Compounding is the art and science of creating personalized medicine. It all starts with a problem: the child who can’t swallow pills, the patient with a gluten allergy, the much-needed drug that’s in short supply. For whatever reason, many people aren’t served by mass-produced medications.
That’s where compounding comes in. Special flavorings, unique dosage forms, innovative delivery methods – using these tools and more, compounding pharmacists work with prescribers to fill a gap in health care through customized solutions for specific patient needs.
Compounding is a great option to explore for people who:
- Have allergies to common mass-produced medicine fillers (casein, gluten, dyes, etc.)
- Aren’t taking medication as prescribed due to unpleasant side effects or lack of improvement
- Need custom medicine strengths and dosage forms (like creams or suppositories)
- For patients, compounding can be life-changing, even lifesaving. And, it’s highly rewarding for pharmacists and practitioners, helping them solve some of health care’s toughest challenges.
We at Health+ Pharmacy specialize in the following areas of compounding:
Pain Management: Chronic pain affects millions of Canadians, who take medication to manage their pain on a daily basis. Compounding can help you and your physician manage your pain more efficiently and effectively by delivering the correct dose of pain relief in the most suitable format for your condition.
Compounding offers a much wider choice of pain relieving ingredients than mass-produced, single dose medicines. Your physician can prescribe a range of active ingredients, each of which may target a specific mechanism in your body, rather than just one or two. As a result of the way these work in specific ways, compounding usually results in smaller concentrations of each medication, and more effective pain management overall.
Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT): Compounded bio-identical hormones enables you to be treated with hormones that have exactly the same chemical structure as those you produce naturally. This bio-identical hormone can fully replicate the function your original hormone did. What’s more, compounding can create the exact hormones you need, in the most appropriate dosage for you. The result is a bio-identical hormone replacement therapy that is as unique as you are!
Dermatology: Through the expertise of pharmacists and dermatologists, compounding offers an alternative to commercially made medications because it is precisely compounded with ingredients to treat you, while taking into consideration personal factors, such as your age, race, sex, sensitivities to medication, allergies, etc. We can compound medications that are non-comedogenic, hypoallergenic, oil-free, paraben-free and petrolatum-free. Other options include topical sprays and powders and various preparations for other routes of administration to best suit your skin’s unique needs.
Additional compounding capabilities: Interested in learning more about our compounding capabilities? Contact the pharmacy today!
