Almost everyone is familiar with pharmacies. When we get sick, we dart to one to find medicine to help deal with the symptoms or fill the prescriptions our doctors give us to improve our health. Most pharmacies follow a fairly standard formula. The pharmacists receive shipments of particular dosages of drugs that they count and ration out to people as a prescription dictates. Their stock is refreshed regularly. However, there is another type of pharmacy known as a compounding pharmacy. Compounding pharmacies utilize their ingredients and stock to create medication mixes customized to the needs of their clients. Of particular note is the fact that they don’t just handle standard medical prescriptions.

Compounding Pharmacies Pros and Cons
There is always something to be said for customized care. Current health trends indicate that customized medicine is increasingly the way of the future. Technology is advancing enough to allow doctors access to further information about their patients that helps to predict particular risk factors and problems that might appear. This all for the anticipation of problems. Traditional pharmacies might not be flexible enough to cover the gradual shift to drug combinations that this might entail. This might make compounding pharmacies seem particularly attractive, but it doesn’t do to forget some crucial facts. Many insurance companies will not cover compounding pharmacies. Furthermore, compounding pharmacies lack the kind of quality control that you can expect at other pharmacies. Their mixtures are not regulation doses and might not provide the benefits you desire. Making this worse still is the fact that nothing protects you from a suggested mixture having potentially harmful effects. There are potential benefits, but they are at least counterweighted if not outweighed by the possible drawbacks.

Growing Markets
Despite these drawbacks, compounding pharmacies are a growing area of business. Their flexibility is allowing them to fill in gaps that normal pharmacies typically can’t. This is particularly true when it comes to combinations of medication where brand names are prohibitively hard to acquire or particular medication combinations that less than ethical companies utilizing price gouging tactics. A famous recent case involved the CEO of a biomedical company raising the price of an anti-HIV drug massively and a compounding pharmacy stepped in to provide the drugs for less than $15. While this case caught international attention, it is far from the only instance of this sort of behavior. Compounding pharmacies may actually prove crucial to ensuring some medications remain available to particular groups of people.

A Custom Touch
Compounding pharmacies actually make creams and other topical products for the skin. This opens up greater avenues in skin care by allowing them to work with your dermatologist to help create a mixture specifically for your skin. It helps to step around the common issue of simply juggling a counter full of products to ensure that your skin gets all the nutrients and supports it needs. Utilizing the services of one of these pharmacies could instead result in you get a product that combines all the best facets of your favorite products with none of the issues that require you to manage them still more products. This deserves highlighting due to the flexibility it opens up. You will want to make sure to discuss such things with your dermatologist though as ensuring the mixture is perfect for your skin will require in-depth knowledge about your skin’s health and type.

Compounding pharmacies are an alternative to traditional pharmacies that might be seeing their start of their proverbial days. Between exploitive drug prices and the trend towards customized medicine, more and more people are turning towards compounding pharmacies to ensure that they get the care that they need or desire. You shouldn’t run to the nearest compounding pharmacy though. Remember that the flexibility comes at the cost of the potential quality of the products and potential mistakes. The incident rate is not particularly high as the pharmacists are professionals, but it can never be discounted as a potential issue.