For much of my life, I have suffered from a re-occurring debilitating illness. It knocks me out, cripples my productivity, removes enjoyment from life, and reduces me to a shell of my normal self.
My wife calls it a man cold.
It’s true, Sidney will tell you I become a little dramatic when the common cold afflicts me. However, I maintain that the colds that enter my body are a little more “uncommon” than the typical junk most people deal with. My colds are a little more savage in nature—my eyes water up without notice, my voice takes a hike, I lose all sense of taste, and my poor nose closes up like a Chic-Fil-A on Sunday.
Oh well, I probably shouldn’t waste space by attempting to convince you that my colds are worse than your husband’s. Because aside from my subjective belief that my symptoms are perhaps harsher than those of everyone else, the other reason that made me think my colds packed more of a punch is now debunked.
For years and years, I turned to NyQuil and its generic equivalents to provide some relief when my colds became especially nasty. And despite my positive attitude, hope, and attention to dosage detail, there was always one consistent result when I took these medications: Absolutely NOTHING.
Besides knock me out if I ever took the night time version, NyQuil never did a thing for me. Glad that it is now being held accountable.
If only I had a dime for each time I complained to Sid that these cold medicines did ZILCH to improve my condition I would be a rich man. Despite my anger that these over-the-counter options failed to even make a single iota of improvement in my symptoms, I would still turn to them every now and then. These are the industry standards, I thought, perhaps this time they will make a difference.
They never did.
In the past few years, I had come resigned to the fact that when I get a cold, the only effective/worthwhile medicine (at least in my case) was just time. My best option was to just take it on the chin and hope I felt better in a week. Oral cold medicine simply did not work for me.
Last week, I received some vindication along with the reality that I wasn’t the only one immune to oral cold medicines. The Food and Drug Administration has proposed completely ceasing the sale of medicines like NyQuil, Benadryl, Sudafed PE and others. Why? Because the active ingredient in these substances, oral phenylephrine, simply doesn’t work. The FDA is accepting the years and years of research from the University of Florida College of Pharmacy that says NyQuil can’t stop a cold any better than placebo pills can.
That is a big deal. For as long as I have been alive, NyQuil was the industry standard for combating a stuffy nose. Even though it never worked for me, I thought I was an anomaly. Not so. People have been shooting this stuff back for decades thinking it would help them. Anyone else mad?
Some pharmacies aren’t even waiting for the FDA’s proposal process to play out, they are simply yanking the products off their shelves right now. Good for them! For those who are still supplying it, the clock is ticking. Within six months, he FDA is expected to declare that oral phenylephrine is a fraud and demand that it be removed from all shelves in the country.
Although I have already moved on from giving chances to NyQuil, I am pleased that others won’t have to experiment with it. Get it off the shelves and let’s stop lying to people. Don’t Blink.
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