I think I’m on like day 3 of this gnarly cold I have. Didn’t respond to allergy meds. It’s not covid or influenza A or B. Runny nose but with congestion, cough, sore throat, violent sneezing fits, itchy nose & ears, congested ears. Took some #sudafed yesterday. Just took Tylenol cold & flu.

Hoping something will help. The worst part is not being able to breathe. My shift to start watching the #grandkids is to start tmrw. If I don’t feel better by evening, I’ll let their mom know. She won’t be happy but I’ll likely be watching them anyway. I just don’t want them to get sick.

It took five decades from the 1970s for the FDA to finally admit last year that oral phenylephrine, used as a decongestant in Sudafed and Lemsip, doesn't actually do anything.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-two-pharmacists-figured-out-that-decongestants-dont-work/

#ColdAndFlu #Phenylephrine #FDA #Decongestants #Lemsip #Sudafed #ClinicalPharmacology

"#Phenylephrine doesn’t work better than a #placebo. So why is it still on shelves?"

I knew it!

https://youtu.be/ZlFF7A8nk0w?si=ybxqqSKAjevNcHW0

#Pharmacy #OverTheCounter #Sudafed

Remember Back When Sudafed WORKED?

It’s been 18 years since drug companies replaced pseudoephedrine with phenylephrine to keep their cold medications available over the counter when the people waging War On Drugs(tm) decided to restrict the main ingredient in Sudafed (and what it was named after) because it could be used to make meth.

Though I remember some other decongestant plugging the idea that "unlike those medications, we chose not to change our formulation…" Yeah, because you weren’t using an ingredient that got semi-banned!

From the start, the new formulation clearly wasn’t as effective. When I found out that I could still buy the real medication as long as I asked at the pharmacy counter (and showed ID so that the DEA or whoever knows I’m not trying to get around limits by hitting every pharmacy in town), I stopped bothering with the OTC versions entirely.

I wasn’t surprised when studies showed that phenylephrine doesn’t work.

Back in 2015.

(Restricting sales of the real stuff didn’t seem to make much of a dent in the meth problem, either.)

"Only" eight years later, the FDA reached the same conclusion.

And yet the industry is complaining that "if oral phenylephrine were not available over the counter, it would be a significant burden to consumers."

HOW?????

It doesn’t work. People who buy it are wasting their time and money on snake oil instead of buying a different medication that might actually do something for them. (Not that this is a problem for the supplement industry, where "not evaluated by the FDA" might as well be a selling point.)

We all ended up worse off: cold meds that don’t work, submitting to surveillance to get the meds that do work, and it didn’t even slow down the meth epidemic.

Update: It took another year for the FDA to recommend pulling it.

#drugs #pharmacy #sudafed #WarOnDrugs

https://hyperborea.org/journal/2023/09/remember-back-when-sudafed-worked/

Decongestant ingredient in popular products does not work, #FDA concludes

Advisory panel reviewed studies of #phenylephrine, an active ingredient in #Benadryl, #Mucinex, #Sudafed PE and #Tylenol
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/12/decongestant-ingredient-does-not-work-fda-phenylephrine
#Health

nobody:

me considering buying #decongestants:

I don't want to make #meth, I just want to breathe!

THE METH MAN DOESN'T MAKE YOU SIGN A BOOK!

#sudafed

My #antidepressant (#desvenlafaxine aka #Pristiq) is a #phenethylamine. That's rare. It shares that skeleton with other big names like #MDMA, #mescaline, and #Sudafed.

It's a #SSNRI, blocks #serotonin reuptake 5-10x more strongly than #norepinephrine, and may increase #dopamine turnover in the prefrontal cortex.

It has some subjective aspects quite reminiscent of #phenethylamines I've tried.

#drugs #pharma #pharmacology #antidepressants