How does medication work in the body

One medicine might be a pink liquid, another medicine might come in a special mist, another might be a blue pill, and still another might come out of a yellow tube. But they're all used for the same purpose — to make you feel better when you're sick. Most medicines today are made in laboratories and many are based on things found in nature.

After a medicine is created, it is tested over and over in many different ways. This lets scientists make sure it's safe for people to take and that it can fight or prevent an illness.

Some new medicines actually are new versions of old medicines that have been improved to help people feel better quicker. Sometimes a part of the body can't make enough of a certain substance, and this can make a person sick. When someone has type 1 diabetes say: dye-uh-BEE-tees , the pancreas a body organ that is part of the digestive system can't make enough of an important chemical called insulin , which the body needs to stay healthy.

If your body makes too much of a certain chemical, that can make you sick too. Luckily, medicines can replace what's missing like insulin or they can block production of a chemical when the body is making too much of it. Most of the time when kids get sick, the illness comes from germs that get into the body. The body's immune system works to fight off these invaders. But the germs and the body's natural way of germ fighting, like getting a fever, can make a person feel ill.

In many cases, the right kind of medicine can help kill the germs and help the person feel better. People take medicines to fight illness, to feel better when they're sick, and to keep from getting sick in the first place. When deciding which medicine to give a patient, a doctor thinks about what is causing the patient's problem.

Someone may need to take more than one type of medicine at the same time — one to fight off an infection and one to help the person feel better, for example. When it comes to fighting illnesses, there are many types of medicines. Antibiotics say: an-ty-by-AH-tiks are one type of medicine that a lot of kids have taken. Knowing more about each of the four main stages of pharmacokinetics, collectively referred to as ADME, aids the design of medicines that are more effective and that produce fewer side effects.

Medicines are absorbed when they travel from the site of administration into the body's circulation. A few of the most common ways to administer drugs are oral such as swallowing an aspirin tablet , intramuscular getting a flu shot in an arm muscle , subcutaneous injecting insulin just under the skin , intravenous receiving chemotherapy through a vein or transdermal wearing a skin patch. Medicines taken by mouth are shuttled via a special blood vessel leading from the digestive tract to the liver, where a large amount of the medicine is broken down.

Other routes of drug administration bypass the liver, entering the bloodstream directly or via the skin or lungs. Most often, the bloodstream is the vehicle for carrying medicines throughout the body.

During this step, side effects can occur when a drug has an effect at a site other than its target. Drugs can also surreptitiously bind to other receptors, leading to unwanted side effects. This is more likely to happen if the dose is too high. In contrast, if the dose is too low, the drug fails to bind the good, target receptor and is not effective. This explains why the dose is so important when a medication is being administered. After drugs finish their work, they leave the target receptor and wash out of the body.

They may go back into blood, get transported to the liver or kidney, and get chemically changed and excreted in stool or urine. By taking medication on a regular basis, the drug is replenished in the body and maintained at an adequate level to perform the desired function.

The science of drug action, called pharmacology, is a fascinating and complicated subject of study. Generic drugs should be equally safe and effective as their name-brand equivalents, because they contain the identical molecule that seeks out the same target receptor.