Some tabs are recommended that you put under your tongue and let them dissolve.
Why? What’s the advantage of that over just swallowing them?
I see there’s another reply coming in even as I type this. What are the chances we will say the same thing?
The usual explanation is that the drug is absorbed and gets into your bloodstream faster that way.
Often recommended if you think you’re having a blood clot. Take an aspirin this way to get it working as fast as possible.
when I had covid and pneumonia they gave me a tablet for nausea it was the size of baby aspirin and tasted like one … the directions said "dissolve fully on the tongue for 30 seconds " and the one time I took it and swallowed it (due to a phone call) I noticed it didn’t really work as opposed to when I followed directions the first time I have ever seen it …
Kicks in faster, higher bioavailability (the % that ends up having an effect), some substances may not play well with digestion. Done right, sublingual administration is close to injecting it.
This. Basically the liver and digestion don’t get involved as the mucus membranes allow the substance to go directly in the bloodstream. Inhalation has a similar advantage.
I hear plugging is similar although I haven’t had the curiosity/determination to check.
Tablets and liquids can both be administered sublingually. It is sometimes done for rapid onset of effects; sometimes because the patient is unable to swallow (eg liquid treatments for epileptic seizures - for both of these reasons); and sometimes, as @Die_Capacitrix points out:
The issue is called the First Pass Effect. Some drugs are more subject to it than others. For some, this initial metabolism before the drug can get into the system (and do its work) is so great that swallowing them (in tablet form or whatever) isn’t a viable method of drug delivery. In this case injection or the sublingual route is preferred; sometimes inhalation. Or, as has been alluded to, other routes of admin may be available:
Alternative routes of administration, such as suppository, intravenous, intramuscular, inhalational aerosol, transdermal, or sublingual, avoid the first-pass effect because they allow drugs to be absorbed directly into the systemic circulation.
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I took nitroglycerine for a little while for chest pain (to see if it was angina, and it wasn’t). These are for holding under the tongue. The doctor told me it wouldn’t work if I swallowed it.
And it is fast, unbelievably fast. Nitroglycerine often causes a headache as a side effect. This only took TEN SECONDS.
Some antinausea drugs are sublingual to avoid the problem of the patient vomiting up the pill before it takes effect.
As in “we can find some other way for you to take it”?
Some drugs, like nitroglycerin for instance, aren’t absorbed through the stomach (the molecule dissolves in stomach acid, but they do make enteric-coated capsules) but they are absorbed through the buccal (mouth) membrane.
Others are indeed usable through the nasal, rectal, even vaginal route, but SL is convenient.
Both mucus membranes, quick absorption into the bloodstream.
nm…
Thats always been the reason I’ve heard, it allows the drug to bypass the liver and digestive system which could break it down.