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...