Availability is the biggest factor in ensuring people take prescribed medicines, and the key to this is a well-stocked, friendly local chemist to help dispense prescriptions and provide advice for over-the-counter treatments for common maladies.
However, there are other factors that have an effect on whether people will stay the course when it comes to a course of prescription medicine, such as side effects, how complex the treatment
is to take and contra-indications with other common medicines.
One of the most interesting and surprisingly decisive factors on why some people find it easier to take their medicine than others is taste.
The bitter taste of medicine is such common knowledge that the saying “taste of your own medicine” is commonly used to describe a form of retributive justice; people should experience how they make others feel.
Medicine tastes bitter because many of the ingredients medicines are made from are derived from the inherently bitter compounds found in plants.
Aspirin, for example, is made from acetylsalicylic acid, a synthetic form of the active ingredient found in the bark of willow trees.
As a taste sensation, bitterness is typically used as a defence mechanism; in large enough quantities, medicines that help to treat diseases and make us feel better can also be potentially toxic, hence why you should always stick to the stated doses on the label.
Our reaction to bitterness, therefore, helps us to realise that what we are tasting may be harmful to us and to seek help if we have had too much. However, it can sometimes overcompensate, especially when it comes to children and medicines.
Children have more sensitive taste buds than adults, particularly when it comes to bitterness, and what can be a mere slight feeling of discomfort on the tongue can be repulsive to people with a particularly sensitive sense of taste.
Of course, the priority of medicines is that they work, not whether they taste nice, but with children, in particular, there is a problem if a drug tastes so bitter that it becomes difficult, if not impossible to stomach.
This affects adherence to a course of prescription medication, which can be at best unhelpful and at worst outright life threatening. Antiretroviral medication, in particular, was so notoriously bitter that a sweet, dissolvable alternative was made for children in 2020.
Given that a spoonful of sugar can literally help the medicine go down, why is taste not prioritised? The main reason is that additives can potentially affect the active ingredients, and it is more important that the pill works than if it tastes nice if you have to choose one or the other.
Some pills found in caplet form, such as ibuprofen, are different because it is designed to only break down once it reaches the intestines due to the effect it can have on the stomach.
Also, there are a lot of ways to fix the taste of medicines, from literally washing it down with a sweet drink or simply holding your nose, given the connection between smell and taste.