Health and Medicine Question #362

Jeremy, Shawn, and Angel, a 0 year old n/a from Orland, California asks on March 19, 1998,

How does medicine (for example, Contact) work in your stomach after you have taken a pill?

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The answer

Barry Shell answered on March 19, 1998

Medicine is absorbed through the stomach and intestine walls into the blood in the same way as any food. Contact has time release capsules which are coated with a material that is resistant to stomach acid and takes a long time to dissolve so the drug is released in the middle into the body. The dozens of different little granules in a contact capsule are coated with different thicknesses of this stuff so the drug inside is released at different times from different nodules. This way your body receives a continuous dose of the drug over a long period of time - about 8-12 hours depending on the formulation.

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