which could affect the brain on a minimal basis, and these side-effects are duplicated several times over due to the consumption of other medicines, then they soon add up to the possibility of increasing dementia and other brain-related conditions.

The body feels the effects of age and there is always a medicine to be prescribed to sort it out. These mount up until an elderly person could be taking medicines in double figures each day.

The sad fact is that if people paid more attention to a healthy lifestyle we could avoid taking all these medicines. Many conditions can be avoided as we age purely by a healthier diet, more exercise and vitamin supplements.

In addition, socially active lifestyles, faith and friend and family support will lead to a healthier and happier old age.

Reports show that the over 65s take one third of all pharmaceuticals prescribed by doctors every year, despite the fact that they can represent around 13 per cent of the total population. On average, an elderly person is taking around six medicines at any given time.

Patients over 65 are numerous. However they rarely, if ever, see a doctor who specialises in geriatric medicine. This may be due to the fact that almost every country has a serious shortage of geriatricians.

In Canada, for example, there are fewer than 200 qualified geriatricians serving the entire country. In an attempt to attract more medical graduates into geriatric medicine, Laura Diachum, at the University of Western Ontario, has gone as far as to describe the specialty as ‘totally sexy’.

Due to this lack of geriatric specialists, an elderly patient is invariably seen by a GP, who may instinctively reach for a prescription pad.

The generation of elderly patients has a tendency to become passive when facing a doctor and feel intimidated by the practitioner’s power, resulting in a tendency not to challenge a doctor’s decision to start taking a medicine.

Amazingly this was the subject of a thesis written in Sweden.

A professor of cardiology at Edinburgh University feels that ‘tick-box’ medicine is used with the elderly.

Michael Oliver says that elderly people are not only taking medicines they don’t need but they are also being exposed to side-effects that can seriously endanger their health. He said nowadays fewer elderly people are allowed to enjoy being healthy.

In 1965, when geriatric medicine was in its infancy, Bernard Isaacs, a professor of geriatric medicine at Birmingham University, said older people were faced with four ‘giants’ that would determine their health: immobility, instability, incontinence, and impaired intellect. Every health condition could be traced back to one or more of those four giants.

Interestingly, Isaacs or his colleagues could not possibly have foreseen that these ‘giants’ would be caused by the medicines the elderly were taking to help them, and not the process of aging. It is usually thought that these four concerns are a result of old age. However, it has become increasingly clear that excessive use of medicines are what cause them in elderly people.

Common prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications including treatment for heart disease, dementia, painkillers, allergy remedies and sleeping pills, can be extremely harmful if more than one is taken at the same time.

A study of 13,000 elderly patients has found that those relying on two or more of these medicines were three times more likely to die within two years than those not taking any at all. They were also more at risk of suffering memory loss and concentration problems which may affect their ability to drive or carry out household chores.

Immobility and instability have been found by various studies to be increased, or even caused, by many prescription and OTC medications. They can increase the risk of falling.

“Elderly people may be more sensitive to drugs’ effects and less effective at metabolising medications, leading to falls”, said a researcher in Canada.

Incontinence is not necessarily caused by old age. In studies, eight out of 10 cases could be resolved or improved by ceasing medication. Many prescription medicines cause temporary incontinence.

Impaired intellect is often seen as a forerunner to dementia. Although age is a genuine factor in memory problems, medication also plays a part in accelerating the condition. Certain medicines can speed up this decline and they do tend to be the medicines given to elderly patients.

Even OTC medicines can cause symptoms which resemble dementia in the elderly. Symptoms can include confusion and memory loss, which are magnified when the patient takes more than one medicine at the same time.

Even young Hollywood celebrities have died as a result of taking several pharmaceuticals at the same time: celebrities such as Health Ledger and Brittany Murphy. One has to consider that without drugs and medicine, perhaps getting older wouldn’t be such an unhealthy rite of passage.

kathryn@maltanet.net