We've all been there, it's the cold season you're stumbling around the supermarket, pharmacy you got puffy eyes, a snotty nose, a headache, that feel about someone about to burst through your face alien style. You spent the last 10 minutes peering at the Shelf trying to decide, which medicine should I buy? 'you know' should I spend a small fortune on the shiny branded drugs or will they make me certainly better than those plain budget options, well in a desperate situation which man flu always is. By the way, you're likely to try anything, but is there really a difference?

Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine we have come a long way from treatments that involved chewing on tree roots or drilling holes into the back of your head, for more than a hundred years pharmaceutical companies have employed scientists to identify specific chemicals for treating all manner of illnesses and disorders, and then to isolate and develop these chemicals into usable medicines.

So, when you're popping a couple of pills for a sore head you're actually swallowing a carefully a controlled dose of 2-4-2 Methyl propyl Phenyl Propanoic Acid, imagine trying to pronounce that to the pharmacist 'not likely', it is however Ibuprofen one of the most common forms of pain relief worldwide. Having a friendly name does do away with the horror of the unknown, even though, last you've got no idea what's inside it.

But what's in a name?

Inventing remedies requires a huge amount of effort. For a new medicine, it can take up to 15 years and around a billion pounds to get it tested and then out onto the shelves.

So, like with any invention the inventors that the pharmaceutical companies that have invested all of that time and that money, they take out a patent to protect their new recipe. Now that Patent will include the trade name that they want to use, and while it's in place, the original company is the only one that is allowed to make and sell the drugs, but Patents don't last forever, after a period of usually 20 years, the patent expires and other manufacturers are able to use that recipe to make the drugs themselves, and at this point, the brand name doesn't have to be used anymore other companies can mark it and sell the drug under its generic name. This goes some way to explaining why branded drugs are so much more expensive than their generic counterparts. By charging more for the branded drug especially in the years and it's the only one on the market, the company that holds the patent can earn back some of the millions of pounds they originally invested to develop. It after the patent expires the other companies don't have to do the same research and testing they just have to produce the drugs according to that recipe, so they can make and sell them at a much lower and competitive cost.

 A case in point is that sildenafil, this drug, started off in the labs of the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. They were trying to develop a drug that treats angina, and one promising chemical snappily called UK92480 had made it as far as the clinical trials. Well disappointingly for Pfizer the drug had no effect on patients' chest pains, so it looked like UK92480 was a failure until the testers started reported unexpected and slightly unnerving side-effects, erections. A little bit of testing later, and Pfizer was able to market a highly effective drug to treat erectile dysfunction, which they patented as Viagra. Within weeks of Viagra hitting the shelves, it became one of the fastest-selling medicines of all time. With up to six tablets being prescribed worldwide every second, 'Yeah, the sales figure graph really just went up and up and up. But Pfizer's patent for Viagra ran out in 2013, meaning that the generic versions of the drug could be made and sold under the non branded name of sildenafil, while this was bad news for Pfizer's commercial prospect, it was great news for patients and doctors, because the generic version of exactly the same drug cost less than 30% of the branded version.

And that really is the kicker. Generic drugs are exactly the same as the brand versions. Sometimes they're even made in the same factory, they're also both tested with an inch of their life to make sure that they're safe, consistent, and pure.

In fact, Britain's NHS almost always prescribes the generic versions of drugs when they can, because these drugs are so much cheaper and they're chemically identical to the brand versions.

However and get this, although there is literally no chemical difference between branded medicines and their budget counterparts people do in fact feel better after popping the premium pills, it's all down to the Placebo effects, where if we believe medicine will make us better than quite simply, 'it will,

A study in 2015 gave patients with Parkinson's disease, two variations of the same drug, one which cost 100 dollars and another that cost 1500 dollars, amazingly the patients showed much more improvement to their motor skills after being given the expensive drug, and the twist in the tale, was that none of them had been given any drug at all both just saline solution with no active ingredients, such as the power of the placebo effect, the expectation of a more expensive drug be ing more effective, actually made it more effective, even when they weren't taking any drugs at all.

So, the next the time you drag yourself to the pharmacy if you want to splash out on the pink a glossy packet of liquid capsules, go for it, or if you want to get the plain package and then spend your savings on ice cream and self-pity, that's great too.

You do you, alright’

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