Part of long-term maintenance might be long-term medicines
DEAR DR. ROACH: Your recent inquiry from a reader who was on prednisone long term raised a question I’ve been meaning to ask: Is it OK to stay on drugs for “long-term maintenance”?
I’m a 77-year-old man who has been on the following drugs on a daily basis for years: aspirin, finasteride, losartan, omeprazole, rosuvastatin and verapamil. This sounds like quite a few pills, but they seem to be working!
My pharmacist tells me, “Pills are what allows people to live longer!” But is there a downside? I’d like to hear your views. — D.J.
ANSWER: In general, medications for chronic conditions need to be taken long term in order to be effective. This seemed obvious to me, but I have seen many people who take a month’s worth of diabetes, blood pressure or cholesterol medicine with the idea that the course of pills will cure their condition. Maybe someday medical science will be able to do so, but for now, we rely on treatments (now and in the future) to lead to benefit (now and in the future). Stop the treatments, and the benefits go away. (By “treatment” here, I also mean dietary treatment, since if you stop eating a good diet for your diabetes, you stop getting benefit.)