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Image credit: Khamar Hopkins / Johns Hopkins
University
Your
posture can make a big difference in how fast your
body absorbs the medicine, and the wrong posture can
delay how fast the medicine is broken down and
absorbed by as much as an hour, a new Johns Hopkins University study finds.
The findings are based on what's thought to be the
first model to simulate the mechanics of drug
dissolution on a human stomach.
"We were very surprised that posture had such an
immense effect on the dissolution rate of a pill,"
said senior author Rajat Mittal, a Johns Hopkins
engineer and an expert in fluid dynamics.
The model developed by the team, called StomachSim,
appears to be one of the first to be able to conduct
realistic simulation of the human stomach.
Blending physics with biomechanics and fluid
mechanics, StomachSim mimics what is happening
inside a stomach as it digests food, or in this
case, medicine.
Most pills do not start working until the stomach
ejects their contents into the intestine.
So the closer a pill lands to the lower part of the
stomach, the antrum, the faster it starts to
dissolve and empty its contents through the pylorus
into the duodenum, the first part of the small
intestine.
If you're aiming a pill for this part of the
stomach, posture is critical to both gravity and the
natural asymmetry of the stomach.
The team tested four postures
Taking pills while lying on the right side
was by far the best, sending pills into the he
lowest part of the stomach where the pill contents
dissolve and are ejected into the intestines for
absorption with a dissolution rate
2.3 times faster than even an upright posture.
Pills taken while
standing upright or lying on the back land in
the bottom of the stomach.
Pills taken while reclining on the left side land in
the upper part of the stomach and take the longest
time to dissolve and reach the intestines. Lying on the left side was the worst.
The
team was very surprised to find that if a pill takes
10 minutes to dissolve on the right side, it could
take 23 minutes to dissolve in an upright posture
and over 100 minutes when laying on the left
side.
"For elderly, sedentary or bedridden people,
whether they're turning to left or to the right can
have a huge impact," Mittal said.
Standing upright was a decent second choice,
essentially tied in effectiveness with lying
straight back.
The team also considered what stomachs that aren't
functioning at full strength meant for pill
dissolution.
Even a small change in the conditions of the stomach
can lead to significant differences in the outcome
of an oral drug, said lead author Jae Ho "Mike" Lee,
a former postdoctoral researcher at Johns Hopkins.
The impact of stomach disease, such as gastroparesis
caused by diabetes or Parkinson's disease, on drug
dissolution was similar to that of posture which
underscores how significant a difference posture
makes.
See also
How to swallow pills
more easily and most effectively (2022-12-26)
Link...
How to Swallow Pills More Easily (2014-12-09)
Link...
For more information
Physics of Fluids
Computational modeling of drug dissolution in the
human stomach: Effects of posture and gastroparesis
on
drug bioavailability
Link...
Johns
Hopkins University
Link...
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