Posted by bleauberry on May 30, 2009, at 14:54:53
In reply to Generic Lamictal - lamotrigine, posted by SLS on May 27, 2009, at 17:58:42
What happens if someone has the wrong supposedly neutral filler put in their compounded Low Dose Naltrexone capsules? Instead of the LDN having about a 4 hour effect which is what makes it work, it has a delayed somewhat time-release effect instead, and the whole idea doesn't work that way. What if they use a different filler that the person is unknowingly allergic to? They will not feel the benefits because some weird minor negatives will drown them out. The neutral filler has to be very specific in the way the active ingredient works.
Just one example. I would venture a guess that the supposedly neutral fillers of meds do make a difference in ways we have no clue about. As SLS said in another post on this very topic, "Different is different".
The active ingredient of Lamictal combined with filler A is not the same drug as the active ingredient of Lamictal combined with filler B. Similar, but different. Similar enough for some people to not notice any problem, but different enough for others to experience a problem.
And of the course the topic of potency acceptability by the FDA. They do not require the exact dose of brand is in each generic pill. There is variation allowance. If one pill is 8% too low in potency, and the next is 8% too high, guess what, that is a 16% difference. Cut your dose, or increase your dose, by 16% and see if you don't feel something different.
I don't know much about chemistry, so I cannot back up what I am about to say. But I can't help but wonder, does the process of actually cooking up the active ingredient somehow make it a little different than a different approach to cooking it up, even though the final molecule is supposedly the same? I'm sure most people would say, "no, salt is salt, it's still sodium chloride." Yeah, but depending on how it is made, the molecules under a microscope look different.
Different is different. That's all there is to it. Simple as that.
My doctor is prepping to write a book on this topic. He has seen it enough to inspire him to research it and try to offer explanations as to why meds with the same active ingredient can show the potential to be different meds. And how the politics of the FDA plays into, and such.
Most of the cases he witnessed were blind placebo...in other words, neither he nor the patient knew they have been switched. All they knew for sure is that, once they had an "ah ha" moment and figured out what had changed, the patients got well again on their previous medication brand. Whether that previous good brand was the actual brand or a specific generic company didn't matter, only that it was THAT brand.
There are plenty of skeptics to this whole topic. That's only because they themselves have not experienced it. Some people have rigid ways of viewing the complex world as if it were somehow simple enough for a mere human to understand. I think many in the human race assume we are smarter than we actually are, which is where this whole generic=brand equivalency assumption was born.
poster:bleauberry
thread:897970
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090524/msgs/898491.html