Can You Take Those Pills? Find Out With The Pill Book!

Growing up, we always had a PDR (Physicians Desk Reference) in our household. I love the convenience of being able to flip thru the PDR and find the information that I need about a prescription medication quickly and easily. When I finally moved out of my parent’s house, I asked my parents for a drug book for Christmas, because I had to call them constantly to find out what over the counter medications were okay to take with which prescription drugs. Mind you, a lot of drug information is available online, but it is scattered, and finding the exact information you need takes longer than I am willing to spend looking for that type of information. When Christmas rolled around, I received The Pill Book New And Revised 13th Edition from my parents.


The Pill Book New And Revised 13th Edition claims to be “the illustrated guide to the most prescribed drugs in the United States”. It boasts 32 colorful pages that give you pictures of most commonly prescribed pills which is great for identifying unknown pills that labels might have fallen off the bottles. The book claims that there are “more than 17 million copies in print”. The book is a reference book by Bantam Books and retails for a lot less than the PDR with a cover price of $7.50.


The Pill Book is an excellent resource for any home. It is a compact sized, 1,280 page paperback book that can be stored on your desk, bookshelf, or in a drawer in your home. At first, I was confused as to how to look up medications in The Pill Book. The medications are listed by generic name, which was confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, and learn to reference the index in the back of the book that lists both name brand and generic names, it becomes an easier to use reference tool that you will turn to again and again. The 13th Edition of  The Pill Book begins the index of all included medications on page 1,249. All medications in the index are listed by both generic and brand names. There is also a list of the 200 most commonly prescribed medications ranked by the number of prescriptions dispensed from January to December 2006 in the back of the book which I found absolutely fascinated. The top five drugs on the list are Hydrocodone Acetaminophen, Levothyroxine, Lipitor, Metaprolol, and Lisinopril.


There are some other nifty little guides in the back of The Pill Book as well including “Twenty Questions To Ask Your Doctor And Pharmacist About Your Prescription”, “Safe Drug Use”, “Safe Use Of Eyedrops”, “Safety Tips For Self Injectables”, and a “Medicine And Money” section. These are helpful guides, but really just common sense for most people who already take prescription medications, so I have glanced at them, but do not use them when I reference this book on a regular basis. The front of the book has a detailed section about “How To Use This Book” that will explain all of the details about how to make the most of the information found in The Pill Book, and how to find the information that you need in a hurry.


When you look up a medication in The Pill Book, you will find the generic name of the medication. The medications in this book are all prescription medications, and they are listed in alphabetical order by the generic name of the medication. Next to the name of the medication is the pronunciation of the medication. The brand name(s) for the medications are listed next, followed by the type of drug, what the drug is prescribed for (most common reasons the drug is prescribed), general information about the drug, cautions and warnings about the drug, possible side effects, drug interactions, food interactions, usual dose overdosage instructions and warnings, special information you need to know about the drug, and information for special populations (children, pregnant women, seniors, etc) that pertains to the drug.

I love the layout of The Pill Book. The information is all there that I need. I reference the side effects, food interactions, and drug interactions section of The Pill Book the most for each medication that I look up. It’s also handy to have dosing information available for when I am unclear about how much medication to take. The information is written in plain English, in that it is easy to understand, not heavy on medical terms, and can be easily understood by the average household. I like the fact that the information is straight to the point, concise, clear, and compact. This book contains just enough information without making you feel over burdened with information or feel unclear about what information is applicable to you and what information is not.


In the center of The Pill Book is a colorful group of pages that are labeled with letters of the alphabet instead of numbers like traditional page numbers. The pages are filled with various prescription medications that are extremely popular, photos of the pills on both sides, the strength of the pills and the page number that the information pertaining to that pill can be found on. This is a great guide for pill identification, but there are only most commonly prescribed pills pictured in these pages. Also, the letter system used for numbering is confusing at first, I eventually figured out, that the A page doesn’t mean pills starting with the letter ‘A’ instead it means page 1, then B page 2, etc throughout the colored section in the middle of the book. It would have made more sense to put the pills on the page that corresponds with the first letter of the pill name, and to just number the pages instead of the lettering system that they used.


The Pill Book is chalk full of useful information. Some of the best information in this book is the food interactions that a lot of times they don’t tell you on prescription information, as well as which medications are alcohol free, dye free, and sugar free. I wish that this book included more medications, as 1,800 medications is nowhere close to all the medications on the market (which hardly any book has within its pages), but most of the commonly prescribed drugs are found in The Pill Book. I don't like the binding on this book. We owned three different books about prescription medications that were not The Pill Book but were extremely similar and they all eventually fell apart after repeated use. I would definately prefer a hard cover edition or a reinforced binding over the glued in binding that will eventually meet it's fate of falling apart somewhere down the road.


If you want a simple to use home reference book about prescription medications, than I would go with The Pill Book. It’s by far simpler than a PDR, compact, easy to store, and makes a great gift for anyone who takes prescription medications, is pregnant or breast feeding, is a senior citizen, has children, is away at college, or anyone who has recently moved out of mom and dad’s watchful eye.