Has anyone bought generic topa overseas? It's much less expensive. Any thoughts?
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Generic Topa??
Hi kayaker,
Generic drugs differ in an important way from name brands. The bindings that hold the drug into a pill is what is different. I know this from checking out the ingredients of many of my over the counter stuff (i.e Tylenol brand versus the cheaper no-name brand, or store brand) and I know because I have worked for the government health department. So, the bindings on generic drugs sometimes make you sick. I felt sick with generic Tylenol and that's why I looked it up. Also, some of these bindings are actually exposive and are used in construction and all kinds of things that you wouldn't believe! After all, you are swallowing this stuff.
Just my 2 cents worth.
CB -
Generic Topa??
What is generic topa called?Comment
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Generic Topa??
I don't know about the particular brand, but ... in my former life I was responsible for organising for scientists to give lectures to science teachers. One scientist, a Canadian bio-chemist, gave a lecture on the manufacture of drugs. It was really informative and kinda scary.
I don't know if you have any science background, but if I assume you don't (sorry if this is too simplistic): all chemicals are in the form of molecules, atoms in certain shapes, like meccano (??? constructions sets that kids use). But, if you think that, for example, a certain drug might contain a chemical that is one blue, two green, one yellow, chemical, you can imagine that there are many different ways these can be combined. And this is how it is in real life.
In real life, these are combined in one way only to get the "real" drug. The one that gets the true reaction in our bodies that we want. But instead of colours, it is how they are how they are physically positioned against each other.
When they are differently positioned they are called 'isomers'. Thalidomide was an isomer of the "real" drug. So sometimes isomers are really dangerous. Mostly, though, they are just useless.
The problem with generic drugs is that they are not always properly screened for the presence of isomers. According to this scientist, this mostly means you are just getting a whole lot of crap when you buy it. Drugs need to go through a lot of screening to to weed out the isomers to ensure purity. Generic drugs are cheap because they cut out the screen process.
That is not to say their active product is not correct ... it is just that their active product may be chemically the same as a whole lot of non-active product. There is no way of telling this unless they do further screening. They are not lying, technically, about their active product.
Same thing happens, by the way, with cheaper Vitamin and Mineral companies. Caveat Emptor.
At the risk of sounding racist ... please don't buy any drugs, vitamins etc sourced from India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China,Vietnam or anywhere in Asia except perhaps Japan. Keep an eye on the US because they are outsourcing and their monitoring is suspect. I would go for Canada and Europe at the moment.Comment
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Generic Topa??
Wandering, that was a very interesting description. I LOVE that kind of thing - I am a wanna-be scientist. So, it's not really just the ingredients that you need to know (and the bindings), it's the way the ingredients are put together. All Canadian products for consumption are labelled with the ingredients so I had fun looking up everything on the generic and the name-brand Tylenol bottles.
Anyway, I wouldn't try generic topa.
CBComment
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