why do some medicine take an hour to kick in and some like anti depressants take weeks to work?
In: Chemistry
What the drug does and the beneficial effect are related, but not necessarily the same. Here are a couple examples:
Medicines like antacids help your heartburn quickly because they act as a base to neutralize the acid that is causing you pain. It’s a quick process and pain response changes quickly.
Another medicine that can help with pain is Capsaicin cream. When you first start using it, it can cause more pain because it causes an intense burning feeling. That feeling is so intense that your “this hurts” nerves run out of the chemical they use to tell you things hurt after being overstimulated by this cream for a few weeks. This takes a lot longer than Tums because the way they help with pain is so different.
To go back to your example of antidepressants, we have a lot of different types of those. Some affect different neurotransmitters or combinations of them. They have this effect within a couple days, but regardless of what they’re doing, we always see a response starting after about 4 weeks. Basically, the chemical soup your brain is sitting in has changed, but that change doesn’t fix depression directly. Your brain has to change in some way in response to the new soup. This brain change is what helps with the depression. So, we make new drugs all the time, but they can’t work faster because the thing that takes so long is the human brain, not the drug.
Latest Answers