Dangerous interactions

Proven content

You have a nasty cold, you walk into a pharmacy and stand helplessly in front of a shelf with OTC drugs. You don’t know what to choose. And do you know which drugs cannot be combined and in which diseases they cannot be used? Here is a small tutorial.

The fall season is the time of infections and colds. On the shelves in pharmacies, dozens of preparations shine, the producers of which compete in their promises that they will eliminate our problems with runny nose, colds and sore throats or headaches. Usually, all these medications contain one of the three most commonly used substances belonging to the group of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) – paracetamol, ibuprofen or acetylsalicylic acid. So how do you choose the right drug?

For colds – acetylsalicylic acid

Acetylsalicylic acid is a component of many preparations (including Aspirin, Polopyrin, Calcipirin, Upsarin, Alka-prim) and the oldest synthetic drug, used since 1897. However, this does not mean that it is the best and safest treatment for colds and infections.

Before you buy a preparation from this group, you need to know if you do not suffer from gastric or duodenal ulcers, because they are a contraindication to the use of this substance. If you are being treated for a hemorrhagic diathesis, or have recently had an operation and are still waiting for the sutures to be removed, or you have gastrointestinal bleeding – you also cannot use aspirin and its equivalents. The same applies to uterine bleeding and normal menstruation, when this medicine must not be used because it stops the formation of clots in the blood platelets and thus increases the bleeding. Likewise, if you have polyps in your nose because if you blow or sneeze more then you run the risk of a nosebleed.

Aspirin and its counterparts they are also contraindicated in people suffering from acetylsalicylic acid-induced asthma. If you suffer from a serious viral infection (chicken pox or flu) – take paracetamol instead of polopyrin or aspirin.

As you can see, acetylsalicylic acid is not always a safe drug. But for some it will be better than paracetamol or ibuprofen – especially for people belonging to the group of “heart” sufferers of ischemic heart disease or “heart attacks”. Then, in the case of a cold, instead of taking low-dose acetylsalicylic acid (anticoagulant: Acard, Acesan, Cardiopirin), use polopyrin or aspirin in a larger dose – 500 mg – also anti-inflammatory and antipyretic.

Remember that now you can make an appointment with a family doctor as part of the National Health Fund via the halodoctor.pl portal. Visits are performed without leaving home in a form convenient for the patient.

Paracetamol career

From the 90s, paracetamol preparations began to take the place of polopyrin and aspirin in the home medicine cabinet more and more often. Many pharmaceutical companies producing drugs such as Apap, Paracetamol, Efferalgan, Codipar, Panadol, Coldrex, Gripex, Maxflu, Fervex and others have tried to do so.

However, it quickly turned out that paracetamol is not a panacea for all patients.

If you suffer from chronic hepatitis or cirrhosis, you must beware of paracetamol, because one of its metabolites, formed in the liver, causes irreversible damage to the cells of this organ – hepatocytes. The same applies if you suffer from kidney failure, when the urinary excretion of metabolites is impaired, as paracetamol accumulates in the blood and causes secondary damage to the overloaded liver. When you take antiepileptic drugs, such as: carbamazepine (Tegretol, Amizepin, Neurotop), phenytoin (Epanutin, Di-Hydan), phenobarbital (Luminalum, Gardenal) – you cannot use paracetamol at the same time, as toxic liver damage will occur, even if you use the recommended dose leaflet.

Paracetamol must not be combined with anti-tuberculosis drugs: isoniazid (Rimifon, Isozid) and rifampicin (Rifa, Rifamazid).

However, the most common cause of liver damage is taking paracetamol with alcoholas evidenced by the famous example of Antonio Benedy, former secretary of President George H. Walker Bush, who regularly drank 3 glasses of wine with dinner while taking paracetamol at the same time. This resulted in his liver failure and resulted in a lawsuit against the drug manufacturer, for which he won $ 8,8 million in damages because the company did not include information in the leaflet about the drug’s interaction with alcohol.

