By Trevor Shewfelt, Pharmacist at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy
We now have this and most other articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website. Please visit us at http://www.dcp.ca/
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
One of the pharmacy’s technicians grew a huge patch of jalapeno peppers. I love hot, spicy food. Hot food doesn’t always love me. Some times it gives me heart burn. You know that uncomfortable burning feeling behind your breast bone. What can be done to quench the fire?
Firstly, symptoms of heartburn happen to virtually everyone at some point in their life. If heart burn symptoms are infrequent and don’t last long they are not associated with an increase risk of serious disease. There are some warning flags for when you should see your doctor: severe abdominal pain, pain on the side of your abdomen that persists in one spot, unexplained weight loss of more than 7 lbs in the past six months, new feelings of shortness of breath or chronic tiredness, difficult or painful swallowing, persistent vomiting, coughing up blood, or black tarry stools.
So how can we prevent heartburn. Big meals can lead to heart burn, so let’s cancel Christmas! Well, cancelling Christmas would work, but wouldn’t be very unpopular. So instead try eating smaller more frequent meals, eat low fat foods with lots of fiber, reduce alcohol consumption, avoid lying down right after meals, and lose some weight. Well, if you’re like me over Christmas I eat huge meals with lots of fat, drink alcohol and coffee and then immediately lie down on the couch (and just forget about losing weight over the holidays). Okay, maybe prevention is harder than we thought. What about treating the heartburn once it has started?
Without a prescription, we have antacids and H2 receptor blockers. Antacids with names like Tums, Maalox, Mylanta, Rolaids, Diovan etc all work on mild heart burn. They go into your stomach and neutralize stomach acid. So you feel relief quite quickly, but the relief may not last very long. If you find one you like, use it. There are a couple of cautions, though. If you need antacids more than 3 times a week, or have been using them longer than 6 months in a row, see your doctor. The other problem can be different medications. Antacids bind up other medications that are in the stomach at the same time. If you are on prescription medications, ask you pharmacist if they are safe to take with antacids.
H2 receptor blockers have names like cimetidine, ranitidine, or famotidine. H2 receptor blockers go to a special histamine receptor and prevent them from getting turned on. This stops the stomach from making as much acid. They are reasonably fast and last a long time. They are quite safe and you can usually get relief from 1 or 2 pills in a day. In fact, until recently 150 mg of ranitidine used to be available only by prescription. Now you can buy it over the counter.
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Antibiotic Resistance
By Trevor Shewfelt, Pharmacist at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy
Have you heard Trevor on the radio? Listen to 730 CKDM Tuesday Mornings at 8:35 am! We now have most of the articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website www.dcp.ca
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
I like Pink Floyd. Yes that psychedelic British rock band from the 1960’s. Although I don’t think I’ve played their album “The Wall” from end to end in a decade, I used to listen to it a lot in University. One of the many themes on The Wall is the difficulty of losing a father in World War 2 and how hard it was to grow up in post war Britain. And in a couple of places they mentioned Vera Lynn.
I honestly had no idea who Vera Lynn was when I heard her name in the Pink Floyd songs. However, on September 13, 2009, Dame Vera Lynn had a Number 1 record in Britain at the very young age of 92. After that I heard an interview with her. She described her career entertaining the troops with hits like “We’ll Meet Again” and “There’ll Be Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover”. For us on this side of the Atlantic, picture her as a British Bob Hope. She described visiting field hospitals in Burma to see wounded soldiers. She actually saw a new drug being used. She saw penicillin powder poured onto open wounds to help them heal. For the record, she said it was a yellow powder.
Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. He was doing research on bacteria and was already known as a good researcher, but a messy lab technician. Coming back to his lab after a few days off, he found some cultures of his bacteria that he’d forgotten had been spoiled by mold. Instead of just throwing out all the culture plates, he noticed a zone around some of the mold was completely free of bacteria. The mold (later named Penicillium notatum) produced a substance (now called penicillin) that killed the bacteria. Penicillin was eventually isolated and made in large quantities. When it was given to people, certain infections were cured!
