Are There Interactions Between Certain Medications, Nutraceuticals That Pharmacists Should Counsel About?

In this clip, Judy Sommers Hanson, PharmD, FAPhA, chats with Pharmacy Times about the important role that pharmacists can play in educating the public on nutraceutical use.

Transcript:

"As a pharmacist it's important that you're cognizant of your patients and the medications that they take prescriptionwise, but it's also advantageous that the pharmacist to ask the patient about any nutraceuticals they may be using to support their care. There are concerns that some medications may be interacting with the prescribed therapy, that may have it be less effective or there may be nutraceuticals that they can take to help support the prescription medication to make sure it works more effectively.With regards to cardiovascular therapy, for patietns who are on blood thinning therapy like warfarin therapy, the pharmacist needs to be keenly aware of any nutraceuticals the patient they may be using and take a look at those patients to make sure those nutraceuticals don't interact with the therapy because that can greatly impact the patient's therapy.In thinking about patints who have diabetes, it may be advantageous to add a nutraceutical, so if we have a patient taking metformin...it may be advantageous to get on a B supplement in order to support the B vitamins that may get depleted because of the metformin they're on.​"