I introduced my wife to aspirin a few years ago. She had never taken it before and was reluctant, because she feared it was a serious drug. I assured her it’s no big deal: in the US it is probably the most commonly used drug and most people regard it as no more serious than a glass of milk. Thus it’s no big deal, but stupidly the matter has led to recurrent arguments between us. I have stupidly said “in the US,” too many times and she responds, “this isn’t the US; people don’t take aspirin in Taiwan.”
Is she right? Are Taiwanese, despite their pill-popping ways, unfamiliar with aspirin? I know it’s available. One can buy it in neighborhood clinics (although you can’t buy it in a grocery store as you could back home). But is she right that Taiwanese people for the most part don’t know about aspirin? Or is it just her?
They take it more then they think. Read the labels on some of the OTCs. (imorted ones) A lot of the cough and cold remedies have asprin as well as the more female line of products.
I’m convinced that when we go to a clinic and get packets of 9 different pills to be taken four times a day just for a cold, at least two are some form of generic aspirin and two are vitamin C. There seems to be a certain aversion to self-medicating, but when a doctor prescribes pills, pop away! Personally, I think the way they wrap the pills in little, folded paper packets is kind of cool; everytime you take medicine is like Christmas…
I got dragged out of my comfy sick bed by she who must be obeyed to go to a doctor for a cold. ‘You have a cold’ he said. ‘No shit sherlock!’ I thought, ‘can I go home now?’. ‘Do you want the injection?’ he asks? ‘Whatever’ i think! Got given the usual smarties to.
I spoke to another doctor here about what it is I was given. You are basically right. He said the injection was an anti histamine, the pills and aspirin and some vitamins. Nothing that you can’t get from the supermarket back home. (Ok anti-histamine pills not injections but you get the idea).
As for aspirin. I once asked for it in a Chemist and they said what for? I said I had a cold and they told me that aspirin would not work. They offered me some other thing which, yes you’ve guessed it, contained aspirin. I firmly restated my position that apirin was all i wanted. I also heard a story about a chemist here prescribing a 3 day course of amoxycillian for a cold :loco:
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]I introduced my wife to aspirin a few years ago. She had never taken it before and was reluctant, because she feared it was a serious drug. I assured her it’s no big deal: in the US it is probably the most commonly used drug and most people regard it as no more serious than a glass of milk. Thus it’s no big deal, but stupidly the matter has led to recurrent arguments between us. I have stupidly said “in the US,” too many times and she responds, “this isn’t the US; people don’t take aspirin in Taiwan.”
Is she right? Are Taiwanese, despite their pill-popping ways, unfamiliar with aspirin? I know it’s available. One can buy it in neighborhood clinics (although you can’t buy it in a grocery store as you could back home). But is she right that Taiwanese people for the most part don’t know about aspirin? Or is it just her?[/quote]
My gf knows what asprin is, but she wouldn’t take it to save her life. She thinks it causes cancer.
I take only aspirin for headaches. I don’t like paracetamol because you can take too much of it get liver failure and die a horrible death. And anyway it doesn’t work as well for me. Aspirin is dirt cheap, which is of course why we have expensive paracetamol.
Drug companies don’t want people taking aspirin when they could pay a lot more for paracetamol. My wife doesn’t take aspirin because she’s got asthma and apparently it interfers with it. I take lots and lots of aspirin as I regularly have mindblowing hangovers. I took 2g of it this morning. Worked a treat. I do find it gives me heartbirn though. Why do they have to make the tablets so big?
I used to suggest my mother take aspirin for “prevention.” She was never interested. I’d thought aspirin was a serious drug until I came to the US. Most Taiwanese must still think so.
Many Taiwanese would take all sorts of vitamins and supplements (and Chinese herbal tea/soup) but not nonprescription drugs. They’d rather take drugs that are given by their doctors even though they probably don’t know or don’t want to know what they are really taking.
