Tablets and Capsules- The Do's and Dont's.

Sometime back, when my mom was sick, she was prescribed Dolo 650. While giving the tablet after the fever reduced, she was like "ara maathra odachu kudu, sapta thookama varuthu" meaning "break the tablet into two, I feel sleepy having fully".

I was then very thoughtful on what happens on breaking the tablet? does it really reduce the dosage and so on.

So I went and read up !!

I want to question you also on:

Have you ever broken a single tablet into two pieces for reducing its dosage? or broken a capsule and ingested only the ingredients? or struggled swallowing a tablet ?

If yes, then this post is for you!!

We usually take Tablets or Capsules as a part of our Oral medications prescribed by a doctor.

To begin with, what is the difference between tablet and capsule?

Tablets are the commonest form of medication which constitutes drugs and also various other ingredients to solidify, improve the taste and texture of the tablet.

A capsule is the same thing but with an outer shell (hard and soft).

If the capsule is same as a Tablet, why a capsule?

For this we need to understand how our body takes in the drugs:

When ever a tablet/capsule is ingested, they pass through the food pipe and reach intestine where the breakage of tablets happens. There is a process called "Bio-absorption" which is a measure of capability of the intestine to absorb the drug in the tablet.

The tablets, when ingested, passes through the food pipe tends to be absorbed by the food pipe in small quantity before reaching the intestine. On reaching, the catabolism starts (breaking of larger particles to smaller). The intestine takes some time to separate out the drug from other ingredients, the bio-absorption is generally less in this case.

So capsule being coated with a shell, reaches the intestine without any scatter. On reaching, the acidic part of the intestine breaks down the capsule and abruptly releases the drug which is encapsulated. Thus the bio-absorption is very high in case of capsules.

So obviously capsule is good right? Why the tablets then?

Well, it depends on the drug itself.

The bio-availability of the drug, which means if the bio-availability is high, the drug tends to be absorbed by the body very quick and vice versa.

Thus the drugs with high bio-availability will be made with capsules, because if made as tablet, the drug might disperse in various places on the way to intestine including the mouth which is highly undesirable.

This is also the reason why the capsules cannot be opened and consumed. So be mindful next time!!!

Coming to splitting one high dosage tablet into two for lower dosage.

The tablets are usually coated with ingredients for reducing dispersing of drugs, improving taste, texture etc., but if we break the tablet into two, one side of the tablet will have full exposure for dispersing which will further reduce the dosage of the tablet.

Thus if you break the tablet into pieces, you are further lowering the dosage, then the tablet might not have its effects.

So if you want a lower dosage tablet, get the prescription for that also.

Never ever break the tablet/capsules.

Now the fun part, Have you ever experienced this?

You might place the tablet on the tongue and drink water and think the tablet is gone,but the tablet is still swirling inside your mouth itself and make you feel like "YUCK"? But the water might have been swallowed by you.

The mistake you was doing is, keeping the head high while swallowing.

The reason is, the density of the tablet is lower in comparison with the density of the water, thus the water alone goes in while the tablet does not.

The solution for this is to keep the head low while you swallow the tablet, this method is called Lean Forward method as shown in GIF above.

The next best way is to use pop bottle method. "Just flush it down" as like shown in the GIF above. But make sure you have direct contact between you lips and bottle and the water flow is continuous.

Next coming to the Common question, which water (Hot/Warm/Cold/Normal) is best for tablet consumption.

1. For tablets, always go with Normal water or lukewarm water (slightly hotter than normal). On having tablets with hot water, they may tend to disperse in their path to intestine.

2. For capsule, it is best to have with Normal/warm water not Boiling water because capsule might get dissolved.

Whichever you are taking, remember the following:

1. Have a gap of at least 10 mins after your meals for ingesting the tablet.

2. Leave at least 30 mins gap after you ingested tablet before you eat anything else.

3. Have the tablet at least 30 mins before you go to bed.

4. Drink lots of water after taking tablets and also while being sick in general.

I am sure, next time when you take the tablets/capsule you know what you are taking and what is happening.

Let me know how much you hesitate to take tablets and why?

Anbudan,

Divya Bharathi.