🧑⚕️ Only When Your Doctor Prescribes Pill Grinding…
When pill crushing of a certain medication is prescribed by a doctor, some people crush their prescription medications using handheld pill crusher and grinder tools. Please ask a doctor before making any changes to your medication. Taking the powdered form of pills without explicit directions from a doctor is dangerous behavior that puts your health at risk.
Consult your doctor before crushing your pills and tablets into powder. Graycare is NOT a doctor.
Most people then proceeding to mix it into an easy-to-swallow glass of water or sprinkle it on top of food with dressings to disguise the flavor.
These are two ways people who have difficulty swallowing their prescribed solid dosage. To give three common examples...
- People who suffer from dysphagia.
- People with unusually large and difficult-to-swallow pills.
- People who find discomfort from the feeling of pills passing through the mouth and down the throat.
Such people prefer taking powder instead of whole oral pills, and they use pill crushers and grinders to make it happen. You can start with Amazon’s dedicated list of best-selling pill crushers, HERE. #ad
⚙️ Twist action pill crushers are easiest to use…
You might buy a pill crusher for your friend with rheumatoid arthritis, strokes, osteoarthritis, or other physical injuries. A 2023 university study down under supplied pill crushers to a sample of 60 adults with and without limited hand function to measure how easy could crush pills, quote: “Overall, the economical twist-action crushers that were designed to improve the hand grip (such as the Ergo-Grip and Tri-Grip crushers) were found to have the best usability by participants.”
Read the original research here: “Perceived Usability of Tablet Crushers: Comparison of Devices by People with and without Limited Hand Functions”
Scroll down for the best pill CRUSHERs and GRINDERs for granulating pills to powder.
Click here for the best pill SPLITTERs and CUTTERs for slicing pills into 1/2s, 1/4s, and 1/8th pieces.
#1 Apex Ultra Pill Crusher
🟠 Round-Twist Pill Crusher with Easy-Grip Cap
Buy Direct from Carex Website.
What makes “The Ultra Pill Crusher” special is it’s ergo-grippy triangular cap and bottom pieces. For the elderly or inflamed with weak or sore hands, these triangles take less effort in the palms of two hands. Simply twist in opposite directions - to remove the cap and to grind your pills. The blue circle at the top of the cap pops off to access a hidden surprise storage area for whole pills or ground powder. Some years ago, “The Ultra” was originally labeled under the Apex brand. Nowadays, the Apex brand is alive and well under operation of the half-century trusted Carex brand, however some people who sell the “Apex Ultra” didn’t get the memo, and now they’re listing it online as the “Carex Ultra”. Make sure you buy “Your Ultra” which has both “Apex” and “Carex” on the label that is listed as an “Apex” brand product. That’s a seller who knows what product they are selling.
#2 Ezy Dose “Ezy Crush”
🟠 Small or Large Size Pill Crusher
Buy Direct from Ezy Dose Website (Small or Large).
If the tropical colors of green, yellow, blue, magenta appeal to you, then you’ll probably also like the fun name “Ezy Crush”. Choose from either the small pill crusher for a couple pills and the large pill crusher for greater counts. One trade-off is not all colors are available, not necessarily in the size you want. Whichever color you take home, the groovy thick bottle-cap circumference on both top and bottom sure do make this easy to grip and turn, for a small batch pill crushing while avoiding the hassle of a less-intuitive handle (like steel pill crushers have).
#3 Pug Pill Crusher (by Equadose)
🟠 Mortar and Pestle (Non-Metal, Unconfirmed plastic-like material)
Buy Direct from Equadose Website.
Shop Pug (by Equadose) on Amazon.
This little pug pill crusher is the most underrated pill-grinding mortar and pestle set. First off, people who swallow down or rinse after swallowing powdered pills will absolutely love the discreet white color cup. The white cup is a "mortar" for grinding, and also a "cup" for drinking. The clear bottom container does well for transporting whole pills, however... If you want to transport powder, then you’ll need to first grind your pills using the white cup then next pour the powder form the white cup into the clear container. It’s an extra step you must accept if you choose the mortar and pestle pill crushing lifestyle. Overall, I applaud Pug and the Equadose brand for high innovation. It’s the only mortar and pestle for crushing tablets, vitamins, and supplements that you discreetly take with you out the house and rinse in with any running water.
#4 Acu Life Pill Crusher
🟠 Plastic Pill Crusher with One-Section Storage
Shop Acu Life on Avacare Website.
An oldie but a goodie, this type of small plastic pill crusher has been available for year, but it’s still a best-seller for the economical shopper. Working backwards, it’s got a built-in water cup to comfortably swallow the powder with water. Before that, the powder container below catches 100% of what falls into it, and you can see it since it’s clear plastic. You can keep whole pills or pill pieces in this compartment too. This particular type of small plastic pill crusher with single storage container and drinking cup adaptation by Acu Life is directly comparable to products by Ezy Dose (several colors to choose, available on Ezy Dose and Amazon) and HealthSmart (just red color, available on Avacare and Amazon).
