Are you taking prescription medications for your medical condition and also taking vitamins, mineral or dietary supplements?
Do you know that dietary supplements may interact with your prescription medications?
Some dietary supplements can change the absorption, metabolism, or excretion of a prescription medication. This can increase or decrease the effect of your medication, causing you to get either too much or too little of a medication you need.
An example of medications interacting with dietary supplements is St. John’s Wort, a herbal supplement. Medications for heart disease, depression, and birth control pills are less effective when taken with St. John’s Wort.
Warfarin, a prescription blood thinner for treating and preventing blood clots, when taken with ginko biloba, asprin or vitamin E, may increase the potential for internal bleeding or stoke.
Mixing prescription medications and dietary supplements can potentially give the opposite effect of improving your health
are on prescription medication. Let your health care professional know what dietary supplements you are currently taking, the dose and how often you take them. It is also important to tell your health care professional if your health status has changed, particularly if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or have had any recent illnesses or surgery.
A good practice is to consult your health care professional before you take any dietary supplement if you
How can AiMed help?
AiMed is a medication reminder and medication management mobile phone app. The app allows you to add both your prescription medication and dietary supplements into the medication reminder, creating a list that can be shared with your health care professional.
One of the impressive feature in AiMed is in it’s ability to provide visualised information on how taking medication and supplements affects you. Blood pressure, blood glucose level and weight can be tracked and charted on AiMed. The information can then be correlated with when you have taken your medications or dietary supplements to see if they are positively or negatively affecting your health.
AiMed can be downloaded FREE on your Android phone.
