Finding an old prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet can raise a surprisingly complicated question: if the pills are still there, is it okay to take one? Maybe you’ve used the medication for years, perhaps the symptoms it treated have returned, or you simply never noticed how old the bottle had become.
The National Institute on Aging warns that aging can change how medicines affect the body and that combining prescriptions with newer drugs, over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, or supplements can create unexpected problems. Medication use also becomes increasingly complicated with age: NIA cites CDC data showing 83% of adults in their 60s and 70s had used at least one prescription drug in the previous 30 days, while roughly one-third used five or more.
