Remembering to take your chronic medications and vitamins can be difficult for everyone, including doctors! In fact, it is estimated that the average national compliance rate isn't 100%, isn't 75%, but is only 50%! In medical parlance, it is called the "Medication Compliance Rate." In one of my favorite studies of medication compliance, investigators rang the doorbells of their glaucoma patients and asked them to show them which eyedrops they were taking. Only 50% of people could even find their eyedrop bottles!
Why is it important for your eye vitamins? Because AREDS 2 eye vitamins require a certain threshold of nutrients to have benefit in supporting the health of the retina. Taking one capsule per day rather than two doesn't have 50% of the benefit, but rather 10%, if at all. And every day I work in my practice, a patient sheepishly confides that they don't remember to take their eye vitamins, or they're taking fewer to save on costs. I tell them the same thing I'm telling you now.
So I want to know your "tricks" for remembering to take all your vitamins and medications, no matter how peculiar or silly they may seem. If it works for you, it may work for others.
When we ran a survey of VisiVite eye vitamin customers, an overwhelming number of them relied on 3 methods of remembering to take their medications and supplements:
- Put all medications in one place (pillbox, kitchen table, night-table, etc.) - Chuck Cain from Texas favors this.
- Take meds with another daily activity (eating, brushing teeth) - This is the method preferred by Theresa Vogelpohl from Arizona and Antoinette Valla from New York.
- Doing BOTH 1 and 2: Joyce McClane from Florida, Sharon Chaiklin from Maryland, Eileen Gonzalez from New York,