Penicillin was a miraculous discovery. Bacterial infections can kill people. Before antibiotics, strept throat, sexually transmitted diseases and child birth often killed people. In fact, bacterial infections remain still one of the only maladies that drugs can “cure”. Yes insulin treats diabetes, celebrex treats arthritis and Viagra treats erectile dysfunction, but the malady doesn’t go away. If you take away the insulin, the celebrex or the Viagra the diabetes, arthritis and erectile dysfunction come back. However, if I have strept throat and the doctor gives me a 10 day course of penicillin, I am cured. The bacteria are dead and that infection is over.
As miraculous as antibiotics are, they aren’t perfect. Several decades after penicillin was discovered, people started talking about antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is when bacteria aren’t killed by a certain antibiotic anymore.
How do bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic? There are a few ways including complicated things like sharing plasmids, but often it is when the bacteria are exposed to a small dose of the antibiotic. This dose is either too small to kill them or given for too short a time to kill them. For example, let’s say you go to the doctor and insist that she give you an antibiotic for your “cough”. Then, you only take 2 or 3 days worth of the antibiotics and “save the rest for next time”. This will kill off the most of the bacteria, but it will leave some alive. The ones that are left will have a natural immunity to the antibiotic. Those bacteria will reproduce and all their offspring will have a resistance to that antibiotic. Now that original antibiotic won’t work anymore. You now have an antibiotic resistant infection!
So finish your antibiotics! I want you to be like my new Pink Floyd inspired hero Vera Lynn. Be working and productive for seven decades. Get that number 1 album on the British charts when you are 92. Do not stop taking an antibiotic part way through the course of treatment without first discussing it with your doctor. Even if you feel better, use the entire prescription as directed to make sure that all of the bacteria are destroyed. Dead bacteria don’t cause resistance.
And like Vera Lynn says, “We’ll meet again….Some sunny day”.
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
Have you heard Trevor on the radio? Listen to 730 CKDM Tuesday Mornings at 8:35 am! We now have most of the articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website www.dcp.ca
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
I like Pink Floyd. Yes that psychedelic British rock band from the 1960’s. Although I don’t think I’ve played their album “The Wall” from end to end in a decade, I used to listen to it a lot in University. One of the many themes on The Wall is the difficulty of losing a father in World War 2 and how hard it was to grow up in post war Britain. And in a couple of places they mentioned Vera Lynn.
I honestly had no idea who Vera Lynn was when I heard her name in the Pink Floyd songs. However, on September 13, 2009, Dame Vera Lynn had a Number 1 record in Britain at the very young age of 92. After that I heard an interview with her. She described her career entertaining the troops with hits like “We’ll Meet Again” and “There’ll Be Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover”. For us on this side of the Atlantic, picture her as a British Bob Hope. She described visiting field hospitals in Burma to see wounded soldiers. She actually saw a new drug being used. She saw penicillin powder poured onto open wounds to help them heal. For the record, she said it was a yellow powder.
Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. He was doing research on bacteria and was already known as a good researcher, but a messy lab technician. Coming back to his lab after a few days off, he found some cultures of his bacteria that he’d forgotten had been spoiled by mold. Instead of just throwing out all the culture plates, he noticed a zone around some of the mold was completely free of bacteria. The mold (later named Penicillium notatum) produced a substance (now called penicillin) that killed the bacteria. Penicillin was eventually isolated and made in large quantities. When it was given to people, certain infections were cured!
Penicillin was a miraculous discovery. Bacterial infections can kill people. Before antibiotics, strept throat, sexually transmitted diseases and child birth often killed people. In fact, bacterial infections remain still one of the only maladies that drugs can “cure”. Yes insulin treats diabetes, celebrex treats arthritis and Viagra treats erectile dysfunction, but the malady doesn’t go away. If you take away the insulin, the celebrex or the Viagra the diabetes, arthritis and erectile dysfunction come back. However, if I have strept throat and the doctor gives me a 10 day course of penicillin, I am cured. The bacteria are dead and that infection is over.
As miraculous as antibiotics are, they aren’t perfect. Several decades after penicillin was discovered, people started talking about antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance is when bacteria aren’t killed by a certain antibiotic anymore.
How do bacteria become resistant to an antibiotic? There are a few ways including complicated things like sharing plasmids, but often it is when the bacteria are exposed to a small dose of the antibiotic. This dose is either too small to kill them or given for too short a time to kill them. For example, let’s say you go to the doctor and insist that she give you an antibiotic for your “cough”. Then, you only take 2 or 3 days worth of the antibiotics and “save the rest for next time”. This will kill off the most of the bacteria, but it will leave some alive. The ones that are left will have a natural immunity to the antibiotic. Those bacteria will reproduce and all their offspring will have a resistance to that antibiotic. Now that original antibiotic won’t work anymore. You now have an antibiotic resistant infection!
