How do you swallow giant tablets like Joint Ace?

I find it easier to take large pills with a cup of coffee (not too hot) rather than water.

Does anyone know why you are not supposed to break them? Is it to make the drug be released more slowly?

eazybee

No help but aged sixteen I was on a school trip to Switzerland when a friend was taken ill and became slightly hysterical; the hotel sent for a doctor who came while the staff were fetched and left some enormous tablets for her to take. She was in tears about taking them as the staff arrived, and they too collapsed in hysterics because the 'tablets' were suppositories, something we had never encountered before.

My DH was in a medicine-related job he says the British like tablets, the French and some European countries like suppositories and the Germans like an injection.
He used to get our DD's to take tablets by putting them on a spoon full of jam.
I find I regurgitate chalky ones even if they are small and as some have to be taken at night by the time I have got them down I have to get up about an hour later for the loo.

Daddima

Does anyone know why you are not supposed to break them? Is it to make the drug be released more slowly?

My question exactly.

25Avalon:

'the advice on the instructions is to take it with food' - that means don't take on an empty stomach without eating something (before or after). It doesn't mean swallow with food!

VioletSky

I have to take quite big tablets daily, at first it was awful and if they got stuck, they'd come back out along with what I recently ate..

I've learned to remain calm and not panic and keep drinking and swallowing until they go and now its easier

I honestly think what was happening was that the fear of taking them was making my throat tighter... which might explain why your second is harder?

Yes, I think anxiety does this too.
My sister's MIL was convinced for years that she had swallowing problems but doctors assured them that this was not the case. When she was eating something she really liked it didn't seem to affect her so much!
Quite a lot of vitamins and supplements do show the size of the product but of course we don't always notice. Personally I find that capsules with a coating sometimes get stuck in my throat, I think the coating melts if it stops somewhere so I make a point of drinking a whole glass of water to make sure it has gone down.

my dentist said I should make myself aware just how many large, very large, lumps of food we do actually swallow. Then compare the size of the tablet with that piece of food.
It helped me as I also have to swallow a pill that mustn't be cut. (the medication in the centre must travel through the stomach and release in the intestine). It helped, but it still isn't easy.
I prefer ice cold water rather than a warm liquid - each to their own.