Welcome to the second official newsletter! Without further delay, let's get right into it.
1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient
2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer
3. Quick Wrap-up
Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.
Counselling Conundrum: "What's the difference between dimenhydrinate and diphenhydramine?"
Concise Conclusion: Interestingly, dimenhydrinate is made up of half diphenhydramine, and half something called 8-chlorotheophylline, which is actually meant to reduce some of the drowsiness caused by the diphenhydramine. This is why you shouldn't use dimenhydrinate to help you sleep, as it could have the opposite effect. Diphenhydramine, on the other hand, is in most combination medications labelled "PM" and "night time", and is also specifically found in most medications marketed specifically for sleep.
Quick Wrap-up: One of our team members recalls when they realized dimenhydrinate actually contained mostly diphenhydramine during a project on insomnia in the elderly. This was not as a pharmacy student either, and it was also a wonder why both compounds generally had different indications (nausea/vomiting for the former, allergies for the latter). Suddenly it all clicked; they added a stimulant to diphenhydramine, because putting someone asleep most of the time really is not solving the problem of nausea and vomiting.
We hope you have found this useful, and please reply to this email with any feedback or topic suggestions you can; it will be the key to making this newsletter the best it can be.
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