So finish your antibiotics! I want you to be like my new Pink Floyd inspired hero Vera Lynn. Be working and productive for seven decades. Get that number 1 album on the British charts when you are 92. Do not stop taking an antibiotic part way through the course of treatment without first discussing it with your doctor. Even if you feel better, use the entire prescription as directed to make sure that all of the bacteria are destroyed. Dead bacteria don’t cause resistance.
And like Vera Lynn says, “We’ll meet again….Some sunny day”.
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
Friday, October 02, 2009
OSTEOPOROSIS
By Trevor Shewfelt, Pharmacist at the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy
Have you heard Trevor on the radio? Listen to 730 CKDM Tuesday Mornings at 8:35 am! We now have most of the articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website www.dcp.ca
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
In Pharmacy world, we have a problem. We call it look alike, sound alike drugs. For example losec looks like lasix when a doctor writes it on a prescription pad and they sound similar when a doctor phones it into the pharmacy. Losec or omeprazole reduces stomach acid and is often used to treat stomach ulcers. Lasix or furosemide causes the body to pass out extra fluid and is used to treat swelling and heart failure. As a pharmacist if I get confused by a doctor’s order and give someone the wrong medication, bad things can happen. So we are very careful to catch the differences between look alike sound alike drugs when the doctor orders them. So I understand when people get confused between look alike sound alike conditions such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis is when the joints between the bones wear out. Moving those joints hurt. Osteoporosis may not hurt at all. It is when the bones themselves lose calcium and become less dense and more brittle. Do you want to learn more about these two conditions? Call Linda Watt at the Arthritis Society 638-8107. She is putting on a talk Oct 7, 7-9 pm at the Senior’s Center where Bonnie Hopps will discuss the differences between the two conditions and even lead you through some helpful exercises.
Osteoporosis is a disease of the skeleton that can have many contributing factors. It’s most important characteristic is the loss of bone strength. If you look at a bone under a microscope, bones look like a honey comb. It isn’t solid. When a person has osteoporosis, the microscopic structure changes, and the holes in the honey comb get bigger. The bone also gets weaker. Osteoporosis is called a silent disease. Sometimes the first sign of the disease is when a person breaks a bone unexpectedly. For example, someone with osteoporosis can break ribs by coughing. Other bones that can break in osteoporosis are the vertebrae in the spine (they usually compress and the person gets shorter), the upper thigh bone, the wrist, and the hip.
What factors put someone at risk of osteoporosis? Being female, being Caucasian or Asian, being over 65, having a small frame, having relatives with osteoporosis, being inactive, low calcium intake, smoking and high caffeine intake.
What can you do to help reduce the risk of osteoporosis? Depending on your age, you should be getting 1000 to 1500 mg of calcium per day either from your diet or supplements and you should be getting 800-1000 IU of Vitamin D per day. Calcium helps build bone and maintain it, and Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium from the gut. Regular weight-bearing exercise will also help building bone. So regular walks with the dog 4-5 times a week for about 20 minutes each will help strengthen your bones. Also, quit smoking and reduce your caffeine intake.
How can you tell if your bones are thinning before you break one? The gold standard is special X-ray called a DEXA. The problem is the DEXA machine is in Winnipeg and it can take a while to get in and get your bones tested. In fact, you have to meet some pretty specific criteria to qualify for a DEXA scan. Some criteria are being over 65, having been on prednisone for more than 3 months, or having an existing compression fracture in your spine. The reason for the strict conditions is that having thin bones on a DEXA scan doesn’t necessarily mean you are at a high risk for fracture.
I know it is a bit confusing, but having thin bones, or a low Bone Mineral Density (BMD), is just one risk factor for getting fractures. This risk should always be viewed in the context of the person’s age and other risk factors. For example a 25 year old with a low BMD has a very low 10-year risk of fracture that is not much different than a 25 year old with a high BMD. However, a person with a low BMD at age 65 has a much higher 10-year risk of fracture.