Good-natured ibuprofen

The third drug that is often used to treat pain and fever in infectious conditions is ibuprofen (Nurofen, Ibuprom Sinus, Ibufen, Ibum and others).

As with acetylsalicylic acid, you cannot give yourself ibuprofen if you have a cold, if you suffer from peptic ulcer, duodenal ulcer or bleeding diathesis.

If you are also taking oral anticoagulants from the coumarin group, e.g. acenocoumarol (Sintrom, Acenocoumarol), bleeding may also occur. Ibuprofen and corticosteroids administered together are similar.

Molotov cocktail

When buying and taking “colds” medications, you need to remember a few more important rules. Although these preparations are available over the counter, interacts with other drugs even within one group. So if you take several preparations on one day containing both acetylsalicylic acid and paracetamol or ibuprofen, your stomach will develop Molotov pharmacological cocktailand the liver will run almost like a diesel engine when you pour it over with gasoline instead of diesel.

Scientific research has unequivocally shown that simultaneous use of paracetamol with another NSAIDe.g. with ibuprofen, increases the risk of kidney damage and worsens symptoms of kidney failure. The combined administration of ibuprofen with paracetamol may also cause cross-allergy, in short, a symptom of allergy to both drugs.

In turn, simultaneous use of aspirin and paracetamol it leads to an increase in the concentration of both drugs in the blood and an increase in side effects caused by both paracetamol and acetylsalicylic acid. So if you have a persistent headache during a cold, and you take paracetamol, use another dose of paracetamol, do not use ibuprofen or polopyrin anymore. When taking several preparations with different trade names, check each time whether it is the same chemical substance.

In addition, when your ailments are long-lasting, such as the headache mentioned above, remember to count if you do not exceed the maximum daily dose when taking the next tablet, because it also results in poisoning the body and overloading the liver and kidneys.

If you do not check which chemical is contained in each of the tablets, you can “swallow” alternately, for example, Alka-Prim, Aspirin, Upsarin and flu tablets, not knowing that you are constantly supplying the liver with the next dose of acetylsalicylic acid contained in each of the tablets. these pills. Meanwhile, the maximum daily doses (MDD) may be slightly lower than the toxic doses in the case of concomitant liver or kidney disease.

For example, the MDD for paracetamol is 4 g, but in long-term treatment (e.g. chronic headaches) the MDD is only 2,5 g. The daily toxic dose of paracetamol for a person with liver disease is only 6 g, so you can easily manage harm by ingesting tablets without quantitative and qualitative control.

To save …

In the case of common infections and colds, viruses are the primary and main source of infection in 80%. For this reason, we should not unnecessarily burden the body with unnecessary drugs, especially antibiotics. Once the fever appears, it is a signal for us that the body has started to fight, and the higher the temperature, the worse the viruses are. So let us trust the organism and not bring down the temperature right away, as long as we do not “fall off our feet”. Besides, the inconvenient truth for many drug makers is that With NSAIDs, we only treat the symptoms, not the cause of the disease. Even if someone accuses us that this is not true, because these drugs are anti-inflammatory, they still act on the symptom – inflammation, and not on the cause of the infection – the virus.

So maybe it is better to lie at home for a few days drinking tea with raspberry juice and get a good night’s sleep, than to “stuff yourself with chemicals” and go to work by force. By the way, thanks to this solution, we will have more money. Manufacturers of OTC drugs increase the prices of this group of drugs every year, because they lose revenues from the sale of reimbursed drugs, for which – by the way – more and more patients are paying extra.

During colds, it is worth reaching for dietary supplements that will help the body fight infection. Try Andrographis Extract from Now Foods.

Selected NSAIDs for the treatment of symptoms of infection:

The content of the medTvoiLokony website is intended to improve, not replace, the contact between the Website User and their doctor. The website is intended for informational and educational purposes only. Before following the specialist knowledge, in particular medical advice, contained on our Website, you must consult a doctor. The Administrator does not bear any consequences resulting from the use of information contained on the Website. Do you need a medical consultation or an e-prescription? Go to halodoctor.pl, where you will get online help – quickly, safely and without leaving your home.