All that from a tiny little pill

It’s always a challenge taking my statin pill. It’s tiny. It's a tiny little pill, about the size of this “O,” in other words invisible to my naked eye. When I try to tap just one out of the bottle several pour out like sand. Once I get them in my hand, they slip between the gaps in my fingers. I end up dropping some, then I have to find them before the cat does. Who knows what would happen if the poor cat ate it? His orange fur might turn purple (1) or worse yet, he could get diarrhea all over the place.

My pill is a tiny little pill

After five minutes of crawling on the floor with a magnifying glass and a flashlight, I find the pill under the cabinet lip. It takes me several more minutes to capture it between my fingertips. I drop it a couple of times. Should I give up and get the tweezers? I finally grab it.

You’d think drug manufacturers would realize how hard tiny pills are for seniors to use. Sean Lim, a pharmaceutical company consultant on pill design understands. He says, “tiny pills are harder to handle, especially in the older population who might have poorer dexterity and eyesight.” (2) Apparently the manufacturers of my statin pill haven’t used Sean as their consultant.

Why is my pill so tiny? Some of my husband’s meds are the size of a kumquat. I don’t see how he swallows them. It seems like they’d get caught in his throat. As Lonny Donnegan says in Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It’s Flavor, “do you catch it on your tonsils and you heave it left and right?” (3)

I asked Google, ‘can they make pills bigger?’ Big mistake. Google, who usually reads my mind, misunderstood me and listed over a billion (yes, your read that right - a BILLION), entries on penis enlargement pills. Geez. I said make larger pills, not pills that make you larger. By now Google should know I’m old and female. Now I’m going to get penis enlargement spam for weeks. BTW, the idea of enlargement pills gives a new meaning to the 1967 Jefferson Airplane classic White Rabbit, “One pill makes you larger…” (4)

Hubby, who worked in pharmaceutical companies, suggested I look for terms like “pill fillers.” They use fillers in pills like a cook uses bread or cereal as a filler in meatloaf. But using fillers is harder than you’d think. Nowadays pill manufacturers have to avoid many filler ingredients because of allergies. (5) A wheat filler could trigger a celiac attack. Sugar filler, a diabetes attack. Hemp, a snack attack.

The list of non-food fillers is scary: polymers, propylene glycol, sodium benzoate, and Carboxymethylcellulose. Carboxymethylcellulose is used in a lot of things, including salt, toothpaste, diet pills, and laxatives so I was right to worry about my cat getting diarrhea if he ate my pill. Maybe I don’t want fillers in my pills.

All those chemicals remind me of the 1996 Breyer’s Ice Cream commercial “Do You Know What’s in Your Ice Cream?” with the little girl reading unpronounceable ice cream ingredients off the ‘bad ice cream’ label: Polysorbate 80, diglycerides. Breyer’s has only milk, sugar, strawberry, and cream. (6)

Breyer's 1996 Do You Know What's in Your Ice Cream? Commercial

Finding my tiny pill isn’t my only problem. According to a study at John Hopkins, I’m taking my pills incorrectly. Like most normal people, I take my pill standing up or sitting upright in a chair. The study concluded “leaning to your right side after swallowing a pill could speed absorption by about 13 minutes, compared to staying upright. If you use the leaning right method, you’d better not take your pills in public, or they’d think you’ve drifted asleep in your chair.

Am I funny, but wouldn't you look silly in either of these positions? (image from Washington Post)

And definitely don’t lean to the left. It could slow absorption by more than an hour. I can’t imagine the poor people in the study who had to lean to the left for 100 minutes for the study. They’d get a neck crick and might end up voting for AOC.

At least I take my pill. My father used to say, “I didn’t take my blood pressure pill today because I felt ok.” I guess he did take it when he didn’t feel ok, I’m not sure what qualified as feeling ok; not being sick? feeling peppy? Feeling frisky?

But at least he took it some of the time. My friend’s mother-in-law wanted to take her unused white blood pressure pills back to the pharmacy for a refund. She never took them because “my blood pressure is fine.” It appears that when taking her pill pack she’d take all the other pills but slip her blood pressure pill under a napkin at the table, or under the doily on her nightstand. After she passed, her relatives found hundreds of pills stashed under placemats, doilies, and the other places she’d hidden them.

Maybe I shouldn’t complain about my tiny pill. At this age, it gives me added exercise (walking and bending to find it), added dexterity (trying to get it between my fingers), and added mental acuity (trying to find it on our patterned floor). And I can eat all the butter and ice cream I want. What more could you ask from a tiny pill?

References

1. There is precedent for fur changing color because of medication. In Argentina, a Polar Bear turned purple after they administered an antibiotic spray. Polar Bear Turns Purple after Medication, Isagoria.net, July 24, 2003

2. Sean Lim, Drug Tablet Design: Why Pills Come in So Many Shapes and Sizes, FLTOScience.com, July 20, 2020

3. Lonnie Donegan, Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor, YouTube

4. Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit, 1967 (live), (original recording). Love that song, So does Blue Man Group.

5. Daniel Reker, et al, Inactive Ingredients in Oral Medications, National Library of Medicine, April 3, 2020

6. 1996 Bryers Ice Cream Commercial.

7. Teddy Amenabar and Aaron Steckelberg, Have you been taking pills wrong: Here’s what Science Says, The Washington Post, September 21, 2022.

Extra Pill Humor

1. Dr. John Delack, How to give a cat a pill…and a dog ,too, NIH National Library of Medicine, April, 2003.

2. Chewy’s ‘ ‘The Peanut Butter Box is Here’ commercial.