Calcium pills are bigger than any other pill I have ever taken. Even the ones advertised as "petite" or "easy to swallow" are huge and hard for me to swallow. Is there something about calcium that makes the pills need to be so big?
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Answers ( 1 )
I suspect it is a matter of marketing, as usual. People don't like to take several smaller pills when they could take just one big one, and manufacturers will always give you what you want unless it is proven to be dangerous.
Bigger doses are not so hard to swallow if they come as a powder in a gel capsule, but I guess those are harder to mass produce, and therefore more expensive, so no one buys them, so no one makes them unless the tablet form has proven dangerous.
It's not just calcium, of course. I take a bunch of pills every day, and my morning menagerie includes big, elongated tablets of several types. I used to be able to just open my gullet and gulp them all down, but in my old age my gullet is getting less flexible and prone to contract involuntarily; as a result, once a month or so I choke on one of those big ones and have to cough it up, abrading my throat in the process and leaving me with a sore throat for a day or two. So I'd call the big tablets "dangerous", I don't know about you. But I'm not keen to choke to death just to make a point, so if you can think of a way to lobby the manufacturers to make smaller tablets or capsules available, please let me know and I'll help!
Yes, I know: just relax and swallow one big pill at a time. You may have more unassigned time than I do.
BTW, the makers of Vitamin D3, Vitamin E, Vitamin B12, and zinc citrate seem to understand that their customers like to be able to choose how much they want to take at once; why is this a problem for makes of calcium, Vitamin C, glocosamine, ... ?