The way you take your medicine has a big impact on how fast your body absorbs it

When you have a headache and reach for pain medication, you may not think about your body positio.

The discovery is based on what is believed to be the first model to mimic the mechanism by which a drug dissolves in the human stomac.

"We were very surprised that posture had such a large effect on how quickly the tablet dissolves," said senior author Rajat Mittal, an engineer at Johns Hopkins University, an expert in fluid dynamic.

In recent years, models have been built to realistically reflect how several major organs work, especially the hear.

Most pills don't work until the stomach has sent its contents into the intestine.

The research team tested four pose.

"For the elderly, the sedentary or the bedridden, whether they turn left or right makes a huge difference," Mittal sai.

Standing up straight is a good second choice, essentially the effect of lying flat on your bac.

The team also considered which stomachs were not fully functioning due to gastroparesis caused by diseases such as diabetes and Parkinson'.

The effect of stomach problems on drug dissolution is similar to that of posture - which underscores the important influence of postur.

"Posture itself has a big impact, in terms of tablet dissolution, it's the equivalent of someone having a very serious dysfunction in their stomach," Mittal sai.

Future work will try to predict how changes in the biomechanics of the stomach affect how the body absorbs drugs, how food is processed in the stomach, and how posture and gastroparesis affect food digestio.

Johns Hopkins authors include: PhD student Sharun Kuhar; Associate Professor Xu Zhengxi; and Professor of Medicine Jay Pasrich.

This work was supported by NSF CBET 2019405 and NIH 5R21GM139073-02.