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The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

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71–80 of 613 posts

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#71
post #22

Phenylephrine must be totally useless since pseudoephedrine barely does anything in my experience!

It's not super effective on me either, except for triggering crippling anxiety, but remember that we are outliers, and it's a very effective medication for most folks.

Same. The original Sudafed did dry up a runny nose somewhat, but also made me jittery like I'd taken a big hit of caffeine.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#72
post #13

The lack of availability of proper pseudoephedrine in USA led to situation where there are papers describing how to turn methamphetamine into pseudoephedrine, not the other way around. With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.

> With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine. People may laugh at this, as they should since it is an absurd situation, but this isn't entirely wrong. Neither my wife or I drive and during the pandemic she gave up her license after getting an appointment at the DOL was difficult. Both of us carry US passport cards as our ID. This has resulted in several situations where we've been t…

As someone who moved to Seattle during the pandemic, I knew when you mentioned getting an appointment with the DOL that it was probably WA. I had to go out to Wenatchee (2 hour drive each way) to get my license because everywhere else was booked.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#73
post #26

It might not do much if taken orally, but a phenylephrine nasal spray can be pretty powerful.

This. Derek has missed that spray is rather effective. Also other agents, such as oxymetazoline is used. They all have a rebound effect, so their use should be limited to 7 days at most.

Also, this is mostly for comfort. There is no really reason to go back to pseudo-effedrive and risk side-effect (high-blood pressure etc.). Also people value their comfort a lot, they are not so good with assessing risks. Apparently that is the reasoning to continue selling phenylephrine because people want to get something even if it is not distinguishable from placebo.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#74

The article comes so close to explaining a way to make it work, likely due to his hesitancy to recommend exceeding the recommended dose: > Why is oral phenylephrine so useless? It is extensively metabolized, starting in the gut wall. You can find a bioavailability figure of 38% in the literature, but that appears to be the most optimistic number possible, and you can also find studies that show 1% or less. Overall, t…

Do we have a study showing these (second dose within 30 minutes or paracetamol + phenylephrine) performing better than placebo?

We actually have a lot of studies where even standard 10mg phenylephrine taken alone outperforms placebo: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17692721/

Note that Figure 3 also mentions the Tylenol combination effect and even shows how 10mg Phenylephrine + Tylenol performs somewhere between 10mg and 45mg of phenylephrine.

The article author just cherry-picked the one study where phenylephrine performed the worst. Cherry-picking a single study to support a conclusion and ignoring meta-analyses would normally get someone torn apart in the HN comments but apparently everyone loves pseudoephedrine so it gets a pass.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#75
post #13

The lack of availability of proper pseudoephedrine in USA led to situation where there are papers describing how to turn methamphetamine into pseudoephedrine, not the other way around. With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.

Are chemistry papers describing the synthesis of methamphetamine illegal?

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#76

My drug of choice for colds is NyQuil. It's always been great for opening up my nasal passages enough to let me breathe easily and then knocking me the fuck out so I could sleep off most of the cold. I remember several years ago when all of a sudden NyQuil stopped doing anything useful. I had no idea why but I directly observed that it was like it had been replaced with a non-functioning placebo. Only a couple years…

Original NyQuil also had a healthy shot of ethyl alcohol in it. Exactly the thing you weren't supposed to mix with pseudoephedrine.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine. People may laugh at this, as they should since it is an absurd situation, but this isn't entirely wrong. Neither my wife or I drive and during the pandemic she gave up her license after getting an appointment at the DOL was difficult. Both of us carry US passport cards as our ID. This has resulted in several situations where we've been t…

Why not get a non-motorist ID card? Every US state has these; here's Washington's: https://www.dol.wa.gov/driverslicense/gettingidcard.html

Would that not still require an in-person visit that they've already stated was not possible? I'd assume the state would require a new photo for a new ID at the least to make an in-person visit required. Probably need new fingerpritns as well (if that's something WA does).

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#78
post #13

The lack of availability of proper pseudoephedrine in USA led to situation where there are papers describing how to turn methamphetamine into pseudoephedrine, not the other way around. With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.

Are chemistry papers describing the synthesis of methamphetamine illegal?

No.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#79
post #54
post #13

The lack of availability of proper pseudoephedrine in USA led to situation where there are papers describing how to turn methamphetamine into pseudoephedrine, not the other way around. With explanation in abstract that its easier to buy meth than pseudoephedrine.

Pseudoephedrine is still available -behind the counter-. You literally just have to ask the pharmacist for it. Let’s not turn grad students having a laugh into an actual statement on public policy.

You don't just ask the pharmacist for it. You have to produce an acceptable form of identification that can be used to record the transaction in the universal database. It's unavailable to anyone who doesn't have one of those.

Re: The Uselessness of Phenylephrine

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not get a non-motorist ID card? Every US state has these; here's Washington's: https://www.dol.wa.gov/driverslicense/gettingidcard.html

But why get one? A passport/passport card is a _better_ ID document in almost every way. State non-motorist IDs should really cease to exist and we should increase access to passport cards

Except for the way of not being scannable at point of purchase machines that was clearly stated. So if the one point qualifying for "almost every way" is hitting right out of the gate, then it doesn't seem to be that viable of an option.
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