First of all, what are the colors of most Chinese patent medicines? True colors? That is, the primary colors of drugs. The tablet consists of active ingredients and auxiliary materials. Generally, the ingredients of western medicine are relatively simple, and the effective ingredients are only a few milligrams, accounting for about 1% of tablets. Moreover, the active ingredients of most tablets are white, and others are accessories. The auxiliary material is usually starch, which is also white. So when mixed together, the tablets are white, so most of the tablets made are white. Of course, berberine, vitamins and other raw materials are yellow, and the tablets made are often yellow or orange. Tablets and granules made of traditional Chinese medicine are generally brownish yellow, which is also the basic primary color of Chinese herbal medicine after extraction and concentration.
Generally, children's medicines will have more colors, because many children don't like taking medicine, and major manufacturers will make medicines into children's favorite colors, such as some attractive warm colors, such as light yellow, withered yellow, rose red and light green. Or coated with colored sugar to improve the taste of the medicine, which is more popular with children and parents.
At present, the direct dyeing of artificial pigment has been cancelled in clinical medication, but a few drugs that need special reminder, such as Phenamin cough syrup and thick tablets containing iodine, will be dyed light red to remind patients not to use them casually. Mercury chloride tablets for external disinfection are dyed deep red because of their high toxicity, which is used to warn patients not to take orally.
So how to make drugs colorful without using artificial pigments? This is actually the color of the drug tablet coating or capsule. For tablet coating, there are still many uses, such as
(1) isolate air, light and moisture, and improve the stability of drugs.
(2) Covering up the bad smell of drugs and increasing the compliance of patients.
(3) control the release of drugs in the intestine. Enteric coating can avoid the stimulation of drugs to the stomach and prevent drugs from being destroyed by gastric acid or gastric enzymes. Colon-specific enteric coating can release drugs in colon and treat colon diseases.
(4) wrapping the slow-release or controlled-release clothes, changing the drug release speed, reducing the times of taking drugs and reducing adverse reactions.
(5) Isolation of incompatible components and avoidance of interaction are helpful to compound compatibility.
(6) Improve the appearance to make the plaque beautiful and easy to identify.
The original bitter and unpalatable medicine, Change? Eating delicious and beautiful is also a benign stimulus to the patient's senses.