1. It cannot be taken with hot water
This is very important: do not take it with hot water, many people often use hot water to take medicine because they are afraid of cold or medication habits, but for the capsule dosage form, this is wrong, and the medicine should be taken with warm water. Capsules are generally made of gelatin and excipients, hot water will dissolve gelatin, resulting in the softening or destruction of the capsule, which is not only easy to make it stick to the throat or esophagus, causing damage to the digestive tract, but also will lead to the early release of the drug, affecting the absorption and efficacy of the drug.
2. Do not open it at will
Some people may feel that the capsule is too large to take and choose to open the capsule and take only the drug powder inside. However, this practice is wrong. Prescription of a drug not only affects the efficacy of the drug, but can also pose a safety risk. Capsules play an important role in drug release and protection of pharmaceutical ingredients. Opening the capsule can disrupt the structure of the drug, causing the drug to be released prematurely or too quickly, which can affect the efficacy.
Take omeprazole enteric-coated capsules as an example, omeprazole is a weakly alkaline drug that is easily destroyed by gastric acid in the stomach, affecting the efficacy. If you remove the capsule and take it directly, the protective effect disappears, the drug becomes ineffective, and it does not help the condition in any way. Therefore, in order to ensure the efficacy and safety of the drug, we should follow the correct medication method and do not open the capsule and take the drug powder directly.
The author once encountered an embarrassing case: the patient Lao Wang suffered from high blood pressure and felt that it was difficult to swallow at home after taking antihypertensive drug capsules, so he crushed nifedipine sustained-release capsules and labetalol and mixed them with food to take them, and nifedipine sustained-release capsules are specially designed drug dosage forms, the purpose of which is to release drugs slowly within a certain period of time to maintain a stable drug concentration in the body.
When this oral sustained-release drug is crushed, its sustained-release properties are destroyed, which will lead to excessive release of the drug in a short period of time, and the bioavailability in the human body will increase rapidly, causing patients to have severe hypotensive side effects, and the combined labetalol inhibits the compensatory increase in heart rate, resulting in bradycardia with hypotension, and eventually death.
3. Do not take it lying down
Many people find it more comfortable to take the drug while lying down, however, when taking the capsule while lying down, it increases the contact area of the capsule with the esophagus, resulting in too long a stay in the esophagus and increasing the risk of capsule rupture. The capsule should be taken while standing or sitting with a slight head bowed as the capsule is relatively light and if taken lying down or with the head tilted, the capsule will float on the surface of the water, making it impossible to swallow.
Taking the drug while standing or sitting can reduce the amount of time the capsule stays in the esophagus and reduces the risk of the capsule rupturing. At the same time, it also avoids the occurrence of premature or rapid release of drugs. For example, capsules for the treatment of osteoporosis are highly corrosive, and if they stay in the esophagus for too long or stick to the esophagus, they will cause severe burns to the esophageal mucosa. Therefore, it is important to take it standing up, and do not lie down immediately after taking it, keep it upright, and drink plenty of water at the same time so that the medicine can reach the stomach quickly.
