I've been answering pharmacy-related questions for a well known web site and am stunned at how many people get a prescription and fail to take it as directed or for as long as directed. Most people are also afraid to report problems with medications to their doctor. And, although an annual Gallup Poll found pharmacists to be their most trusted health care professionals, people also fail to ask their dispensing pharmacists for the information they want and need to be willing to comply or adhere to instructions on how, when and for how long medicine should be taken.

Back in the dark ages, when I went to pharmacy school, prescriptions were often compounded. Pharmacists worked closely with the doctor to be sure the right amount of medication was dispensed based on a person's age, weight, health condition, lean mass and any other factor that might affect how the drug was absorbed, metabolized and excreted. Now there are more than ten thousand different drugs available and it's hard for the pharmacist, much less the doctor, to keep up with everything.

Happily, sophisticated software programs keep track of a person's prescriptions-if you go to the same pharmacy every time. I recommend this. That way you can be sure that there are no interactions between various drugs that might be prescribed for you. You should also let your pharmacist know if you are taking any supplements, herbs or over the counter drugs so they can be entered in the drug database. For example, one question came to me from a woman whose elderly husband had a heart attack and was on a blood thinner, Coumadin. Because she was attempting to act on advice she'd heard on television she was also giving her husband (without her doctor knowing about it) an aspirin (also a blood thinner) every day. She wrote my consulting service to ask if I thought it would be a good idea for him to have Ginkgo for his memory. Ginkgo works for some Alzheimer patients in the slowing of memory deterioration. But, it doesn't do that much for the usual forgetfulness we all experience and it is also a blood thinner. She's already put her husband in danger by adding the aspirin without talking to her doc ("I thought aspirin was harmless.") Ginkgo might have thrown him into a tailspin if he'd been injured and his blood was unable to coagulate. Yes, aspirin and Ginkgo probably are relatively harmless in healthy people who aren't on prescriptions but herbs and supplements and over the counter products are medicines too.

The point of this diatribe is to encourage readers to ask your pharmacist to fill your prescription with the most reasonably priced drug available (when your state allows substitutions). Then be sure you let him or her know EVERYTHING you are taking when you are getting your prescription filled. Last but not least, take the prescription as directed. This is your life.