November 16, 2007

You may not be aware of this, but we Americans are our own pharmacists. :) Let me explain. As you know I caught some bug that was going around, and have in fact spent the last 2 days almost entirely at home. But I did go to Tesco to get some medicine. I have heard from British folks who lived in the US that they found our medicinal advertisements to be bit strange. Now I know why- they just don't have them here. Medicine isn't marketed to the consumer here. When people are sick or need some medicine, they either go to the pharmacist, the chemist, or the local medical clinic. I'm still not sure about the definition of a chemist, but I think they are between a pharmacist and a doctor. Pharmacists have some capacity to diagnose medical conditions and prescribe medicine for it. In fact most of the medicines are behind the counter.

When I went to Tesco I stopped there on my way back from our women's group, which looking back at it I probably shouldn't have gone to. By the time I got home I was exhausted and seriously sick. Anyway the last thing I wanted to do was stand in a long line at Tesco to talk to a pharmacist. So I took a look at their "medicine" section. Said section is only about 15 feet long, and is mostly comprised of pregnancy tests, contraceptives, and band-aids (which by the way they still call "plasters" here). There was a small section for "cold and flu" medicines, but a quick comparison between the 5 or 6 they had showed them to be all identical except for the packaging.

A British person might find it strange that I would be analyzing the medicinal content of all these boxes right there in the Tesco. But that's what I would do at home- except Kroger has an excellent variety of cold and flu medicines, and although some are repeated it's usually the name brand versus generic. There seems to be plenty of "recipe" differences, and since not everything works for every person that's great. I have it pretty much narrowed down to what medicines are helpful to me when I have a cold/flu, which specific type of decongestant, which type of fever reducer, and which kind of cough suppressants work for me.

Do you remember all those Dr. Mom commercials? Maybe we gain some of our medicinal analysis from our moms. Or maybe I'm just strange. :) But you can't deny that Americans know an awful lot about medicines for diseases we don't personally have because we see the ads on TV. When was the last time you saw an ad that had some nice sounding music, a person doing something, you're not sure what, or maybe 2 people, walking or on the beach or whatever, and wondered "What is this an ad for?" And then it turns out to be Prozac, Lipitor, or who knows what else. With the famous "Ask your doctor if Medicine X is right for you."

For your amusement I took a bunch of pictures of the various medicines that I bought. :)




First we have cough medicine. We can get Robitussin here but you have to ask for it at the counter. I was a bit surprised at the label "For chesty coughs" since we don't really use the word "chesty" in that way in the US. And who knows what "catarrh" is? I guess it's the British version of phlem. :) They also have cough medicine for itchy coughs, which is nice.



Next we have Paracetamol. This is the British version of acetominophen. It is not the same thing, and it is certainly not as strong, but I think it can potentially cause liver problems just like acetominophen if it is overly taken. I didn't see Tylenol here, even behind the counter. And they don't sell this in bottles- almost all medicine comes in a box with blister packaging. The paracetamol didn't help my fever at all- it was basically useless.



Now we're on to Vicks- a brand name that I at least recognized. This formula had 500mg of paracetamol just like all the other cold and flu things, but it has 12mg of Phenylephedrin hydrochloride. That is the decongestant agent. Since being congested is one of my main complains when I'm sick I thought I'd go for the one that had twice as much decongestant at the others. Unfortunately it doesn't do anything at all. Literally- when it didn't seem to work I dug around online and found several studies stating that it has basically the same efficacy as a placebo. Great. :) You may remember that in the US they removed Pseudoephedrine from over the counter medications because it can be used to make Meth. I think it's ridiculous that anyone should be able to sell medication that basically doesn't do anything. :)




I haven't tried this yet- I probably won't because it has the same stuff as the Vicks (only less placebo). Can you see the raised dots on the surface of the box? It's braille! How cool!



Here's the Tesco version of the same stuff- it's a bit blurry because the cell phone has a limited focal range but I wanted to be able to show people the braille up close.

I'm feeling better now, thankfully, and my next blog won't be full of medicine boxes. :) After all this, I ended up sticking with plain old aspirin, and benadryl, my allergy medicine which works great as a decongestant. And doesn't make me sleepy. Between the aspirin and the benadryl I felt much better. :)