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Your medicines have a lot of information on the labels. While it’s all a lot to take in and remember, you should be aware of it all and write it down somewhere for you to easily look up. But even the most organized skim over some of the info presented on those little orange and brown bottles, the temperature restrictions.
Many medications states that they need to be kept at a controlled room-temperature environment, which is around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t have air conditioning or you take your medicine into places that can get to 90 degrees and above, you are destroying your medicine. It loses effectiveness or changes into something else entirely. If you feel that this has happened to your medicine, call your pharmacist or doctor and ask them about the effects this might have had. In some medications it can be a benign detail, but in others it can be serious so the general rule is to ask. If you feel that your doctor or pharmacist doesn’t know the effects of excessive temperatures on your medicine, then make an effort to ask other sources or ask the manufacturer of the medicine to get a detailed and informative response.
And this doesn’t that you should refrigerate your medicine to keep it cool either, as there are temperature minimums as well. You should try to keep your medicine in a cool place through the day. Try to keep them in the shade in cool rooms and never store them in places that get extremely hot or cold like compartments on an airplane or in the trunk of your car. A basic rule of thumb is that if it’s uncomfortable for you then it’s hazardous for your medicine, try to keep it somewhere you would want to be.
