Ep. 238: How Much Medication is Too Much?

Guest: Cindy Preston & Gina Gaspard, First Nations Health Authority

It’s called polypharmacy – that’s when you are taking too many medications and those medications start competing with one another to the detriment of your health. It’s a problem.

Let’s say you go to the doctor, complain about an ache or a pain, indigestion or a reaction to a drug you’re already taking and then the doctor issues a new prescription.

Not to point the finger at the doctor, because a lot of patients don’t reveal the extent of the medications they’re taking. They almost never talk about the vitamins they’re taking or about their marijuana use – either for pain or recreational reasons or illegal drugs. And it doesn’t stop there; did you know people share drugs, “as in I’m taking this and it works for me, here, try one”? Doctors don’t hear those stories.

There are a host of reasons why people don’t have frank conversations with their primary health care provider: embarrassment, a fear of losing face, a lack of understanding about drug interactions and a worry about challenging the authority of their doctor.

And, while I hate to add this in – but I have to in this case – that is, add in the experiences indigenous peoples have with the Canadian medical system: a system that many say does not respect them or their perspectives on health, wellness and prevention.

For this episode we invited two members of the team at the First Nations Health Authority, pharmacist Cindy Preston and nurse Gina Gaspard to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the Coyote Medicine Story and how it can help all of us address an important health care challenge.