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The senior population grows every year. Seniors older than 65 years of age now comprise more than 13% of the total population. However, women outlive men. In the 85-and-over age group, there are only 45 men to every 100 women.
Children of people with alcoholism are more inclined to drink alcohol or use hard drugs. In fact, they are 400 times more likely to use hard drugs than those who do not have a family history of alcohol addiction.
Lower drug doses for elderly patients should be used first, with titrations of the dose as tolerated to prevent unwanted drug-related pharmacodynamic effects.
More than 34,000 trademarked medication names and more than 10,000 generic medication names are in use in the United States.
Many supplement containers do not even contain what their labels say. There are many documented reports of products containing much less, or more, that what is listed on their labels. They may also contain undisclosed prescription drugs and even contaminants.
![Patients should be encouraged to bring to their health care visit all the substances that they take,](https://biology-forums.com/gallery/47/medium_2137_17_05_12_2_10_44.jpeg)
![It is important to ask patients what other health care providers they are seeing, such as the dentis](https://biology-forums.com/gallery/47/medium_2137_17_05_12_2_17_18.jpeg)