The purchase of medicines prescribed by a doctor for the treatment of a particular disease often becomes a serious blow to the family budget. A blow that you want to soften, but without compromising your own health.
A cursory Google search suggests that Canadian pharmacy meds from an online pharmacy that sells generics of various medicines can save you the biggest amounts of time and money. This is where the doubts can come from — is it safe to take such brand equivalents and do they have the necessary therapeutic effect?
To dispel these fears, an analysis of the five most common misconceptions about generics will help — to which the presented article is entirely devoted.
5 important details about Generics
1: Generics Are Fakes
Counterfeit medicines are never sold as generics — that is, complete chemical analogs of branded medicines that have expired patents. More often than not, fakes are sold precisely as brand-name drugs — after all, trying to mimic the original and the most popular brand is the goal.
If the pharmacy sells a generic drug, which is also cheaper than the original, then you can stay calm — it’s probably not fake.
2: Generics Are Weaker Than Brand Name Drugs
Counter question: if the generic contains the same active substance as the original drug, in an identical dosage, then for some unknown reason its effect on the patient’s body should be weaker.
3: Generics Can’t Replace Brand Name Drugs
The role of excipients added to pharmacological preparations is the creation of the correct consistency, shaping, correction of smell and taste, changing conditions, and/or increasing the maximum shelf life.
Not only auxiliary components selected by the manufacturer of the original preparation but also other substances with similar physicochemical properties can perform these tasks.
4: Generics Will Always Be Worse Than Brand Name Drugs
The low cost of generics has a very simple explanation: they are a copy of the original medical product.
It should be understood that generic manufacturers did not spend money on the development, verification, state registration, and advertising of the drug. They simply reproduced the medicine according to an already existing formula.
Consequently, the market price of generics does not include all the costs listed above, which explains their relatively low cost.
5: Generics Are More Likely To Do More Harm Than Good
The described phenomenon is indeed observed in approximately ⅓ of patients, but there might be another reason for this: after reading myths about generics online, some patients initially do not believe in their effectiveness and unknowingly “program” their bodies for the inevitable deterioration of well-being.
Simply put, the patient’s suspiciousness and fear of novelty are to blame for everything — which was scientifically confirmed by US researchers back in February 2012.
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