Overhaul Your Medicine Cabinet
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You wouldn’t eat spoiled food from your fridge – why use products that have outstayed their welcome in your medicine cabinet? Be safe: give your medicine cabinet a semi-annual checkup.
How Important is the Expiry Date?
Check expiry dates on products before taking or applying them, particularly if they haven’t been used in a while. Since the dates are often in small print on the packaging, highlight the information or write the date in a large text on the product when you put it away.
But don’t products remain good for weeks, months or years after the expiry date? Not necessarily. The expiry date estimates when the potency of the unopened product will fall to 90 or 95 percent of its original strength, under average storage conditions. Some medications, such as antibiotics, can become toxic when expired.
Check Non-medical Products
Like medicines, a wide range of other products, such as vitamins, sunblock or toothpaste, have a built-in shelf life. Only stock up on items you can use before they expire. Even if they haven’t expired, dispose of natural health products showing signs of spoilage, such as change in color, odor, or texture. When in doubt, discard.
Remember to toss old makeup products too, especially eye makeup. Because eye makeup applicators touch your eyelashes, you risk transferring bacteria from your eyes to the makeup. Health Canada recommends changing your mascara every three months. Liquid foundations, powders, and lip products are generally formulated to last longer: from one to three years. No expiry date on the package? Use the purchase date as your guide.
Safe Disposal
Discard old medication or any bottle that has lost its label, even if you think you know what’s in it. Instead of tossing in the garbage or flushing it down the toilet, which can create environmental problems from chemicals leaching into the soil or water, contact your pharmacy or health store. Some have drug recycling programs and will take expired medications back at any time; others hold periodic collection drives.
Location Counts
If you’re like most people, your medicine cabinet is in your bathroom. Convenient? Yes. Suitable? Not always. Humidity from baths and showers can destabilize medication, causing it to lose potency faster. The kitchen, because of heat from cooking, can have the same effect.
Unless the medication requires refrigeration, consider storing it in your bedroom or on the toop shelf of your linen closet, away from children.
Basic Supplies
In addition to first-aid supplies, a well-stocked medicine cabinet should include a variety of natural products that keep you healthy and fight disease.
Check your health food store for vitamins and minerals that fit your needs. While you’re there, look for healthier versions of toothpaste, soap, deodorant, makeup and grooming products that feature botanicals and other natural ingredients that are safer for you and for the environment.
Conventional products, with their reliance on artificial perfumes and toxic chemicals, are more likely to cause allergic reactions and potential health problems.
An up-to-date, well-stocked medicine cabinet and first-aid kit mean healthy products are only an arm’s reach away – that’s nothing to sneeze at.
FIRST-AID KIT
A properly stocked first-aid kit allows you to deal quickly and effectively with everyday health problems and minor accidents, or to provide first aid for more serious ones. Keep a family-sized kit in the house and car. If you go hiking, camping or boating, carry a travel-sized kit with you.
Standard Items for a Basic Kit:
- an assortment of bandages, sterile gauze, absorbent cotten
- adhesive tape
- blunt-nosed scissors
- thermometer
- safety pins
- tweezers
- eyedropper
- eye-bath cup
- a first-aid manual
Add in Basic Natural Remedies:
- tea tree essential oil (insect bites)
- arnica cream (bruises, muscle strain, and pain)
- ginger capsules (indigestion and nausea)
- lavender essential oil (burns and headaches)
- witch hazel (antiseptic)
- natural sunscreen
- natural insect repellent
Remember to restock your first-aid kit after use and check it regularly for expiry dates.
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