Take painkillers lying on your right side . Do you reach for a pain reliever if you have a severe headache? Then it is best to lie on your right side when you take the pill. Your posture appears to have an influence on how fast your body absorbs the medicine. If you take a pain reliever in the wrong position, it can take an hour longer until it relieves your pain. This is evident from recent research , where a computer model simulates the absorption of drugs through the stomach.

Path of the Pill Most of the pills you take don't work until they're dissolved in the stomach. As a result, the active agent is released and can reach the intestines, says fluid scientist Rajat Mittal from the US Johns Hopkins University. In your intestines, the medicine is absorbed into the body via the blood, where it can do its job.

The closer a pill is to the lower part of the stomach, the faster it dissolves and reaches the intestines. Your posture, in combination with gravity, determine where a pill ends up after swallowing. Right side The researchers simulated the path of the pill for four different postures: lying on the back, lying on the right side, lying on the left side and standing. It turns out that the pill immediately ends up in the lower part of your stomach when it swallows lying on your right side. The drug then dissolves more than twice as fast as if you take the pill standing up. Lying on your back appears to yield similar results to standing. Left-side Recording is slowest when lying on your left side. That's when the pill ends up at the top of your stomach. If a medicine takes ten minutes to dissolve when lying on your right side, it takes 2-3 minutes standing or lying on your back and even over a hundred minutes on your left side. For the elderly and sick who are bedridden, it can therefore matter a lot whether they turn to their right or left side when taking medication. For healthier people, standing is a good second choice. For example, if it doesn't work out at the office to lie down on your right side. Hearty meal For their investigation, the scientists used a computer model called StomachSim, which mimics the human stomach as accurately as possible. “It predicts the movement of fluid flow in the stomach and how food, or a pill, will be digested there,” says Mittel. The researchers also looked at how the pill absorption takes place in a stomach that is malfunctioning. This can occur in diabetes or Parkinson's, for. These diseases appear to slow down absorption almost as much as lying on your left side. So the attitude in which you take your medication seems almost as important as a healthy stomach to pain reliever make it work fast. The findings have made Mittel more aware of his attitude when he takes a pill. “I'm going to lie on my right side now after a hearty supper,” he says. “The same principle also works for the digestion of food.’

Source: NewScientist

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