Author: Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

VH-studio/Shutterstock.com Take a medicine and start feeling a bit off, and it’s easy to assume you’re imagining it. Sometimes you’re not. It could be a known side-effect – the sort of thing listed on the leaflet in the packaging. Or it could be something known as an adverse drug reaction, or ADR. The terms get […]

Shidlovski/Shutterstock.com Anyone who has bought medicine online may have wondered whether what arrived in the post was really what they’d paid for. They are not alone. A recent global survey found that around 60% of people fear their medicines could be fake – and the unsettling truth is that they have good reason to. About […]

Skorzewiak/Shutterstock.com Melatonin is best known for helping us sleep. But a new study suggests it might have another surprising use: easing muscle and joint pain. Produced naturally by the pineal gland in the brain at night, melatonin helps regulate the body’s sleep-wake cycle. That’s why this hormone is widely used as a treatment for insomnia […]

Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock.com When the weather turns hot, most of us remember sunscreen and water. But what about our medicines? Heat can quietly damage medicines, making them less effective or even unsafe. As heatwaves become more common in the UK and globally, knowing how to store medicines properly is becoming essential. Medicines are more sensitive […]

Ibuprofen is shown to be more effective at reducing period pain. fizkes/ Shutterstock For something that affects millions every month, period pain remains surprisingly poorly treated. A recent analysis of supermarket transaction data from over three million shoppers found that paracetamol is the most purchased painkiller for menstrual cramps – despite being a less effective […]

Sildenafil (better known as Viagra) is perhaps the most famous example of a drug that has been repurposed. Yuriy Maksymiv/ Shutterstock Many medicines begin life with one purpose and end up proving useful for a completely different reason. Few areas show this more clearly than men’s health. Three drugs in particular have become household names […]

Jack_the_sparow/Shutterstock For a medicine so commonly found in bathroom cabinets and high street pharmacies, codeine has a surprisingly complicated story. It sits at the intersection of pain relief, genetics, public health and regulation. As the UK continues to tighten rules around opioid use, codeine offers a useful case study in how a drug can be […]

All sorts of supplements are marketed online as being able to improve symptoms of the menopause. Pixel-Shot/ Shutterstock Social media is saturated with menopause solutions: powders for brain fog, gummies for sleep or capsules promising hormonal balance. Supplements such as magnesium, lion’s mane, creatine and collagen are being marketed as must-haves for perimenopause and menopause. […]

pimpampix/Shutterstock Metformin has a strong claim to being one of the most influential medicines of the past century. For decades, it has underpinned the treatment of type 2 diabetes, helped millions of people control their blood sugar, and inspired a second life in research on everything from ageing and cancer to heart health and fertility. […]

Ray Geiger/Shutterstock.com When Lady Gaga recently spoke in an interview about taking lithium while suffering from a “psychotic break”, it drew attention to a drug that has long been used in psychiatry but is less widely understood outside it. Lithium has been used in psychiatric care for more than 70 years, most notably to treat […]