Don’t let a hospital stay set you up for a return!

Dear Reader,

Going to the hospital can be a risky proposition at best.

Along with medical mistakes, there are those “superbugs” – ones resistant to antibiotics – that you can pick up during a stay, including serious infections such as sepsis and pneumonia.

But now, it looks like there’s yet another danger that can follow you home!

Research out of the University of California has found that 1 in 7 seniors (out of nearly 15,000) treated at a VA facility were discharged with either more BP meds than they were on before or much higher doses.

Just last week, I told you how blood pressure meds can put you at big risk for taking a serious fall.

A study done by Kaiser Permanente found that once your top BP number drops to 110 or below, the odds of taking a tragic tumble jump by 50 percent.

That, of course, can land you in the hospital – which is where you got the drugs in the first place.

It’s like tossing a boomerang, only it comes back and hits you smack in the face!

The craziest part is that before being admitted, all of these veterans had their blood pressure under control. They weren’t being treated for heart problems or anything else having to do with blood pressure.

But just landing in the hospital was enough to have them spike a higher reading.

And that was all it took for the VA docs to start piling on the drugs — something said to have “no evidence” to back it up as a good practice.

You’ve likely heard of “white coat syndrome.” That can happen when your blood pressure soars at the doctor’s office but not at home.

Well, being hospitalized is like multiplying that anxiety by a factor of 1,000! And that’s something these VA docs never seemed to consider when changing patients’ meds and doses.

Plus that, they didn’t just over-dose and over-drug these patients while they were in sickbay. They sent them home with prescriptions for disaster.

There’s no reason to believe that the same thing won’t happen to you, should you ever land in your local hospital.

And don’t bet that the hospital staff will stop with just BP meds. Studies have found that over half of all adults hospitalized are discharged with multiple changes in their prescriptions.

So, if you should spend any time in the hospital, it’s important to carefully check on any revisions to your meds.

Talk with your primary-care doctor right away about extra drugs you’ve been prescribed, along with any change in the dose.

Because the last place you want to end up is back in the hospital!

To Not Being Over-Medicated,

Melissa Young