What medications should be tapered rather than abruptly stopped? If you’ve stopped a prescription medicine in the past, you may have wondered if it was okay to stop abruptly. It’s always a good question to ask. There are many prescription medications that should be tapered slowly to avoid uncomfortable or even life-threatening consequences. With prescription medications, your doctor or pharmacist is in a great position to guide you. Or check
Have you seen articles or ads about the wonders of creatine supplementation for older adults? Wondering if you should try it? A reader asked me about creatine recently, so I looked into the research. What I learned was quite interesting. Creatine is a compound that our bodies need to build muscle. We get some of it from animal protein in our diet and some from our body’s manufacturing processes. Though
Until the early 2000’s, hormones were used pretty routinely to treat women with uncomfortable menopausal symptoms. Then a study by the Women’s Health Initiative changed everything. It seemed to show that the risks of hormone replacement far outweighed the benefit. So for the past two decades or so, doctors have discouraged the use of hormones. But a reanalysis of the research results found that some conclusions didn’t apply to women
Pharmacogenetics (AKA Pharmacogenomics) Pharmacogenetics (PGx) — the study of how genetics affects your response to drugs — is an exciting field in healthcare. Read our recent post to learn the basics of PGx and why it’s important in predicting your response to certain medications. But who needs testing? How does it work? In this post we’ll talk about practical issues of pharmacogenetic testing. First, WHO should consider pharmacogenetic testing and