The Most Useless Medicines

2024 Author: Rachel Wainwright | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 07:39

The most useless medicines

We are all trained to be treated according to the scheme: I fell ill, took a pill, recovered, and although this system is extremely simplified and has proven its ineffectiveness many times, we still believe in pills and that they must certainly help. It is difficult to say what such a strong belief is based on, most likely on the traditions absorbed with mother's milk. In fact, not all drugs are equally useful, among them there are those whose harm exceeds the benefit to the body, which for some reason is not detected at the stage of clinical trials, but becomes clear after the drug has become widely used. But there is also a fairly extensive group of drugs that are simply frankly useless, that is, no one has yet been able to find a positive effect from their use. Why do we use them? Some in the old fashioned way, some because of the intrusive ads modestly omitting some details,some due to the fact that the friend of the neighbor's grandmother, this medicine allegedly helped a lot in a similar situation. We bring to your attention a small and, unfortunately, far from complete list of popular drugs, the lack of benefit from which has been reliably established.

Validol

Did your grandmother put a big white pill with a pungent medicinal smell under your tongue too? Well, if grandmother did this, then it is forgivable for her, but if you do this, then you know, with the same success you can eat mint candy. Validol does not contain any special medicinal substances, the principle of action is based on irritation of the nerve endings that trigger certain reflexes. This can work if you are nervous, but it will never work if you really have heart problems, and this is the danger of validol. With intense pain in the heart, you need real drug support, not this drug, otherwise you can end up in intensive care.

Essentiale and similar hepatoprotectors

A widely advertised hepatoprotector, that is, a substance that protects the liver. The idea seems to be great: since the liver is a very important organ, which the average person is actively destroying with a thoughtless diet, an abundance of medications taken and a love of drinking, it must be protected. For this purpose, hepatoprotectors were created, in particular, Essentiale, which supposedly restore damaged cell membranes of hepatocytes. But in fact, the drug does not restore anything, it penetrates into the liver on a general basis, where it is simply metabolized, that is, it is destroyed and excreted, like other foreign compounds, without lingering.

Aqua-Maris

A fashionable drug that pediatricians love to prescribe and advise pharmacists to mothers with snotty children. In literal translation, "aqua-maris" means "sea water", which, in fact, is in its chemical composition. The most significant effect that can be obtained by dripping aqua-maris into the nose is moisturizing the nasal mucosa. This may indeed be useful in, say, the Sahara desert or other cases of dehydration and drying out of the mucous membrane. There is at least no need to moisturize the nasal mucosa with a runny nose. The high price for a small bottle of salted water, which, moreover, should be used in the next few days after opening, since then the water, which naturally can undergo bacterial contamination, is completely unjustified, except by the greed of the manufacturer and the gullibility of the consumer.

Arbidol

Arbidol, which in 2008 became the best-selling drug in Russia, is nothing more than a widely advertised pacifier. And although there are many scientific terms in its description, and its action is explained by complex immune mechanisms, in fact, it does not have any, at least the slightest noticeable, effect on the body. Some experts even believe that arbidol and similar drugs may be harmful, disrupting the production of its own interferon in the body. Be that as it may, but research on its effectiveness has never been conducted. It remains only to guess how and why this medicine got into pharmacies at all.

Bifidumbacterin and other means of combating dysbiosis

Doctors have long been trying to draw attention to this, so beloved by patients, a group of drugs. It is believed that probiotic preparations, that is, containing beneficial intestinal microflora, are not too much for anyone to drink, and people undergoing treatment with antibacterial agents are prescribed them as an obligatory component of antibiotic therapy. To put it mildly, this is ineffective, because almost all bacteria (with the exception of Helicobacter pylori) are destroyed in the stomach, otherwise we would all have died out at the stage of a primitive man who ate pasture and dragged into his mouth whatever he got. However, pharmacologists assure that most of the bacteria die even at the stage of sealing them in a vacuum package used in the production of such capsules. Their use during antibiotic therapy is even more surprising and completely illogical - if antibiotics kill the intestinal microflora, why do they not act on bacterial drugs introduced from outside? There is an answer, and it is not in the field of medicine, but in the field of economics.

Valocordin and Corvalol

These drugs are known to all as "heart drops". No

cardiologist would ever think of using them to treat heart disease, since they have no effect on the heart and never have. Meanwhile, Valocordin and Corvalol are not completely useless, as they help "from the nerves", that is, they have a mild sedative effect. If your grandmother clutches at her heart because you disobeyed her, valocordin may help, but if her heart is really in danger, then these medications are ineffective.

Alcoholic solution of brilliant green

Everyone's favorite brilliant green turns out to be very weak as an antiseptic. Naturally, since this is still an alcohol solution, it still possesses disinfecting properties, but no more than ordinary alcohol. Rather, brilliant green helps to make it clear to others that you are not all right, for example, you have a "battle" wound - remember the sympathy of friends in the yard, at the sight of a skinned knee, generously smeared with brilliant green? And what about children with green spots and chickenpox? The sight is not for the faint of heart. Although this case is just the exception when the use of a dye may be useful: parents smear the rashes as they appear, knowing exactly which ones are freshly formed, and also fixing the day when new rashes stopped appearing. From this moment, seven days are counted, after which the child is no longer contagious. Truth,here brilliant green acts more as a marker than a medicine.

This list of useless drugs is, of course, incomplete. In fact, in countries with developed health systems, lists of drugs with unproven efficacy are constantly being compiled, after which they are discontinued and withdrawn from pharmacies. It remains to be hoped that sooner or later this practice will be introduced in our country.

Found a mistake in the text? Select it and press Ctrl + Enter.