Across millions of households, older Americans continue taking medications that medical science has quietly moved past — benzodiazepines that cloud the mind and loosen the footing, antibiotics prescribed for conditions they cannot touch, aspirin swallowed in good faith against a risk it no longer meaningfully reduces. The distance between what medicine has learned and what medicine still does is not a failure of intelligence but of inertia — the deep human tendency to keep doing what once seemed right, long after the reasons have changed. The cost of that lag is measured in falls, fractures, b
Older Adults Still Overusing Drugs Despite Updated Medical Warnings
Benzodiazepine use increases falls, fractures, motor vehicle accidents, and overdose risk in older adults; antibiotic overuse causes emergency room visits and C. difficile infections; aspirin increases gastrointestinal and brain bleeding risk.