The Best Way to Crush Medicine: From Pill Crushers to Ziploc Bags

When you have to crush medicine to take either yourself or to give to someone else, you have to get all the chunks and bits out. You need a powder to mix with liquid. Sometimes it's hard to find things and products that will achieve this effectively.

Here are 3 well-known methods of crushing medicine...
- store-bought pill crushers
- mortar and pestle
- put in bag and crush with something heavy

Take your pick, but which one is the best way to crush the medicine? Which will five you the best crush and still leave you with most of the medicine instead of it sticking to the crusher?

Here are a few things to consider about each of the 3 methods I mentioned above and you can decide, but I will tell you which I find to be the quickest, most effective, and useful. I will put these considerations into list form so it is easy to compare.

Store-bought Pill Crushers:
These can be in a few different forms. I have had experience with the ones that resemble a small cup, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter around, and have a lid that screws on and reaches all the way down to the bottom of the small cup when screwed on.

The point is to put the pills in the cup and twist the lid on which crushes the pills as you twist the lid tighter and tighter. Some things about these are...
- You can only put 1 or 2 pills at a time into them.
- The pills usually don't crush completely even though you loosen the lid, shake, and twist it back on again to try and crush more.
- Some of the medicine gets stuck and stays in the threads where the lid screws on.
- You have to try to pour the medicine into another cup and add water.

**With transferring the medicine and some of the powder sticking to the threads, you loose or waste some of the medicine.

Put In Bag and Crush With Something Heavy:
This is usually done with a Ziploc bag and something heavy such as a glass. The medicine is put in the bag, the bag's shut and you proceed to roll the glass over the medicine to crush. Here are a couple of things to think about before doing this...

- The medicine sticks to the zip part of the bag when you pour it out.
- It also sticks to the plastic bag even if you snip a corner to pour it out of.
- Sometimes the bag tears or gets a hole poked from the medicine while crushing and you have to transfer the medicine into something else to crush.

**This method can be aggravating, bothersome, and you loose some of the medicine trying to do it.

Mortar and Pestle (I have found to be best):
This is a bowl usually made of ceramic or marble that comes with a pestle to crush things in the bowl with. The pestle has a rounded end. You put the medicine in the bowl and crush with the pestle. These are the advantages I found of crushing medicine using this method...

- You can put all your medicine in the bowl together (unless there is something that isn't supposed to be combined).
- It is easy to make sure all the medicine is crushed into a fine powder as you can visually see easily and the medicine keeps falling down allowing you to keep crushing. You don't have to stop and scrape the sides.
- You can add the water directly to the medicine in the mortar and mix it together with the pestle.
- When you pour the medicine and water out, if you wish, you can add a little water to the mortar and stir to make sure you get everything and pour with the rest.
- The medicine doesn't stick and you get ALL of the medicine.
- The pestle is easy to hold and slightly heavy so you don't have to do heavy pushing to crush the medicine.

**Doing this is the quickest way to crush the medicine. You don't lose any of the medicine, and there is only 1 transfer...mortar and pestle to cup!

NOTE:Potassium tablets do NOT crush well in anything. There are small granules left that you can't even heat and soak to make them crush. If you need Potassium crushed to mix with water, the best thing to do is to have your Doctor prescribe you Liquid Potassium. There IS a liquid form of Potassium.

I hope this list has helped you to decide which method would be the most effective and efficient way for you to crush medicine for yourself or for someone else.