Medication

**Medication** (also called **medicine** or **pharmaceutical drugs**) is the use of legal drugs to treat or cure an illness. 

Drugs which are sold freely or do not require a prescription are called over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. It is easy to buy OTC drugs. A doctor must give a prescription for powerful or dangerous drugs. The note from the doctor is called a prescription. These drugs are called prescription drugs, prescription medicines, or prescription only medicines (POM).

## Terminology 
There are many different words used to describe things about medications.

### Action 
Action is what the medication is supposed to do. It is the helpful effects that the medicine is supposed to have on the body.

Many drugs have more than one action. For example, acetaminophen is an analgesic (it kills pain) and an antipyretic (it makes fevers go away).

### Indication 
An indication is a reason why a medication is given.

Many drugs have more than one indication. For example, acetaminophen's indications include pain and fever.

Almost all medicines, even over-the-counter medications, have some contraindications. For example, acetaminophen should not be given to people who are allergic to acetaminophen. Dose can be worked out based on body weight (others in BMI) based on amount of drug (for example a mg of the drug) versus weight of the person (like in kg). Working out dosage like this has helped come up with a LD50 (lethal dose in 50% of the population) for drugs and other chemicals people might eat, and it uses the dose of drug for every kilogram of weight on a person to estimate how much it would take to be toxic to the body as a guess.  

Some dosages are based on age. For example, children often need less medication than adults. The mix of the drug or how it is delivered can change based on age, like how different flavours can be used in child, animal (horse for example) or psychiatric medicine (or the dose route changed, such as putting it in apple pudding). Other chemicals might be used in the adult version of a medicine people use to treat specific issues, such as the use of salicylic acid in oral wart gel for adults, which is contravened in children. In tinctures, or a mix of the medicine or medicines, is allowed to be made up of 0.5% alcohol for children under 6, 5% for ages 6-12, and 10% for people aged 12+, according to the FDA.

Dosage is very important because all medicines can be poisons if they are taken in large amounts. If a person takes too much of a medication, they can get very sick or even die. This is called an overdose. For example, taking too much acetaminophen (also called paracetamol, Tylenol, or Panadol) can badly hurt the liver. 

Sometimes, normal dosages have to be changed if a person has certain medical problems like kidney failure for example. If someone has to go through surgery then they might not be allowed to drink liquids to avoid adverse effects or failure. A different gas has to be used during surgery in types of operation, like one on the GI tract for example. In these cases it is useful to have taken nothing by mouth before the operation, not just to avoid affecting medications but so the operation does not end in failure. 

### Adverse effects (side effects) 
A person takes a medication because they want it to do certain things. When the medication also does other things that the person did not want, these are called adverse reactions or "side effects". For example, acetaminophen can cause nausea.

For example, the chemical names for acetaminophen are N-acetyl-para-aminophenol and para-acetyl-amino-phenol.

### Generic name
Every country has one generic (official) name for every medicine.

When taken by mouth, medication gets into the bloodstream through the digestive system. It takes a while, usually 15–20 minutes, for the medicine to get through parts of the digestive system and get taken up into the bloodstream. Also, a very small amount of the medicine actually gets into the bloodstream. This is because acid in the stomach kills most of the medicine before it can be taken up into the bloodstream.

Medicines taken by mouth often last longer than medicines taken by other routes of administration.

Not every medication can be given by mouth. With some medicines, like insulin, the acid in the stomach will change the medicine or break it down so much that it will not work.

## References