I am not seeking medical advice, I have already spoken to a doctor.
Has anyone used Prilosec (Omeprazole)? It was recommended for my stomach problems, to take daily. Is it really “stronger” than Pepcid/Zantac/Tagamet? The cheapest I have seen it is for $25 per 42 pills, does anyone know a cheaper source?
I take it, and think it works great. I wouldn’t say it’s stronger, but I think it works in a different way, which is more effective, at least for me.
Why are you taking it every day, though? The instructions recommend that you take it for 14 days every four months. I think I got a box 28 for about $18, which is not bad for what amounts to be an 8 month supply.
Also, you might want to double check with your doctor that he/she knows that the 14d/4month dosing is what the manufacturer recommends. My doctor was surprised when I told him about it.
I take it, and it works great for me.
That’s what the OTC box says, cause it’s OTC and they aren’t allowed to say that you can (and in reality, should) take oner pill daily all the damn time. If you ver get a script for omeprazole or esomeprozole (Nexium), it will be to take one daily.
And as said before, it’s not that’s it’s necessarily stronger than Pepsid or Tagament, but it works in a different way. Pepsid, Tagament, and Zantac are all H2 receptor blockers. They work by blocking one of the hormones that tells your stomach cells to secrete acid. However, there are other hormores that are still more than happy to tell your stomach cells to secrete acid. Omeprazole and esomeprazole block the proton pump directly (the part of the cell that pumps out the hydrogen that will make HCl.) It’s more effective at reducing acid all the time, whereas the histamine blocking action of the other drugs is best only for reducing acid in response to a meal. If you have frequent heartburn that occurs randomly, or not just after a meal, than a doctor would probably recommend Prilosec or Nexium.
ETA: I take it daily and I haven’t add anything more than a whimper of heartburn since I started (over two months ago…I used to get heartburn 3-4 times a week.)
According to my pharmacist friends (and bosses), you’re only supposed to take OTC Prilosec for 2 weeks at a time so that you don’t just treat the symptoms of some other underlying cause for the upset.
Not really anything else to add, other than good for your doctor for telling you to take Prilosec instead of Nexium. I work in a pharmacy and it seems that the drug reps in charge of marketing Nexium are really doing their job, because doctors write way more scripts for it than its nearly identical sister drug, Prilosec.
(Without writing a whole lot, Prilosec is racemic, meaning that there are equal amounts of both mirror images of the active ingredient, one of which is converted in the body to the other, (with varying success depending on population). Nexium is just one pure form of the molecule.)
Also, disclaimer: I take Nexium anyway, because even though there’s a prescription generic for Prilosec, it won’t cover it, because you can get Prilosec over the counter. Which means that they’re having to pay more money for me to get Nexium. :rolleyes: My insurance is just dumb like that.
Your only supposed to take it for 2 weeks? Dang, I’ve been taking it for months. I was on some prescription stuff (can’t remember what), but my copay was $45 a month. Seemed kinda silly to pay $45 a month when I could get a 42 day supply for around $25. So I checked with my doc and got the OK.
Works great. I used to get pretty much constant heart burn. I ate tums like candy. Now I don’t bother even keeping Tums around. If I forget to take it one day, I will get heart burn again.
Suck it up and pay it. Before the OTC stuff came out, it was something like $180 for 30 pills, and you needed a prescription. I gladly pay the reduced price for OTC. And this is with the blessing of multiple doctors. I’ve been taking it since it came out, around 4 years.
What I don’t get is why you can no longer get it in the aisles. You have to ask the checkout person for it. What’s up with that? Are children stealing it and making recreational drugs from it? Is there a fear that someone’s going to abuse the stuff? Woohoo, Saturday night! Let’s roll some drunks, break some windows, and get general heartburn relief! Party on!
No, I think there’s a black market for it. Our store has gotten hit up twice for a couple thousand dollars’ worth of Prilosec. So we moved it behind the counter.
Really? Wow. The stuff is cheap enough, people need to steal it and sell it at a discounted price? I can think of dozens more things that would be better to steal from a pharmacy. Right off the bat I’m thinking that various cosmetics would have much higher value, and I could fence them to a much larger demographic. Shampoo, toothpaste, digital blood pressure monitors, condoms, candy bars, greeting cards, electronics… Why Prilosec? That’s just odd.
I’ve been taking it for longer than the recommended 2 weeks and can report a side effect: Weight gain. Used to be, I couldn’t eat hardly anything without getting heartburn. Now I can eat anything I want 
It’s behind the counter at the supermarket, Wally World still has it on the shelves.
I had a dog that took it for inflammatory bowel disease. Took it for months, no side effects for him. Worked better for him than Pepcid or Tagamet.
