Pills, they're the answer to every one of life's little problems, or so the pharmaceutical companies would like us to think. They come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours, but have you ever thought about why? Why are some boring white and round, while others are bright pink and look like a torpedo?


To get to the bottom of pills, you have to first look at the delivery mechanism - where is the pill meant to end up, and where is it designed to be dissolved? The simplest or most common example is the humble paracetamol tablet; I can't imagine how many of those tiny white pain-relievers I've swallowed over my lifetime. Have you ever kept it in your mouth a little too long? It tastes foul and starts to dissolve immediately. That's because the tablet is destined for your stomach, the first stop on the magical mystery tour that is your gut.

Tablets, Capsules or Halfway In Between?

Pills that don't need to survive past the stomach, mainly because their contents - the drugs you so desperately need - are acid stable, therefore don't need much, if any, of a protective coating. That's why tablets often taste horrible, because there's nothing between your tongue and the drugs and packing agents that make up the pill. Other pills, such as lower digestive tract-targeted capsules like Immodium, or the majority of anti-biotics that need protection from the harsh acidic environment of the stomach, need torpedo-like casings to keep them safe. They're often coated in hard starch-based two-piece shells, which form that essential protective barrier and control the drug's release. That's why some pills are just chalky, solid tablets, and others are capsules forming hollow mini bombs, full of stuff you're never meant to see.


Of course, not all tablets are the same size and shape either. Your common white and chalky tablet has somewhat given way to a new raft of "caplets." These new-fangled pills, which are essentially your bog standard round tablet compressed into a different shape, are meant to be easier to swallow. They're slightly more expensive to produce, or at least they're slightly more costly to buy, but they do exactly the same thing - hit that stomach acid and dissolve, releasing the goods to be absorbed into your bloodstream.

Blue and Yellow Purple Pills

Pills, in all their various shapes and sizes, also come in a myriad of different colours. Since the 1960s, when colour pigment technology hit the pharmaceutical companies already churning out millions of pills, we've had almost every colour under the Sun available; 80,000 different colours to be exact. But why are different pills different colours?

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The obvious answer is because they look pretty, and while that's surely part of it - you're more likely to remember an attractive-looking pill than some crappy white one - the real reason was, at least in the beginning, just because they could. However, it made telling different pills from others much easier; it's a lot easier to spot that important bright pink pill out the plethora of boring chalky white ones. As pills became the drug delivery mechanism of choice, colour began to be used to differentiate prescription pills from those you could buy over the counter. While that generally still holds true today, there are quite a lot of branded pills these days that use colour as part of their image, from the packet down to the capsule, complete with the company logo stamped on the side. A good example of that kind of thing is Nurofen, which is actually just ibuprofen wrapped up in a fancy casing, and has that striking red branding plastered all over it. Or, of course, those little blue pills that everyone seems to able to remember - do you think Viagra would be such a household name if the tablets weren't blue?


So there you have it. Pills come in different shapes and sizes, mainly because of where they're meant to end up inside you, and they're all an assortment of pretty colours because it makes them easier to spot and remember. Now, pass the panadol will ya? I've got a monster of a headache.

Image credit: Capsules and Pills from Shutterstock


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