Explained: It is good to lean right while you pop that pill, here’s why

Is there a right way to take your pills to ensure quick results? Here are findings of a new study by researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

The findings of the study are based on a model to simulate the mechanics of drug dissolution on a human stomach. (File Photo)

Is there a right way to take your pills to ensure quick results? A new study by researchers from Johns Hopkins University has found that popping a pill while leaning towards the right is the ideal posture to ensure fastest absorption into the bloodstream.

Oral medicines, which are considered safe, economical, and have a high degree of patient compliance, start working when they are absorbed into the blood through the intestine. But to get there, a pill needs to pass through the stomach. The lower part of the stomach — the antrum — is connected to the first part of the small intestine, the duodenum, through the pylorus, a valve that opens and shuts during digestion. A right posture ensures that the pill lands closer to the lower part of the stomach, which in turn helps in the stomach ejecting its contents into the intestine faster.

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The team tested four postures — upright; leaning right; leaning left; and leaning back.

“Leaning right yields a significant increase in the dissolved mass released into the duodenum compared to other positions. Leaning left leads to a significant decrease,” the study said.

The team tested four postures — upright; leaning right; leaning left; and leaning back.

The team was surprised to find that if “a pill takes 10 minutes to dissolve on the right side, it could take 23 minutes to dissolve in an upright posture and over 100 minutes when laying on the left side”, the JHU website says.

“For elderly, sedentary or bedridden people, whether they’re turning to the left or to the right can have a huge impact,” said one of the study’s authors, Rajat Mittal, who is a Johns Hopkins engineer and an expert in fluid dynamics.

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The findings of the study, published last week in Physics of Fluids, are based on a model to simulate the mechanics of drug dissolution on a human stomach.

Source: Physics of Fluids