764 - Am I Taking Too Many Medications? Polypharmacy, Interactions, and Drug Cascades
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2024
⏱️ 16 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
One in five U.S. adults is taking five or more prescription drugs at a time, often for years without reassessment of need, dosage, or possible interactions. Today, a look at polypharmacy and why it's important for physicians to periodically check in with patients about all the prescription—and nonprescription—drugs they're taking. The guests also discuss the importance of considering non-pharmaceutical treatments like physical or talk therapy, and empowering patients and their care partners to ask questions about what they're being prescribed.
Guests:
Dr. Cynthia Boyd is a geriatrician and faculty at Johns Hopkins Medicine. She is also a senior associate with the Johns Hopkins Center on Aging and Health.
Dr. Ariel Green is a geriatrician and faculty at Johns Hopkins Medicine. She is also a core faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness.
Host:
Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, the largest center at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Show links and related content:
-
Taking Multiple Medications? You May Need to Scale Back.—The New York Times
- Get the transcript for this episode (PDF)
Contact us:
Have a question about something you heard? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website.
Follow us:
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to Public Health Question at jh.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's Public Health Question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.8 | This is Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of Public Health On Call. |
| 0:35.5 | Americans take a lot of prescription drugs, which are often |
| 0:38.8 | vital to survival, but can also cause harmful side effects that end up being treated with |
| 0:44.1 | more medication. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Johns Hopkins geriatricians, Dr. Cynthia |
| 0:49.9 | Boyd, and Dr. Ariel Green, about how to regularly reassess whether you're taking the right |
| 0:55.8 | medications and how to prevent dangerous drug interactions. Let's listen. |
| 1:02.4 | Cynthia Boyd and Ariel Green, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:06.1 | Thank you for having us. Glad to be here. |
| 1:08.8 | So today I want to talk about something called polypharmacy, which we will |
| 1:13.4 | define momentarily. But basically it comes down to, is my understanding, is that one in five adults |
| 1:19.2 | ages 40 to 79 is taking five or more prescription drugs at the time. And so I guess my question for |
| 1:26.4 | you, Cynthia, is why? How does this happen? |
| 1:30.1 | Great question. So I think many times it's an unintended result of what we would absolutely say |
| 1:38.9 | is good health care, right? Like we have many effective treatments that are both preventive, meaning that they prevent something bad happening in the future or that are treating chronic conditions people have. By chronic conditions, I mean something that, you know, lasts for a period of time, not a short-term illness. And many times, medications kind of accumulate over time as a result of |
| 2:06.0 | trying to do the right thing by our patients. But it's really the use of multiple medications. |
| 2:12.6 | And sometimes the use of multiple medications is absolutely what the person should be doing. |
| 2:19.1 | But sometimes, and over time, the number of medicines tends to accumulate. And we don't necessarily |
| 2:26.0 | always do a great job of reevaluating which ones are still right for the person, has the |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.