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Q: Do people here take an abnormal amount of medicine for minor illnesses?
Came down with the flu recently so went to the pharmacy to buy some meds and got prescribed 4 different types of pills, mostly Chinese medicine ones. I was literally taking 8 pills at the same time which struck me as a little strange. In general, I notice that it's quite common to take a shopping bag of meds home after a trip to the pharmacy.
11 years 1 week ago in Health & Safety - China
I think it is because those pills are traditional Chinese medicines. If you look at the ingredients you will see that is made of common herbs. Therefore you need to take a large amount for it to have any effect.
You could take one paracetamol tablet and it will probably be more effective, at least that is the case for me
It's the concentration of medicines (or lack thereof), I get allergies and my Chinese anti-histamine medicine is four bloody huge tablets a horse would struggle to swallow, which also make me VERY drowsy (great if your struggling to sleep though). So I got some Clarityin which are about 3mm diameter, you only need one and don't cause drowsiness.
GuilinRaf:
Reminds me of an incident I had back west.
I was given this really big pill, and when I told the doc that how was I expected to swallow that he with a look of amazement on his face pointed to a part in the box that specified it was a suppository.....
Hugh.G.Rection:
Must of been a nice 'user-friendly' doctor. I'd have been tempted not to tell you!
............................ 
They probably do very little. Remember that the hospital's here are businesses and probably put profits before anything else. I had a serious flare up of eczema before and I got prescribed like a cream and like 3 different pills costing 300RMB. In UK I probably would of just got some E45 cream which is just an oily cream for the skin.
Yeah. You should see what my wife made me take while sick.
Two or four packets of TCM wood balls per day. Disgusting.
4 to 8 pills per dose, 4 times per day. Also TCM.
Whatever it was, knocked me out for several weeks. The pills actually made it worse..
So I swore off TCM and demanded American/western medicine. Fortunately for me, I chose one that was banned in America for causing all manner of auditory hallucinations, in addition to heart problems. Awesome, huh? I thought I finally flipped my shat when I heard voices telling me I'm gonna die tonight, and then laughing at me.
I had been taking it for a week when it finally frigged with me. I recommend avoiding medicine in China if you can help it. The only reason I found out was because my wife translated the name for me, and looked up the side-effects.
To quote a doctor I saw. "There is nothing I can give you that will help you heal faster, would you like some Chinese medicine"
They are big consumers of medicine, or the TCM crap at least. If you go see a witchdoctor then you can be sure to get a long prescription, and you wil bring bag bags of stuff from the pharmacy.
The Chinese think they can actively improve their health and happiness by stuffing themselves with things that has no or little effect.
"Could I have a big bag of placebo, please?"
