Jake (Bn)
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ou’re likely familiar with the mountain of tablets and capsules, creams and lotions, syrups, drops, inhalers and other medications that dwell in your medicine cabinet. But what makes these ‘medicine cabinet essentials’, essential? What makes painkillers easy treatments for fever or toothache, and—while they won’t cure regret—how can they help you cope with a hangover? Antihistamines, indigestion treatments, and anti-diarrhoea tablets are also hallmarks of a wellstocked medicine cabinet, but how do they work? Here are a few such medications and their modes of action, which will offer some insight into the most popular medicine cabinet essentials.
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ness, warmth, and painful swelling as fluids leak into surrounding tissues. Therefore, the therapeutic, pain-relieving effects of NSAIDs are attributed to the lack of these signalling molecules. Indeed, the ability to tackle headaches caused by inflammations make these useful hangover cures.
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Starting with the medicine cabinet powerhouses, NSAIDs include ibuprofen, aspirin, and naproxen, among many others. They are anti-inflammatories which work by inhibiting the activity of cyclooxygenase (COX) enzymes responsible for converting a compound called arachidonic acid (found naturally in the body) into a number of signalling molecules which play a “house-keeping” role in regulating many physiological processes, including causing inflammation (on the diagram, these molecules are shown as PGE2, TXA2, and PGI2) Inflammation occurs due to a high amount of blood flow into areas of injury or infection, resulting in red-
NSAIDs also prevent blood clotting by the same mechanism; one of these signalling molecules, called thromboxane (TXA2 on the diagram), promotes the adhesion of platelets (one of the key components involved in blood clotting). When COX enzymes are inhibited by NSAIDs, they are unable to synthesise thromboxane; thus, many NSAIDs have anti-coagulant properties,
