this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (4 children)

can't even get my adult partner to take pills normally. It's soo ridiculous the hoops a person would go through to avoid a slight bitter taste.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (2 children)

For me it’s the size. Can not really trick my body to just swallow. „But that’s huge! We have to chomp on it to break it down! Trying to kill yourself by choking?“

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

For normal pills I don't even need water for pills. I just swallow. My partner always makes me drink it afterward cause you are supposed to.
But those monster size ones! I'm like wtf why not make it 2 smaller one jerks!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If they're the hard pills, you can just cut them in half or even quarters if they're big enough.

Should I schedule my press conference?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

This is not always true. Some tablets are extended release and if you break them apart the timing is thrown off. You get a higher dose initially, and the dose doesn't last the intended period.

A family friend learned this the hard way when they were breaking a seizure preventive tablet in half to make it easier to swallow; they'd often have a recurrent seizure about an hour or two before their next dose time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Maybe I'm making a bad assumption that it was made that big for a reason. It's probably money...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Depends on the type of pill. Something easily desolvable like melatonin will dissolve in my throat of I don't take it with water.

Now that's a bitter taste that comes back up

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Oh wow. Makes sense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Drop your neck to your chest, it opens up your throat and makes putting things down your throat much easier

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I'm a 34 y/o man and I need tricks to swallow pills. It has nothing to do with taste at all, it's about capability. I actually have a condition that makes it difficult to swallow.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

It's literally just taste for my partner.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It’s soo ridiculous the hoops a person would go through to avoid a slight bitter taste.

I figured out a fix for the avoidance of horrible tasting medicine:

The simplest and easiest way to use it is with an ice cube or two. Get the pill/liquid medicine you have to get down your throat ready, your ice cubes, a cup of water and stand in front of a sink. Put the ice in your mouth and let it sit on your tongue for 15 to 60 seconds. Yes, its going to be cold and slightly uncomfortable. The longer you can stand it the better your result. After this time has passed with the ice in your mouth your tongue will be numb. Spit out the ice in the sink, you'll have 5-15 seconds where you can't taste a goddamn thing which is plenty of time. At this point you could put the most disgusting flavored thing (sour, bitter, etc) and you won't be able to taste it. Quickly get the medicine in your mouth and chug that full glass of water. Taste will start to return within about 3 or 5 seconds of chugging water, so make sure you drink enough to clear your mouth of whatever bad flavor you're trying to avoid.

This whole process adds perhaps 2 minutes tops to taking medicine. For those that have difficulty this is a tiny fraction of time usually spent avoiding taking it, or the recovery process for taking it normally.

If you need more incentive (especially for kids) instead of using ice cubes and spitting that out. You can use ice cream or milk shakes and just swallow those. Same rules apply: put the ice cream in your mouth and let it sit on your tongue as long as its frozen. Its a little more involved than ice cubes because you might have to have two or three spoonfuls to get your tongue numb.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

An Interesting strategy. I will see if your idea works better. Cause putting it In pudding does not work.

My partner opens mouth wide almost dislocating jaw and carefully puts pill at back of mouth and then immediately drinks something favored to wash off taste. Its like the conehead dentist scene wide. I'm scared choking is going to happen eventually.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It may depend quite a bit on the pill. As an adult I can easily dry swallow things like ibuprofen. But I'm not sure about something like oral steroids.

I was prescribed them as a kid due to a particularly bad poison ivy reaction. I couldn't swallow pills at the time, so after running through all the tricks to teach someone, we ended up grinding them up and sticking them in ice cream. It was something like 15 years before I could eat cookies and cream again without tasting steroids. Grinding them definitely exacerbated the problem, but I'm not sure how I'd fare if prescribed the same pills again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Yeah it's wild how adding some pills to strawberry yogurt just makes for really really fucking bitter yogurt.

Yeah I learned how to dry swallow after almost that same incident cause I wasn't ruining food I liked anymore