According to google, the maximum dosage of ibuprofen is 3200mg divided into 3 or 4 equal dosages (that’s 800mg every 6 hours). For reference, that is less than the weight of a paperclip. So what makes pills so strong that it’s extrmeley dangerous for a stomach that can literally devour steel to consume more than a paperclip weight of ibuprofen every 6 hours?
And that’s only ibuprofen, i’ve taken others meds which were WAY lower at 80mg max dosage and another one 10mg!
Note: didn’t know what to put as flair since it’s technically medicine or biochem (neither are available) so i chose biology since i’m focusing on an organ
In: Biology
The acid in your stomach is strong and it actually damages your stomach walls too, it’s just that the stomach produces a protective lining, while also producing new cells faster than they are damaged.
Drugs are generally designed to survive the acid in the stomach, get to the bowels and be absorbed into your bloodstream… but in what ways they can damage the stomach?
* Part of the drug can be absorbed directly by the stomach, where it can have a mild, local toxic effect
* The drug can make the protective lining less of the stomach less effective
* The drug is itself an acid compund (aspirin is acid, for example), more acidity in the stomach can damage it faster than it heals
To mitigate this, some drugs need to be taken after a meal, so that the drug gets diluted in the food and doesn’t packs a strong punch to the stomach, or you split the dosage trough the day.
But it’s not the only reason you can’t take too much of a drug at a time. If you take 3200 mg of ibuprofen in the morning, you’ll have a very high dosage in the morning which will increase side effects, after that you’ll body will start breaking down the drug, so you’ll have a mid, effective dosage in the afternoon and a low, ineffective dosage in the evening.
Spreading the pills trough the day makes it less likely to gess unwanted or toxic effects from overdose and makes it so the effect doesn’t wane off after a while.
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