Patients also like to take antibiotics for colds. Parents don’t usually know the danger of over using or abusing antibiotics and often demand the prescription of them to their sick children. Many doctors seem to perscribe antibiotics without any consideration of their possible side effects (especially long term ones) to their patients, espeically children.
It’s bloody hard to find aspirin here these days. I used to be able to get it easily enough, but now they no longer stock it in any of the Watsons or other such stores in which I’ve looked for it in the last year or so. When I go into any kind of pharmacy, I always check to see if they do have any aspirin, but I’ve just about given up hope of ever finding it again.
Like Hexuan, I don’t want to take anything other than aspirin when I have a headache, but lately, since I used up the last of my precious store thereof, I’ve been having to reluctantly take paracetamol, which isn’t anywhere near as effective as aspirin in relieving the kind of headaches I get from exposure to traffic pollution.
[quote=“hexuan”]I take only aspirin for headaches. I don’t like paracetamol because you can take too much of it get liver failure and die a horrible death. And anyway it doesn’t work as well for me. Aspirin is dirt cheap, which is of course why we have expensive paracetamol.
Drug companies don’t want people taking aspirin when they could pay a lot more for paracetamol. My wife doesn’t take aspirin because she’s got asthma and apparently it interfers with it. I take lots and lots of aspirin as I regularly have mindblowing hangovers. I took 2g of it this morning. Worked a treat. I do find it gives me heartbirn though. Why do they have to make the tablets so big?[/quote]
I noticed doctors here will prescribe days and days of paracetamol (also known as acetaminophen, Tylenol, etc.) yet forget to mention you should not be drinking at all when you are taking it.
[quote=“Flicka”]
I noticed doctors here will prescribe days and days of paracetamol (also known as acetaminophen, Tylenol, etc.) yet forget to mention you should not be drinking at all when you are taking it.[/quote]
I don’t think I would go that far. A wee hot toddie and a couple of aspirin or paracetamol before you go to bed is my old man’s standard cure for any cold/flu. Then again he’s an O&G man so…
BTW if tigerman is still reading this, do you have any stomach problems from the aspirin or is the dose so small that any probs are unlikely?
Cosmed stocks aspirin, but I don’t think it’s on the display shelves even though it’s non-prescription. Ask the counter clerk instead. I know they stock 100mg tablets (Bayer, 30-pack), but not sure about bigger tablets.
The pinyin is a1 si1 pi1 lin2 and the chinese is 阿斯匹林 if that helps anyone.
You CAN get stomach ulcers from taking aspirin over a prolonged period of time. I’m not saying you should stop taking aspirin, but it would be wise if you drank a glass of milk with your aspirin. Milk coats the stomach and minimizes the damage. Another good precaution is if you can find the kind of coated aspirin that desolves more slowly (so it dissolves in your intestine). Unfortunately, I haven’t seen this in Taiwan.
I guess I should also point out that this problem isn’t limited to aspirin. All of the NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) have this issue. That includes ibuprofen.
Anyway, I do agree with you Tiger, aspirin is good for the heart, and a number of other problems.
As for why the Taiwanese believe that aspirin causes cancer - in my many years of living on this island, I’ve found that once something gets said on television, it becomes gospel. If Dr. Quack said in a 1960 TV interview that aspirin causes cancer, it becomes a folk legend, and hard to pry it loose from people’s minds even two generations later. I’m always hearing how mixing hot-cold food and drinks causes illness, a yin-yang theory believed even by Taiwanese who dismiss Chinese medicine. It took decades for people to stop believing that you could cure cancer with apples (apple importers in the 1960s started this legend). I’m still hearing about how the Japanese released snakes during WW II, and that’s why Taiwan has poisonous snakes today (this myth originated from 1950s KMT anti-Japanese propaganda).
And of course the case in England that was sucessfully prosecuted through the courts in England: The London Rubber Company (Durex) put it about that the pill caused cancer.