So what do you do if you are curious about how thin your bones are but you don’t qualify for a DEXA? Come to the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy’s Heel Scanning Clinic. We will be using a special ultrasound machine to see how dense the bone in your heel is on October 7 and 8th. Please call us at 638-4602 to book your appointment soon as spots are limited! The test is fast, easy, and painless!
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
Have you heard Trevor on the radio? Listen to 730 CKDM Tuesday Mornings at 8:35 am! We now have most of the articles published in the Parkland Shopper on our Website www.dcp.ca
The information in this article is intended as a helpful guide only. It is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional advice. If you have any questions about your medications and what is right for you see your doctor, pharmacist or other health care professional.
In Pharmacy world, we have a problem. We call it look alike, sound alike drugs. For example losec looks like lasix when a doctor writes it on a prescription pad and they sound similar when a doctor phones it into the pharmacy. Losec or omeprazole reduces stomach acid and is often used to treat stomach ulcers. Lasix or furosemide causes the body to pass out extra fluid and is used to treat swelling and heart failure. As a pharmacist if I get confused by a doctor’s order and give someone the wrong medication, bad things can happen. So we are very careful to catch the differences between look alike sound alike drugs when the doctor orders them. So I understand when people get confused between look alike sound alike conditions such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis is when the joints between the bones wear out. Moving those joints hurt. Osteoporosis may not hurt at all. It is when the bones themselves lose calcium and become less dense and more brittle. Do you want to learn more about these two conditions? Call Linda Watt at the Arthritis Society 638-8107. She is putting on a talk Oct 7, 7-9 pm at the Senior’s Center where Bonnie Hopps will discuss the differences between the two conditions and even lead you through some helpful exercises.
Osteoporosis is a disease of the skeleton that can have many contributing factors. It’s most important characteristic is the loss of bone strength. If you look at a bone under a microscope, bones look like a honey comb. It isn’t solid. When a person has osteoporosis, the microscopic structure changes, and the holes in the honey comb get bigger. The bone also gets weaker. Osteoporosis is called a silent disease. Sometimes the first sign of the disease is when a person breaks a bone unexpectedly. For example, someone with osteoporosis can break ribs by coughing. Other bones that can break in osteoporosis are the vertebrae in the spine (they usually compress and the person gets shorter), the upper thigh bone, the wrist, and the hip.
What factors put someone at risk of osteoporosis? Being female, being Caucasian or Asian, being over 65, having a small frame, having relatives with osteoporosis, being inactive, low calcium intake, smoking and high caffeine intake.
What can you do to help reduce the risk of osteoporosis? Depending on your age, you should be getting 1000 to 1500 mg of calcium per day either from your diet or supplements and you should be getting 800-1000 IU of Vitamin D per day. Calcium helps build bone and maintain it, and Vitamin D helps your body absorb calcium from the gut. Regular weight-bearing exercise will also help building bone. So regular walks with the dog 4-5 times a week for about 20 minutes each will help strengthen your bones. Also, quit smoking and reduce your caffeine intake.
How can you tell if your bones are thinning before you break one? The gold standard is special X-ray called a DEXA. The problem is the DEXA machine is in Winnipeg and it can take a while to get in and get your bones tested. In fact, you have to meet some pretty specific criteria to qualify for a DEXA scan. Some criteria are being over 65, having been on prednisone for more than 3 months, or having an existing compression fracture in your spine. The reason for the strict conditions is that having thin bones on a DEXA scan doesn’t necessarily mean you are at a high risk for fracture.
I know it is a bit confusing, but having thin bones, or a low Bone Mineral Density (BMD), is just one risk factor for getting fractures. This risk should always be viewed in the context of the person’s age and other risk factors. For example a 25 year old with a low BMD has a very low 10-year risk of fracture that is not much different than a 25 year old with a high BMD. However, a person with a low BMD at age 65 has a much higher 10-year risk of fracture.
So what do you do if you are curious about how thin your bones are but you don’t qualify for a DEXA? Come to the Dauphin Clinic Pharmacy’s Heel Scanning Clinic. We will be using a special ultrasound machine to see how dense the bone in your heel is on October 7 and 8th. Please call us at 638-4602 to book your appointment soon as spots are limited! The test is fast, easy, and painless!
As always if you have any questions or concerns about these or other products, ask your pharmacist.
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