Is it advisable to take medicine with drinks？ Expert： It is best to use warm boiled water.
Is it advisable to take medicine with drinks?
In daily life, we usually take all kinds of drugs with boiled water, but sometimes we take them with milk, tea or even carbonated drinks for convenience. So, let the experts talk about it.
Is it right to take oral medicine with drinks? Why? Tong Weihang, director of the Pharmacy Department of Rocket Army General Hospital, pointed out the maze one by one.
1. carbonated drinks
Carbonated drinks such as Coke, Sprite, mirinda, etc., which contain carbon dioxide and gastric acid, increase the absorption of weakly alkaline drugs (such as erythromycin, etc.), which may indirectly lead to excessive and prone to adverse reactions. Carbonated drinks will increase the gastrointestinal irritation of ibuprofen and other drugs. In addition, carbonic acid will also affect the stability of some drugs.
2. Tea drinks
Chinese medicine and western medicine should not be served with tea drinks.
Tea contains more tannins. Tannin can reduce the bioavailability of enzyme preparations (pepsin, lactase, pancreatin and multi-enzyme tablets), and also make antibiotics (tetracycline, chloramphenicol, erythromycin, rifampicin and sulfonamides) lose antibacterial activity, resulting in increased side effects. Tannin can precipitate with iron and zinc preparations such as zinc sulfate, zinc gluconate, ferrous sulfate and iron fumarate, which not only hinders the absorption of drugs, but also stimulates the gastric mucosa, and may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain and stomach discomfort. Tannin and digitalis glycosides, ephedrine, quinine and other alkaloids are precipitated, denatured and inactivated, which reduces its curative effect. Tannin can resist the crown-expanding effect of persantin. Tea contains 2%-4% caffeine and a small amount of theophylline and theobromine, which has the functions of exciting higher nerve center, strengthening heart, diuresis and stimulating gastric acid secretion. Oral sedatives and hypnotics, antihistamines (such as diphenhydramine and chlorpheniramine), antitussive drug Kebiqing, and traditional Chinese medicines such as Anemarrhena asphodeloides, Fritillaria, and Ziziphus jujuba seeds are also not suitable for drinking tea, because tea has antagonistic effects with these drugs and reduces the curative effect.
3. Mung bean soup
Take Chinese medicine
Mung bean soup is a favorite summer drink, which can clear away heat and toxic materials, relieve summer heat and produce fluid, and has outstanding effects. Mung bean itself is a kind of traditional Chinese medicine, which is cold and sweet, and has the effects of clearing away heat and toxic materials, relieving summer heat and relieving annoyance, quenching thirst and strengthening stomach, promoting diuresis and reducing swelling. If you have heatstroke, sore throat, cough, parotitis, dry mouth, bitter taste, skin infection, urinary system infection (frequent micturition, urgency, dysuria, fever, etc.), constipation, etc., taking mung bean soup while taking traditional Chinese medicines for treating these diseases (such as coptis root, scutellaria root, phellodendron bark, isatis root, bezoar, honeysuckle and other heat-clearing Chinese medicines) will not affect the efficacy. However, if there are symptoms of spleen and stomach deficiency and yang deficiency, such as chronic gastroenteritis, cold pain and numbness in limbs and joints, abdominal pain, diarrhea and dysmenorrhea, and you are taking warming drugs (such as ginseng, astragalus, cinnamon, aconite, clove, galangal, etc.) and traditional Chinese medicines (such as cassia twig, dried ginger and asarum) to treat these diseases, Therefore, whether you can drink mung bean soup when taking Chinese medicine can not be generalized, but should be based on the cold and heat deficiency of your illness and the taste of Chinese medicine you take.
Take western medicine
Although there are many rumors about the influence of mung beans on drug efficacy, so far there is no definite evidence that mung beans can make a drug ineffective. Modern research has found that mung beans contain protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, carotene, nicotinic acid, folic acid, minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and iron. In addition, mung beans also contain vitexin, β-sitosterol, tannin, flavonoids, coumarin, alkaloids, phytosterols, saponins and other bioactive substances. These components determine that it has the functions of regulating blood lipid, lowering cholesterol, anti-allergic, antibacterial, anti-tumor, stimulating appetite, protecting liver and kidney.
Protein, tannins and flavonoids in mung beans can combine with organophosphorus pesticides, mercury, arsenic and lead compounds to form precipitates, which reduce or lose toxicity and are not easily absorbed by gastrointestinal tract. Therefore, when taking pesticides by mistake or poisoning by heavy metals (such as copper, lead, iron, cadmium, mercury, etc.), you can take mung bean soup or take it with raw mung bean powder to detoxify.
Similarly, drugs with alkaloids (such as ephedrine, scopolamine, morphine, caffeine, etc.) and metal ions as active ingredients (such as vitamin B12, calcium preparations, iron preparations, etc.) can be combined with the components in mung beans to form insoluble substances, which is not conducive to the absorption of drugs and makes these drugs ineffective. Therefore, it is best not to use mung bean soup when taking these drugs.
4. Milk beverage
Milk and milk-containing beverages are rich in protein, which, on the whole, can obviously affect the absorption rate of drugs and reduce the efficacy. Taking medicine with milk-containing drinks can easily cause calcifications in the gastrointestinal tract, leading to drug efficacy failure, and even lead to gallstones and kidney calculi in severe cases. The rich calcium ions in milk-containing beverages can form complexes or chelates with tetracyclines and isoniazid, which makes it difficult to be absorbed by gastrointestinal tract and weakens its antibacterial effect. Calcium ions can also lead to toxic reactions when digitalis, digoxin and other drugs are treated. In addition, milk, cheese and other dairy products are rich in histidine and should not be taken with antiallergic drugs (chlorpheniramine and loratadine) to avoid histamine accumulation in the body and induce dizziness, headache and palpitation. In addition, taking antidiarrheal drugs can not drink milk, because milk not only reduces the efficacy of antidiarrheal drugs, but also contains lactose which may aggravate diarrhea. Therefore, it is best not to drink milk-containing drinks within 1-2 hours before and after taking the medicine.
It is not difficult to see from the above that it is best to take medicine with warm boiled water, because warm boiled water will not affect the absorption of various drugs. However, all kinds of drinks, fruit juice, milk, etc. are not suitable as "water" when taking medicine because of their complex ingredients, otherwise it may affect the curative effect and even have some serious adverse consequences.
In addition, when taking medicine, there are certain requirements for the temperature of boiled water. For drugs that treat stomach diseases, colds and other diseases, the water temperature should be hot, which is more suitable than the usual water temperature. However, there are six kinds of medicines that should not be taken with hot boiled water, including digestive AIDS, vitamins, cough syrup, live vaccines, active fungi and heat-clearing Chinese patent medicines. Multi-enzyme tablets, pepsin mixture, pancreatin tablets, multi-enzyme tablets, yeast lactobacilli, vitamin C and other digestive AIDS are easily damaged and ineffective when exposed to high temperature. Therefore, it is not advisable to take them with boiling water, but should be taken with warm water. Polio sugar pills belong to live vaccines, so it is advisable to take polio sugar pills and other live vaccines with cold boiled water.
Text/Mo Peng (Rocket Army General Hospital)