Medicine cabinet check up: Experts recommend purging expired medication

The milk gets tossed after the expiration date. Old meat goes the way of the trash bin. But when was the last time your medicine cabinet got a once-over for out-of-date items?

Over the counter medications have expiration dates on the box or the bottle -- sometimes both -- and should be checked on a regular basis.

"I don't know if a lot of people even look at expiration dates," said Becky Maintz, a pharmacist with Main Street Pharmacy in Jackson. "At least once a year I'd recommend going and cleaning out your cabinets."

She said to associate the cleaning with a special day like your birthday, anniversary or when you change the batteries in your smoke detector.

Is there leeway when it comes to the "best if used by" stamp? Maintz said to err on the side of caution and buy a new bottle of the medication in question.

"If it's expired, I would go ahead and get rid of it," Maintz said.

Expired medication can lose potency, causing people to overcompensate and possibly overdose, and some things -- like eye drops -- may start to break down after that date.

Maintz said using expired eye drops puts people at risk for an eye infection. "Say it's got some type of preservative to keep it from getting bacterial growth," she said. When the drops expire, that preservative may stop working, and bacteria can grow in the eye drops.

Maintz also said people should become more active readers.

Reading the label on a bottle of medication will tell people the expiration date and the active ingredients.

"They need to be aware of what the ingredients are in the medications they have," she said.

Medications may have different brands and different names, but contain the same ingredients. Some combination cold medicines have acetaminophen and if people take the combination cold medicine and a Tylenol, "they could overdose that way," Maintz said.

"Make sure you read the label before you start popping pills," she said.

Maintz also recommended checking with the pharmacist for drug interactions between OTC medications and prescriptions.

"Some stomach medications like Maalox will interact with antibiotic and make them inactive," Maintz said. "They'd just be wasting their money and not getting better."

People should also pay attention to their symptoms, according to William Grady Yount, director of pharmacy services at Saint Francis Medical Center.

"Try to use a medication that treats your specific symptom(s), instead of a 'multisymptom' product," Yount said in an e-mail interview. "The more drugs in a single product, the more chance of side effects or adverse reactions."

charris@semissourian.com

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Medicine cabinet essentials

Pharmacist Becky Maintz said this group of essential medications will give you a well-rounded supply of medical necessities. Ask your pharmacist about specific drug interactions with medicines you already take:

* Keep Tylenol (acetaminophen) or Motrin (ibuprofen). Maintz said which one you stock depends on what prescriptions you're taking.

* Cortisone cream for bug bites or poison ivy.

* Antihistamine (Like Benadryl)

* Eye drops in case you get something in your eye.

* Cough syrup.

* Thermometer, bandages and antibiotic ointment.

Storage tips

William Grady Yount gave these tips on safely storing your medicines:

* The medicine cabinet should not be in the bathroom. It should be in a cool, dry place in the home.

* The medicine cabinet should be secure so that children cannot get into it.