Over-the-counter medicines Often, popular medicines are not recommended

35 known drugs that you should not buy

Headache, cold, heartburn: Especially in supposedly harmless diseases, many people quickly resort to medication. However, self-medication poses risks, health experts say. Another problem is that many common drugs are not very suitable and can sometimes increase the risk of side effects.

Self-therapy of illnesses can be dangerous

Many people assume that OTC painkillers are safe because they are over the counter. However, some of these medicines can be associated with extremely dangerous side effects, including increasing the risk of heart failure or cardiac arrest. Other freely available medicines can also harm your health. And some remedies can increase the risk of side effects because ingredients are not meaningfully combined, Stiftung Warentest reports.

For colds, headaches, heartburn and co, many consumers use over-the-counter medicines. However, many of these medicines are only of little use, as Stiftung Warentest reports. (Image: benjaminnolte / fotolia.com)

Many over-the-counter medicines are ill-suited

Cold, sore throat, constipation or heartburn - there are over-the-counter medicines for everything. Customers like to access well-known products.

But many remedies, the Stiftung Warentest according to an evaluation of studies, are not very suitable, for example because ingredients are not meaningfully combined.

Therefore, they can even increase the risk of side effects.

The experts had a total of 35 popular drugs for their investigation.

Treat symptoms more effectively

Various drugs such as Aspirin Complex, Grippostad C or Wick MediNait, for example, promise a sweeping attack against common cold symptoms.

"But a watering can principle does not make sense" Bettina Sauer from Stiftung Warentest in a statement.

"Instead, you should specifically treat the symptoms that really bother you, such as taking a cough suppressant or nasal spray at short notice."

The scratching neck does not need any medical lozenges, because moistening (sugar-free) sweets relieve the symptoms perfectly.

Other home remedies for sore throat such as sage tea can help.

Ingredients of combined preparations often do not make sense

As the Stiftung Warentest writes, a team of experts regularly reviews all drugs that are marketed most frequently according to market analyzes, including around 1,500 over-the-counter medicines. About 500 of them perform poorly.

Among the few suitable drugs are many combination preparations with several active ingredients.

Known examples are cold remedies such as Aspirin Complex, Grippostad C, Wick MediNait or analgesics such as double cleft compact, neuralgine, thomapyrin. In most cases the ingredients of such preparations do not make sense supplement.

The experts write about "Thomapyrin": "The combination of ASA and paracetamol offers no additional therapeutic benefit, but carries the risk of the different adverse effects of the two painkillers. Caffeine can promote abuse. "

And to "WICK MediNait cold syrup for the night" states: "Not meaningful combination of a pain, a cough and a calming and a stimulating agent, which are distributed through the blood throughout the body and thereby also the nasal mucosa to swell. Contains alcohol. "

In addition, the combination of different drugs in the same drug is associated with an increased risk of side effects.

Effectiveness often insufficiently proven

For other drugs that the Stiftung Warentest rated as unsuitable, the therapeutic efficacy is not sufficiently proven or low compared to the side effects.

So preparations for constipation with aloe or castor oil have a dramatic laxative and strongly irritate the intestine.

Better are laxative laxatives, such as psyllium, Senna, sodium picosulfate, lactulose or macrogol.

These and other medicines are included in the list of medicines that Stiftung Warentest has recently put together. Therein are 35 known and less suitable over-the-counter preparations.

Consumers should instead choose suitable alternatives, which are also to be found in the table.

The drug evaluations carried out by Stiftung Warentest are based on specialist literature as well as international and national clinical studies in four stages from "suitable" to "unsuitable". (Ad)