#5 MEDca Pro Pill Grinder
🟠 Stainless Steel with Rotary Handle
Capable of grinding multiple pills and tablets into powder in one go. “The MEDca Pro” is FDA-approved to grind whole pills with a rotating handle you manually push round-and-round. You’ll see transparent sprinkles sift down fine into the transparent powder chamber below. No, the handle is not as long as other grinders, so this model is better for fewer pills per turn.
#6 MAXGRIND Pill Crusher and Grinder
🟠 Plastic Pill Crusher with One-Section Storage
Buy Direct from Maxpert Medical Website.
If you like your pill crusher looking like a red or blue two-tone capsule, or if you’re a Pokemon fan missing a Pokeball to catch ‘em with, MAXGRIND’s tall plastic top pill grinder and bottom container combo resembles these objects. If you stock tiny plastic cups, then this transparent storage bottom is big enough to put that tiny cup inside, so that the tiny cup catches the medicinal sprinkles of your crushed medication and supplements. People who like tiny cup sips might like to take their powdered pill mix this way.
#7 Apex Pill Pulverizer (Original)
🟠 Round-Twist Pill Crusher with Storage Cap
Buy Direct from Carex Website.
This is the original plastic pill crusher model produced by Apex, called “The Pill Pulverizer”. Today, I’d recommend you buy Apex’s newer “The Apex Ultra” because it’s got the same in-cap hidden pill and powder keeper compartment as “The Pulverizer”, and the “The Ultra” has a triangle-nomic grip handle that’s easier to twist open and closed and easier to grind pills into powder. “The Old Pulverizer” cap has wing nubs that are not as forgiving to prying fingers as “The New Ultra”.
#8 MEDca Mortar and Pestle Medicine Grinder
🟠 Mortar and Pestle for Crushing Pills
The stainless steel pill crushing mortar and pestle set is the most popular, but also the granite set makes you feel close to Mother Earth. It’s about 3 and ½ inches tall and wide, making it the perfect size for crushing medicine, vitamins in tablets and capsule forms as well as herbs, spices, seeds, and “the strong kind” of fresh fruits and vegetables. You came here to powder your prescription pills, but with a mortar and pestle mini-sized for medication, you can grind up other blends both dry and wet. Cleaning a mortar and pestle is no different than dishes.
#9 Ezy Dose Pill Crusher (Original)
🟠 Pill Crusher with Three-Section Storage
Buy Direct from Ezy Dose Website.
Grinding works for a couple pills, but newer plastic crushers like “The Apex Ultra” and steel crushers like “The MEDca Pill Mill” granulate better when grinding multiple pills. Ezy Dose brand makes daily medication a little more fun with colors beyond “medical blue and white” to flashier shades of magenta and green.
#10 MEDca “Pill Mill” Grinder
🟠 Stainless Steel Rotary Handle
The stainless steel “Pill Mill” specifications has become the standard of its kind. Like most stainless steel pill crushers, you can load multiple pills to grind them all at once and save time. The easy-torque elongated handle doesn’t become a bother on-the-go because it folds away to make this pill mill easy-to-take. Here is MEDca brand’s “Pill Mill”, but you’ll find near-exact products under different sellers and brand names too, such as “The B&C Home Goods Pill Mill” and “The Pill Mill” (Proper), yet I’d still choose “The MEDca Pill Mill” in this near-identical category because of MEDca brand’s good reputation selling many crushers, cutters, and compartments for prescription pills.
#11 Silent Knight Professional Pill Crusher (by Medline)
🟠 Professional Pill Crusher with Special Pouches
Buy Direct from Medline Website.
Shop Silent Knight on Avacare Website.
10 and ½ inches long, you know just looking at this thing it’s an efficient machine for high-volume pill crushers, typically healthcare staff relied upon to keep a rigid medication schedule for multiple people’s pills taken the way they like - order up! When the FDA categorized pill crushers as a bona fide medical device, they were probably using a heavy metal pulverization machine similar to Silent Knight. You actually crush the pills while inside the special-fit pouch (standard NONPC1000 or NONPC1001 crusher pouches fit best), where zero powder loss administers exact dosage and prevents crush-to-crush contamination, because powder never comes in contact with the machine. To grind pills into tiny pouches with top performance and efficiency, I recommend “Medline’s Silent Knight” for possibility of valuable post-sale customer service, however if you want to save a few bucks at the time of sale, try the lesser-known “RD Plastics Silent Knight” (available direct on RD Plastics Website and Amazon). To tell the difference, the Medline version has blue square Medline top sticker and smoother font “SILENT KNIGHT”, but the RD Plastics version has not top sticker and sharper font “Silent Knight”.
