What is the most appropriate posture for taking medicine? Scientists give the answer

In our daily lives, we inevitably take some medications for health reasons.

A common, economical and simple method of administration is oral administration, i.e. swallowing a pill or capsule.

Most people take a few pills with a few sips of water.

But is taking medicine that simple?

Science has confirmed that there is a correct running posture and a correct swimming posture.

So, is there a correct posture for taking medicine?

In other words, how can we take medicine to make it more effective?

A recent study answers this question.

A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine explored what posture humans should adopt when taking oral medications and what they should eat before and after taking medications.

Studies have found that gravity has a great influence on the effect of taking medicine, that is, the posture after taking medicine can indeed affect the effect of stomach absorption of medicine.

Sleeping on the left side can slow down the excretion of the drug, while sleeping on the right side can help the drug to exert a greater effect.

The related research paper, titled "Computational modeling of drug dissolution in the human stomach: Effects of posture and gastroparesis on drug bioavailability", has been published in the scientific journal Physics of Fluids.

According to the paper, this is the first model to combine gastric biomechanics with drug movement and dissolution to determine how much active drug actually passes through the pylorus and reaches the duodenum.

In fact, oral administration is the most complex way for the body to absorb active pharmaceutical ingredients , because the bioavailability of drugs in the gastrointestinal tract depends on the drug ingredients and the dynamic physiological environment of the stomach.

"Although oral administration is the most common choice for drug delivery, it is surprisingly complex," said Rajat Mittal, one of the paper's authors. "When a drug reaches the stomach, the movement of the stomach wall and the flow of stomach contents determine how quickly it dissolves. The properties of the drug and stomach contents also play an important role.

However, current research capabilities for evaluating oral drug dissolution in experimental or clinical procedures are limited, leaving scientists with limited understanding of the effects of different gastric diseases on drug dissolution and absorption.

In this work, the research team used a biomimetic computer model based on the real anatomy and morphology of the stomach to investigate and quantify the effects of body posture and gastric motility on drug bioavailability.

Figure | Schematic diagram of the original position of the stomach relative to the body and its relative position in different postures in this study.

Studies have shown that standing will allow more drugs to be discharged from the stomach quickly, while when lying on the side, since the stomach outlet is at the highest point, lying on the left side can slow down the discharge of drugs, while lying on the right side is conducive to greater drug efficacy.

Figure | Volume distribution of dissolved active pharmaceutical ingredient concentration in the gastric antrum and duodenal regions at different postures.

Of course, this study also has certain limitations.

For example, due to computational costs, current simulations are limited to modeling the short duration of the dissolution process (approximately 3 minutes), which is very short considering that drug dissolution may occur over hours.

But the researchers say their model can generate biologically relevant data about drug dissolution that can provide useful and unique insights into the complex physiological processes behind oral drug delivery.

After reading this, why not try lying on your right side next time after taking medicine?

Reference Links:

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0096877