Name: 薬剤師だけど「薬・医薬品」について質問ある？| Tech Support | WIRED Japan
Uploaded: 2025-05-23T08:03:17.000Z
Duration: 19 min 32 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I'm Dr. Christina Madison, a clinical pharmacist.

I'm here to answer your questions from the internet.

Purcell would like to know, what is it about grapefruit that makes it so dangerous to mix with so many medications?

Like, bam, grapefruit goes through the liver.

It's part of something called the cytochrome P450 system.

What that means is that it can disrupt the metabolism of medications.

It can alter the absorption of that drug, meaning that more of the drug will remain in your bloodstream and you'll be more likely to experience the toxicity associated with that drug and experience side effects.

Tech with Taz asks, expiration dates on medications.

Are they similar to a bust by situation or what?

Expiration dates are what we know to be safe and effective.

I like the term best buy, but ultimately there are some drugs that if you don't use them by their expiration date, they can become toxic.

Doxycycline starts to break down and the chemical that's left can be very toxic to you if you ingest it.

Most medications, however, do not become toxic.

You may have to take more, which means you possibly could take an inaccurate dose or have an overdose because you're taking more medication that's needed because it's not as effective.

So the key here is whenever possible, please try not to take any expired medications.

E Shodan would like to know, why is botulism toxin, the most lethal toxin known, purposefully injected into humans for cosmetic surgeries, such as Botox?

Is there nothing else that could be used?

Botulism toxin in the environment, yes, can be very toxic.

However, what we currently use for therapeutic uses, like cosmetic purposes, or for things like migraine headaches, is a very small dose that's targeted, localized, and causes limited effects.

It's gonna cause localized paralysis, so no more wrinkles, but the toxin itself is not gonna get into my bloodstream and cause me to be sick or ill.

Zarithi asks, how exactly do extended release pills work?

So there's a few different things going on here.

Oral medications are unique in the fact that they may undergo something called first pass metabolism.

So medications are comprised of chemicals transformed through actions of our body.

So one of the ways that that happens is through first pass metabolism, where it gets metabolized in the liver.

The chemical structure that is left after it goes through that process is called a substrate.

So some of the time what we do in order to make the medication last longer is that we use a precursor to that substrate, which allows for the main medication or the active ingredient to get metabolized after first pass metabolism and become the active medication.

The other thing too that we can do to extend the likelihood or the length of duration of therapy is going to be using a different type of container to hold the medication.

There's tablets, there's capsules, all different types of coatings that can go over the tablet that allow for it to be dissolved or metabolized more slowly once it hits the acid of your stomach.

I don't think people understand how dangerous it is taking Tylenol regularly.

Most over-the-counter medications are safe and effective when used as directed.

However, Tylenol can be toxic specifically to your liver.

So there is a maximum amount of Tylenol that you should consume within a 24-hour period.

However, for safety, most pharmacists would tell you you really shouldn't take more than three grams within a 24-hour period in order to avoid any injury or toxicity to your liver.

The reason why this is important is because there's so many different over-the-counter cough and cold preparations that contain the active ingredient in Tylenol, which is called acetaminophen.

So if you've got cough and cold preparation over here, and then you have some regular Tylenol over here, you have to add the two together and make sure it doesn't go over that three gram in a day limit.

The only one left would like to know, why do some vaccines require a booster shot a few weeks later after the first one?

There's a couple of reasons why this may occur.

The first is whether or not the person has been exposed to the vaccination in the past.

For example, most childhood vaccinations require lots of booster doses because it's new to their immune system, and we want them to develop an appropriate response.

Same thing with the influenza vaccine or the COVID-19 vaccine.

Once you receive it, we're basically priming the pump, and then we give you a booster in order for your immune system to be able to recognize it if it sees it in the environment.

From OKAXIS3286, how do y'all count your pills?

From Winsad5408, is it beneficial to get HPV vaccine after you have HPV?

HPV, or human papillomavirus, is a type of infection that can just be transmitted from skin to skin, and it is the leading cause of cervical cancer, vulvovaginal cancer, penile cancer, and anal cancer, as well as genital warts.

All of those are caused by different strains of the HPV virus.

Six and 11 have been associated with genital warts.

16 and 18 have been associated with cervical cancers and other types of cancers, including anal cancer and penile cancer.

The vaccine that we have now has multiple strains that it protects against.

So even if you've had HPV, you've probably only had one, maybe two of those strains, and you can be still protected by the other strains that are included in the current vaccination.

Toby the Robot asks, how does a pharmaceutical company come up with new drugs?

Do they just try various chemicals on animals until something shows promise?

Pharmaceutical companies take a lot of pride in their research and development.

It costs millions of dollars in order for them to develop a new drug.

It can come from natural sources, it can come from synthetic compounds or chemicals.

Typically, it's done from clinical trial work, looking at compounds that have been known to cause therapeutic effects in other disease states, and then we try it and see if it works in others.

It's not really this, what you're saying, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.

Next is FunnyReputation454, favorite animal-derived drug fact.

One of the things that we know when we think about drug development and drug discovery is that a lot of the medications derive from venoms or toxins that are produced by animals or biological sources like viruses and bacteria.

One of our popular diabetes medications comes from the saliva of a Gila monster.

So one of my favorite animal-derived drugs is from Gila monster spit, not corn emoji, would like to know, why does DoorDash need my ID for cold meds?

LOL, what do you think I'm going to do with it?

Cough and cold preparations may include an active ingredient called pseudoephedrine.

Those medications, even though they're technically considered over the counter would be behind the counter in the pharmacy.

The reason for this is that we have to document how much pseudoephedrine you're purchasing on a daily basis.

Why would I need to know how much pseudoephedrine you're buying in a day?

Before we had this restriction, pseudoephedrine was being used to fuel the methamphetamine processing in different areas of the country.

We need to keep track of who's purchasing it in order to hopefully stem the production of illegal drug production.

So the reason why we have this requirement is so that we don't have more meth labs.

Croy Celtic, Alexa, show me how penicillin was discovered.

He's a Scottish biologist that was working in a hospital in London and discovered after looking at a Petri dish that had some mold growing on it that the Staphylococcus that was on that Petri dish was not growing in the place where the mold was.

Ultimately, we discovered one of the most powerful antibiotics by mistake.

Zara Toro VT would like to know, is melatonin dependency bad?

So the first thing is is that melatonin, you can't really become dependent on melatonin.

However, too much melatonin can be a bad thing.

There was an instance about a year ago where several children became sick or ill because of overdoses of melatonin from the use of melatonin gummies.

It really should not be used on a regular basis.

You should not be using this continuously for sleeping.

Cindy Hindren 2 would like to know, why hasn't a cure for the common cold been found?

The common cold is often caused by a rhinovirus.

However, there's been 200 separate viruses and organisms that have been attributed to the causes of the common cold.

So it does make a bit of a moving target.

In addition to rhinoviruses, the common cold can also be caused by coronaviruses like COVID-19 as well as respiratory syncytial virus and RSV.

And the good news is, is although we may not have a cure for those, we do have a vaccine for them.