Generally the cheapest place to get it is Wally World, though occasionally the supermarket would have a special where I got it for about $22 for 42 pills. Plus, if you get the Sunday paper, look in the coupon section. There are coupons for it in there pretty regularly - usually $1 off, but sometimes for more.
Also, if you go to the Prilosec website (http://www.prilosecotc.com/) you can sign up for a free sample.
I took Prilosec for my GERD (this was before it went OTC) and it worked, but not consistently. When I switched to Nexium, it was a miracle drug. Your results may vary. I admit my body is all kinds of weird, so my results almost always vary from others’.
I’m curious to know if anyone else has had the same experience with heartburn drugs as I had. Years ago, I began taking Prevacid, and it was great. I took it for about a year. Then the insurance company decided to change their formulary, and get people onto generics. So I began taking some generic – ranitidine, I think. It made my heartburn dramatically worse. I went back to Prevacid. It no longer worked. Since then, I’ve tried over-the-counter Prilosec, Pepcid, generic omeprazole, whatever – and they all had significant side-effects after a few days or weeks.
Now I feel like my stomach is just a shadow of its former self. I take nothing for heartburn except liquid Maalox occasionally, and try to manage my problems by eating gruel and softboiled eggs. Caffeine, alcohol, tomato sauce, spicy foods – it’s all pretty much gone from my diet.
That’s my heartburn tale of woe.
Tagamet was what I was originally prescribed, but it quit working after a while. I had given up on it, tried Pepcid and Zantac to no avail, and finally just kept Rolaids in my pocket until Prilosec OTC came along. It’s been working for me ever since. All the things on Sal’s list and doughnuts. Man, I could eat a doughnut and just erupt with heartburn. Now I can have a doughnut and coffee and be just fine.
I found Nexium worked better, too, but my insurance won’t go for it. There’s also another concern. I started feeling like hell a few weeks ago–sleeping for 10 hours and wishing for another 10, cold all the time, brain fog, etc. It turns out I was b12 deficient and guess what that can be a side effect of. Yep, long term PPI use. My doctor put me on sublingual B12, and it’s helping a bit. I’m trying to do without the Prilosec for a while and it hasn’t been pleasant. Has anybody handled GERD successfully without constant antacid use?
I have been on them all - Nexium to start, then my insurance made me switch to Prilosec. I took it every day. It didn’t work quite as well for me, but well enough for a while. Then I switched to Aciphex and it was the best of all, plus now that I am pregnant it is the safest one to take during pregnancy. I expected my heartburn to get worse during pregnancy, but for some reason after the first trimester it went away and I am currently taking nothing but the occasional Tums. It’s amazing.
The other types like Tagamet didn’t work for me at all. My GI specialist says everyone is different and it is usually trial and error until you find something that works best for you.
I was diagnosed with GERD after having my gall bladder out a few years ago, but I don’t know if that is what I actually have. It was kind of a diagnosis made by ruling everything else out rather than finding any other reason for my symptoms. Whatever the case, time seems to have done me good and my symptoms are better by leaps and bounds to the point where I don’t have to take anything most days. When I started Nexium I was on the highest prescription, taking it twice a day and still had breakthrough symptoms even eating mild foods. It was weird. Whatever the case, I am glad now that things seem to be getting better, even if I don’t know why. I can eat almost anything now without trouble.
Among the general population, no idea. Probably.
Among bariatric surgery patients, yes, sometimes. 1400 patients made 3440 followup vists. In those visits, 8 people (some were repeats) reported using more antacid medication. 43 used less, 67 stopped using anything at all, and 260 were using the same amount. Those numbers may be skewed because of the repeat visits.
I specifically asked my doctor if it was okay to take Prilosec indefinitely, and he said that it was. I don’t know about anyone else’ situation, as his advice was for me. I do know that if I stop taking it, the heartburn comes back within a few hours. I think it’s a miracle drug.
Oh, and we get it at Costco. Our health plan offers a “flexible spending account” for various OTC meds and other medical expenses, so we’re able to reimburse ourselves out of that account. The cost to us ultimately is about 2/3 of what Costco charges, which is about $24 for a 42–pack.
I was on daily Prevacid and when a generic Prilosec came out, I asked my doctor if I could switch to save some money. He didn’t care and I can’t tell any difference. It sure beats the hell out of waking up 5 times a night to snarf down Rolaids.
I take prescription omeprazole - two pills every night before I go to bed. Without these, my GERD is constant and not quite unbearable, but definitely uncomfortable. With the omeprazole, I feel fantastic. I’ve never had any side effects that I know of and I think it works just great.
I did talk with my doctor about taking these as a maintenance med, and he said it was fine. I’ve been taking them for years, and so far no problems. I’ll be sure to post when after another ten years or so the long-term side effects become apparent and my arms fall off. I’ll be posting with my toes, so there may be typos.