China Health Guide: Which OTC Medicines to Get Back Home
Going home for Spring Festival? It might be a good idea to bring back a bumper stock of OTC medicines that aren't available in China. In this post, three Beijing United Family Hospital (BJU) Family Medicine doctors give their advice about which medications to get while you're back home.
Below, we'll talk about which common over-the-counter medicines are unavailable in China. We'll look at what substitutions you can make and discuss when it's best to bring enough medicine with you from home. Here with the US angle is Dr. Lijun Liang, who was educated in China and trained in New York City, and giving us the UK point of view is Dr. Andrew Perrett, our Cambridge-educated and highly experienced British doctor. Themselves expats living in China, they have some great tips for generally healthy people who want to make sure they have everything they need to thrive in the Middle Kingdom.
Certain children's medications and supplements
When you move to China, many aspects of your life will change but many things will stay the same. You'll still get colds and headaches. If you like to take dietary supplements, you'll probably also want to continue taking those, too. Dr. Perrett explains, “For favorite over-the-counter medicines, it’s best to bring these, especially if you really strongly prefer particular brands or particular flavors of children’s medications. The following may be hard to find in China: child-friendly multivitamins (not all brands are available here), vitamin D supplements (especially higher doses), phenylephrine cold medicines, and some non-medicinal products such as throat lozenges and menthol gum, especially sugar-free varieties,” he notes.
Strong aspirin
If you’re American and a big fan of using aspirin for headaches, Dr. Liang has the following advice: “In China, aspirin is rarely used for pain relief. In the States, it’s so cheap and widely available that it’s used in higher doses for headaches and sore joints. The stuff we have here is called baby aspirin because it’s so weak. We use it in low doses as a cardiac prophylactic. So, we have aspirin but we don’t have the aspirin formulations for pain and headaches.” She suggests using ibuprofen instead, which works equally well and has fewer harmful side effects. Common painkillers like ibuprofen, paracetamol, and Tylenol are readily available in Chinese pharmacies.
For children and adults with allergies, you may want to consider bringing certain medications with you from back home. “EpiPens aren’t available here,” cautions Dr. Liang. “I know that the pharmacy can prepare a vial of the medicine with a syringe for the same effect, but not the same brand. Benadryl is only available here in IV form, not in oral form,” she adds, so if you know you like taking Benadryl you should bring it over. Other allergy medications, like Claritin and Zyrtec, are available in China, but if you have a favorite formulation or prefer a different brand, it’s probably best to bring a good supply with you.
Specific brands
If you’re very loyal to a specific brand or formulation, our advice is to make sure you bring enough for your stay in China. “Sometimes, patients want a specific medication for a one-off issue, and we aren’t always able to accommodate,” says Dr. Liang, “but we can usually get them something similar. But, if it’s a long-term medication, for example, a medication for their blood pressure – something they need on a daily basis and they can’t go back home all the time for refills – then we can give them something similar and that’s usually okay. For chronic medical issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, we’re usually able to find something equivalent if the patient is willing to switch,” she says.
Dr. Lijun Liang is an American Family Medicine physician at Beijing United Family Hospital. She speaks English and Mandarin. To make an appointment with her, please call the BJU Service Center at 4008-919191.
Dr. Andrew Perrett is a British Family Medicine physician at Beijing United Family Hospital. He speaks English and Mandarin. To make an appointment with him, please call the BJU Service Center at 4008-919191.
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