I stopped taking phenylephrine because it worked too well. Like absurdly well. Days of blocked nose then completely clear from one tablet within an hour. It made me rue the opposite problem with my nose dry and scratchy, even without taking any more it would last well into the next day. Milder remedies better for me. There’s no way you will convince me it doesn’t work.
And yet, you will have thousands testify to the efficacy of phenylephrine as a remedy for colds and allergies. Myself being among them. I take it along with ibuprofen or acetaminophen at the onset of migraines and it works better than simply taking ibuprofen alone. Placebo? Perhaps, but I've tried other medications with less effect. Phenylephrine is kind of like drinking an espresso but with less of a stimulant effect.
Even these often contradictory double-blind studies seem flawed if the goal is to approve medications that could confer benefit without creating danger. For example, do any dig deeper into the experimental groups to test if a fraction of them may be physiologically benefitting? I know if, statistically, control and experimental are the same, we write it off as ineffective, but I think even a variance of a few percent between the groups should pique curiosity. Nobody seems to be arguing that phenylephrine is dangerous, just that it works about as well as a placebo, which is better than nothing. So replacing this relatively harmless, generally effective drug with... nothing seems like a net minus to the legions of allergy and cold sufferers. I'm stocking up on now and will hopefully have a few year's worth waiting for the next placebo to hit the shelves.
I stopped taking phenylephrine because it worked too well. Like absurdly well. Days of blocked nose then completely clear from one tablet within an hour. It made me rue the opposite problem with my nose dry and scratchy, even without taking any more it would last well into the next day. Milder remedies better for me. There’s no way you will convince me it doesn’t work.
Diethylene glycol in a cough medicine just killed dozens of kids in India
https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2118
And yet, you will have thousands testify to the efficacy of phenylephrine as a remedy for colds and allergies. Myself being among them. I take it along with ibuprofen or acetaminophen at the onset of migraines and it works better than simply taking ibuprofen alone. Placebo? Perhaps, but I've tried other medications with less effect. Phenylephrine is kind of like drinking an espresso but with less of a stimulant effect.
Even these often contradictory double-blind studies seem flawed if the goal is to approve medications that could confer benefit without creating danger. For example, do any dig deeper into the experimental groups to test if a fraction of them may be physiologically benefitting? I know if, statistically, control and experimental are the same, we write it off as ineffective, but I think even a variance of a few percent between the groups should pique curiosity. Nobody seems to be arguing that phenylephrine is dangerous, just that it works about as well as a placebo, which is better than nothing. So replacing this relatively harmless, generally effective drug with... nothing seems like a net minus to the legions of allergy and cold sufferers. I'm stocking up on now and will hopefully have a few year's worth waiting for the next placebo to hit the shelves.