Stretching prescription medication can prove deadly.

Whether you're treating a chronic condition or trying to stock your medicine cabinet with the basics, medications can be pricey.

To cut costs, you may be considering splitting pills or taking a medication after it has expired (though staring down a bottle of Tylenol purchased during the Clinton administration can make even staunch stomachs uneasy). You may well be wondering if cutting pills or ignoring use-by dates is really safe.

As if often the case in medicine, that's a simple question with a long answer.

Pill Splitting

It's basic math: Cutting pills in half can make a bottle of medication last twice as long. And if you only need half a pill to get the job done, splitting seems to make sense.

Some medications lend themselves to being halved, but certain others should never be split, says Dr. Norman Tomaka, a clinical consultant pharmacist in Melbourne, Fla. Splitting extended-release capsules, for instance, would cause a dose that's intended to be administered over several hours to be ingested all at once. In some cases, that might result in nothing more than a stomachache. But with drugs such as anti-seizure medications that need to be constantly active in the body, a sudden dose that then tapers off quickly could pose serious health risks.

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