weight of pills?

Question

lets take panadol for example. each pill consists of 500 mg paracetamol but from just looking at the pill, it looks like its at least 1-2g. so wad makes the remaining portion of the pill?

p.s. im having difficulty swallowing pills. thats why i get upset when i see so little contents in a large pill.

Answer 1

The inactive ingredients, also called excipients, serve many purposes in a tablet. Panadol's primary excipients include starch, polyvidone, potassium sorbate, talc, and stearic acid. Since many active ingredients (drugs) are crystalline, they do not compact/compress easily and require additional materials to form a tablet (what are commonly referred to as "binders").

Starch is a common binder in tablets, and can either be compressed directly or used in granulation with the drug. Sometimes drug particles are too small by themselves to maintain content uniformity when mixed with the excipients prior to compression, so they are mixed with other excipients and may use polyvidone (also called povidone) as a binding solution. The drug, excipients, and binder solution are mixed until a wet mass is formed, then the granulation is dried and milled to a desired particle size. This helps to prevent the drug particles from separating from the rest of the blend over time, causing poor content uniformity throughout a compression run. Content uniformity is important because you don't want the beginning of your batch of tablets to be superpotent and the end to be subpotent or vice versa. Povidone can also be used in direct compression as an additional binder.

Talc and stearic acid serve as glidant and lubricant, respectively, assisting in the compression of the tablet by allowing the tablet press to eject the tablet from its die without breaking or otherwise damaging the tablet. Potassium sorbate acts as a preservative for the tablet.

The other excipients in Panadol are parts of the film-coating and printing ink and do not contribute much to the tablet weight. Other drugs may appear large, but in actuality are not. A 400 mg Advil tablet weighs less around 600 mg and is mostly drug. Multi-vitamins are usually 1 - 1.5 g, so you could use that as comparison to estimate the actual weight of Panadol.

Answer 2

An excipient is an inactive substance used as a carrier for the active ingredients of a medication. In addition excipients can be used to aid the process by which a product is manufactured. In general, the active substances (such as aspirin) may not be easily administered and absorbed by the human body; they need to be put in some appropriate form. The active substance is then dissolved or mixed with an excipient. Excipients are also sometimes used to bulk up formulations with very potent active ingredients, to allow for convenient and accurate dosage.

Answer 3

you bring up a good point. manufacturers of pills use other other ingredients ("inactive ingredients") in addition to active ingredient to increase stability.

the issue of what to add to a pill, injection, etc. is a very big problem in the pharmaceutical industry because you need to have a long shelf life with NO toxicity, and the chemicals would be preferably cheap (pharmaceutical companies love wide profit margins).

the characteristics of the chemicals are those that another person listed above.

if you have trouble swallowing pills, try this:

put the pill on the back of your tongue, then drink water as quickly as you can. if you do it right, you should not even feel it go down.

i hope this helps.

Answer 4

The binder serves multiple purposes:
to hide the taste of the drug
to delay the digestion of the drug
to make it easier to handle the drug