Pills can be hard to take. Everyone has their own story about why they take pills and how. But, how can you make taking pills easier to swallow? It’s almost like eating a lemon whole.
Some of you have issues swallowing pills or problems in your throat where constricting is hard and you avoid them altogether. I get that. Perhaps a capsule you can open and put in a beverage is the way to go for you.
When I was a kid the standard protocol for every sickness was a pink liquid called amoxicillin. If you were sick, you were going to get the pink stuff. It was flavored like bubble gum and I hated it. Swallowing it made me throw up.
So, instead of the pink stuff … the doctor started prescribing me pills. I was about 4, so I was considered an early adopter where pills were concerned. I refused to take the liquid, but I was willing to swallow just about anything.
Do You Have Incentive To Swallow Pills?
Before long, I was on a regular dose of penicillin. (For those who may not know, penicillin has been linked directly to seizures in research).
I learned to take pills quickly because I had incentive. If I didn’t take them I was going to gag. No one wanted that, especially me. I thought they were helping me. I didn’t know I was harming myself every time I swallowed.
We don’t know what we don’t know. And, my parents didn’t know either. They were doing the best they knew how. I was doing the best I knew how. They were listening to their doctor and doing what they thought was right. I was listening to them. We’re all kicking ourselves now.
I started to feel better momentarily. I would get better for a few weeks and then I would start to feel sick again. So, I would take more pills. And, I got worse and worse. No one seemed to question it.
I got a sore throat and the doctor suggested tonsil removal … we did that. Then, I got hives. That’s miserable. I tried to pretend it away, but when you can’t stop scratching people notice. Nothing was working.
Then came the seizures.
I understand now there were things I could have done to help transform the process into something different (if I had known what to do). Except, I didn’t. And, how could I have made changes without the knowledge to make them? So I kept swallowing pills.
I have more knowledge now. I’m learning daily about things that will change the course of my situation and the lives of others. We don’t have to stay where we are if we’re willing to learn.
But, learning means we have to be willing to admit we don’t know. Then, we have to be willing to receive the knowledge that’s coming at us from other directions. We have to shift our beliefs. It seems like it would be easy, but it’s harder than it may seem or everyone would be healthy right now.
Your Body Is Made To Heal & Swallow
Looking back I can see I missed some of my greatest opportunities to shift my own diagnosis because I was comfortable. I believed I wasn’t able to heal. Then, when I believed I was I had to listen to the right people. It’s not so straightforward.
Now, I’m learning alongside my children. They are involved in the process with me. There are things they will know because I didn’t. I learn from them daily.
As I was putting my son to bed recently he looked at me and said, with fear in his eyes, “Mom, what about the plastic?”
I was confused. “What do you mean, buddy?”
WORRY:
“You know, the plastic on the pills,” he said (with worry).
He’s been sick, so I’ve been giving him natural vitamins and minerals that have been encapsulated in a vegetable capsule that dissolves naturally in the body. Most of the time he’ll take it, break it and drink it in a beverage. But, it’s gross to take on its own with water and the last day or so he tried to take the pill.
He did it slowly and had a hard time. It was a BIG ordeal.
“Oh, it’s not plastic. I wouldn’t ask you to eat plastic. Don’t eat plastic,” I said.
He sighed and seemed relieved.
I looked at him again. “Were you worried you were eating plastic?”
“Yes!” He said.
The whole time he’d been taking these pills he had been struggling with the idea that I was giving him plastic and he knew that couldn’t be right. We’ve talked about plastics before. We’ve changed out our water bottles and straws so this didn’t fit.
He’s smart. Smart enough to know after all our other conversations that a pill surrounded in plastic wasn’t something he should be consuming.
He asked me to let him know how they make the covering for the pills. He wanted to know exactly what he’s dealing with and what he’s putting in his body. I didn’t have all the answers either. So, we decided to learn together what pills were made of. I didn’t realize it would help him learn to swallow pills better.
Kids are smart and their minds are curious. And often, we just forget to tell them what they’re dealing with because maybe we forgot or don’t know ourselves. But, if we just have a conversation and let them in, realizing we don’t have all the answers and they’re a huge part of teaching us … we’re going to learn a whole lot and teach them how to love in the process.
So, if your kids are having trouble with pills … make sure they don’t think they’re plastic. Make them easier to swallow mentally first. 🙂 Perhaps by teaching them you’ll learn something you needed to know in the process.
SUPPLEMENTS:
If you’re looking for some really great supplements with non-plastic coverings 🙂 you can take safely or pop open and put in smoothies, send me a message below and I’d be happy to hook you up with what our family takes each day.
Kids want to understand all the things. We need to make sure we understand them.
- If you’re having trouble swallowing, try juice (sometimes a beverage with a thicker base makes the slide easier).
- Make the mental game less challenging. If you have trouble with pills don’t put that on anyone else.
- I don’t ever remember having trouble with pills. Let your child try it out first and then, if they’re struggling work on a solution. Often we program fear in when it wasn’t really there to begin with.
For more information on amoxicillin and epilepsy you can visit pub med here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27900944/#:~:text=Epileptogenicity%20is%20also%20a%20feature,the%20context%20of%20amoxicillin%20exposure.
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