Painless Pill

Shots or pills? How about BOTH?

This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.

I would pick pills over shots any day! Easier to take and PAINLESS – hypodermic needles are scary!! But what about the drugs that HAVE to be injected?

For those, Alex Abramson from MIT and a team of international scientists have a solution. Shots in a pill!

Yes, you heard me right. There are shots INSIDE the pill!

The pill contains a spring loaded needle wrapped inside a sugar disk. The needle tip is actually a crystallized drug, like insulin. Once in your stomach, the sugar dissolves and releases the spring. That shoots the needle tip into the stomach lining – similar to a traditional shot!

BUT! Since our stomach wall doesn’t have pain receptors, you probably won’t feel THIS injection.

What happens to the rest of the capsule? It harmlessly passes through your system.

The scientists tested this capsule in pigs. Turns out, it works just as well as regular insulin shots! Good news for all us scaredy cats!

Yay, I won’t have to shut my eyes next time! But do I still get a lollipop?