CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they’re useless | Bogus homeopathic products based on pseudoscience will remain on shelves.::Bogus homeopathic products based on pseudoscience will remain on shelves.
You just say the magic incantation.
"These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. "
Except now the statemenhave been evaluated by the FDA, and they are not happy
I must be in the minority. This stuff works great for me. Totally dries out my sinuses without side effects. I’m very conflicted right now.
Pseudophedrine is clearly effective and still readily available, it’s just behind the counter and you have to ask for it (can be used in manufacturing meth). Phenylephrine is the one being pulled here, it was primarily pushed so they could have a cold medicine that didn’t have to be behind the counter. The picture here is slightly confusing because it is sudafed, which people generally associate with pseudophedrine, but in this case it’s sudafed PE, which is phenylephrine (the one that doesn’t work). Check the active ingredient on whatever one you’re using.
Yeah, I hate pseudoephedrine. Makes me feel awful. Phenylephrine HCL is the stuff I’ve been using.
If it was getting into the blood it should be doing about the same thing as pseudophedrine since they share a mechanism. You certainly shouldn’t take either if they make you feel terrible though, and probably talk to your doctor about it. The way both medications are supposed to work is vasoconstriction, which could be a big problem if there is already high blood pressure for instance.
There’s a lot of evidence out there showing no difference between phenylephrine and placebo, probably because of low bio-availability at low doses. One study below, there are many others:
https://www.annallergy.org/article/S1081-1206(10)60240-2/fulltext
Now if the politicians would just stop limiting access to the ones that do work.
Could you elaborate on what you mean?
probably the real pseudoephedrine containing sudafed and generic versions that are behind the counter and require a swipe of an ID to get from an employee. They don’t want you making the meth by buying a million packs across the city or state, now do they?
Pseudoephedrine is an effective decongestant which used to be widely available in a variety of products. In the USA, significant restrictions were placed on its sale in 2006 because it is an ingredient in the method of producing methamphetamine which was common at the time.
Now, methamphetamine is usually made using phenyl-2-propanone or phenylacetone, which is a more cost-effective process. It is likely that restrictions on pseudoephedrine no longer serve their intended purpose.
But no one is stopping you from buying a reasonable amount of it…
It’s trivial to think of situations where the current restrictions are a hardship.
- Your schedule makes it inconvenient to shop during pharmacy hours
- You have covid and you would like to have it delivered rather than risk anyone from your household infecting others
- You’re the primary caregiver for several family members, and everyone in the house is sick
Is there a reason you think they should remain in place?
That makes no sense, but I can see why they don’t take the homework stuff away too, since the FDA hasn’t said anything about them
What does this has to do with Technology?
I guess the bot considers “medical products” as being technology
I guess someone is going to try selling people an app or something in the near future. 🤷🏽♂️
The bots know the future. 👻
Source is Ars Technica. Guessing the bot assumes everything from them is technology.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
“We are removing a small number of oral decongestant products that contain phenylephrine as the only active ingredient from CVS Pharmacy stores but will continue offering many other oral cough and cold products to meet consumer needs,” CVS’s statement read.
For decades, consumer advocates and watchdogs have railed against them, yet these products are readily available on the shelves of every major drug store.
Homeopathy relies on two false ideas: the “law of similars” aka “like cures like,” meaning a substance that causes a specific symptom in a healthy person can treat conditions and diseases in an ill person with that same symptom; and the “law of infinitesimals,” which states that diluting a supposedly curative substance renders it more potent at treating medical conditions.
As such, homeopathic products often start with bizarre, sometimes toxic substances that end up being diluted into oblivion in ritualistic procedures.
As such, homeopathic products enter the market without any FDA review—and sit on shelves with FDA-approved, evidence-based medicines.
“Most people don’t know what this stuff is,” Nicholas Little, vice president and legal director for the consumer advocacy organization the Center for Inquiry (CFI), said of homeopathic products in an interview with Ars.
The original article contains 462 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This has class-action written all over it
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Antihistamines, if that’s what you mean are not in the same category, and definitely work for some people. They can also cause drowsiness and cognitive impairment.
No this is about phenylephrine, which is a vasoconstrictor. Allergy meds are a much different category, usually the pills are anti-histamines. The nasal sprays are usually a corticosteroid (there’s different ones too though). Anti-histamines can certainly have side effects though, especially the ones that don’t say non-drowsy, as anyone who’s taken benadryl could tell you. I’m glad they pulled phenylephrine. I personally noticed it seemed to have no effect, and use pseudophedrine whenever I feel like I want a decongestant.
An interesting thing about Benadryl (diphenhydramine): if you look at “PM” meds or things that are supposed to help with sleep, diphenhydramine is usually the active ingredient. Benadryl is a sleep medication that happens to also work as an antihistamine which I find a bit amusing.
Antihistamine drugs are all sleep medications. The non-drowsy versions just don’t cross the blood-brain barrier and cause less drowsiness.
The problem with using antihistamines as sleep meds is that you build a tolerance fairly quickly, so they work well for occasional use but not in the long-term.
That’s a good point and goes for pretty much any “insomnia” medication. None have good evidence for helping in the long term. The only intervention that has good evidence for chronic insomnia isn’t a medication, it’s cognitive behavioral therapy for sleep. Unfortunately that can be difficult and expensive to access, there’s not a ton of psychologists or counselors that do that.
Benadryl is an antihistamine that also makes you sleepy. You’ve got it entirely backwards.
Very true! Benadryl was primarily intended for use as an allergy medication, though it’s common for meds to get repurposed like this if they have other effects. Histamine in your brain is important for maintaining wakefulness. Non-drowsy allergy medications avoid this by making sure they can’t get past the blood brain barrier.
All those pm meds are just branding. Unless you’re also in pain or have a fever and too lazy to take two pills or something, there’s no real benefit. Just a glance at amazon shows the unit price of tylenol pm vs the same dose of generic benadryl (diphenhydramine) is 12x more! There’s multiple meds like this in the over the counter section, always read what the actual active ingredients are, not just the branding. I’m particularly annoyed by all the combination products that wrap tylenol/acetaminophen in them, or an NSAID (ibuprofen, naproxen), as it could be easy to accidentally overdose those if you were also taking them separately or a very similar med.
