Why colored medicines?
Colored medicines are easier for patients to distinguish – especially for seniors, who often have to take many different medicines at different times of the day, the coloring is an advantage. It structures the intake rhythm, for example the red pill in the morning, the white pill at noon, and the blue pill in the evening. In this way, the medications are not so easily confused.
The more striking the tablets are (color, shape, but also dosage form), the easier they are to recognize (e.g. the blue potency pill or the headache tablet with a cross). Some patients often cannot remember the name of the medication they have taken, but they can remember its color. Doctors may then be able to draw conclusions about the drug.
Blue calms, red wakes up
Tablets and capsules
However, the color of a drug not only promotes recognition, but also has an influence on the effectiveness of the drug and its acceptance by patients.
Color plays an important role in the placebo effect of tablets and capsules, for example. A number of studies have come to the following conclusions, for example:
- Depressive patients responded better to yellow-colored tablets than to green or red ones.
- Patients with hypertension, on the other hand, had a preference for white tablets.
- Overall, red and black tablets appear to be more effective than white ones. Brown ones are reported to have the strongest laxative effect.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers have been using these findings from color psychology for some time. This is why tranquilizers are often colored blue, stomachicides green, strong painkillers and cardiovascular drugs red, antidepressants and stimulants tend to be red, yellow or pastel-colored, and contraceptive pills lavender or pink.
Colored injections
Leading the pack in placebo treatment of pain is the purple vitamin B12 shot. A pain researcher calculated that it was equivalent to the effect of five milligrams of morphine.
Price and taste
In addition to color and dosage form, a drug’s price and taste also play a role. Many patients believe that an expensive drug works better than a cheap one, and a bitter-tasting medicine better than a pleasant-tasting one.
