Dextromethorphan for instance. Check the label of your cold medicine, it's what's used as a cough suppressant. It's a distant, distant cousin of codeine and no all you teenagers out there, that does not mean you can get high off of it. As a matter of fact, you can't do much of anything with it. I have never, ever, taken a dextromethorphan based product and coughed less as a result. I have known through this anecdotal evidence for years that it is the greatest health care fraud being perpetrated on the American public today. And now, the scientific evidence is trickling in to confirm what I have known since I was 10, the stuff is worthless. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/07/08/MNGNF7I1G31.DTL
Yet no one will believe this. Confronted with a shiny box, a multimedia advertising campaign, and a high price tag, my advice stands no chance. So I try to do what I can, letting people know that DM is the *only* ingredient in *any* OTC cough med (the powers that be realized diphenhydramine, an allergy med, is useless for coughs years ago and quit labeling it for that purpose) , at least trying to save them from buying 10 different products before they give up and see the doctor. This leads to many conversations such as this one:
Customer: What do you recommend for my cough?
Me: Have you tried anything yet that didn't seem to help?
Customer: Yes, I tried (fill in the name with brand A) and it didn't seem to help much
Me: Here's the thing......even though there are maybe 10, 20, different cough syrups out there, they all use the same ingredient, so if you've tried one, you've pretty much tried them all. If (brand A) didn't seem to help....you might want to get with your doctor to see if you can get something stronger.
Customer: What about (fill in the name of brand B)?
Me: It uses the same ingredient as (brand A), you'd probably be wasting your money
The customer will usually leave with (brand B), education losing the battle with multimedia advertising yet again.
1 comment:
Same thing i hear with Camphopheneke ??( i cant spell it)
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