Don't Waste Money on This Popular Cold Medicine That Doesn't Work

Colds and allergies can make you feel miserable, and can send you reaching for one of the many over-the-counter (OTC) drugs on the market that promise to help you feel better. Unfortunately, if you've been buying certain popular meds, you may have been wasting hard-earned money from your bank account.

An advisory panel to the FDA announced recently that phenylephrine, the main ingredient in many popular OTC cold and sinus meds, may not be effective. Here's why.

Phenylephrine may not work to help fight cold and sinus symptoms

According to an FDA briefing document, all 16 members of an FDA advisory panel found that the nasal decongestant phenylephrine is most likely ineffective due to the fact it is metabolized too quickly, the oral bioavailability is less than 1%, and the half-life is very short.

All of this technical language basically means that cold and sinus drugs with phenylephrine as their active ingredient most likely do not provide the promised relief for a stuffy nose. And, that's a big problem because phenylephrine is the active ingredient in a ton of popular drugs including (but not limited to) versions of drugs made by the following manufacturers:

• Vicks (Nyquil and Dayquil)
• Benadryl
• Sudafed
• Mucinex

If you have an over-the-counter cold or allergy drug in your medicine cabinet that you didn't specifically ask a pharmacist for, it probably has phenylephrine in it. That's especially true considering this was recently the most popular oral decongestant in the U.S. and consumers bought $1.8 billion of drugs with this active ingredient in just the past year alone.

Don't buy medication with phenylephrine to relieve your symptoms

With the FDA advisory panel unanimously agreeing that these meds don't provide relief, you might assume they would be pulled from the market now. But that's not necessarily going to happen right away.

Phenylephrine has been approved for over-the-counter use since the 1970s and grew in popularity when pseudoephedrine access was restricted by lawmakers in 2005. In 2007, an FDA committee reviewed phenylephrine and raised questions about whether it was effective, but determined further research was required.

Studies in multiple large clinical trials have revealed that it isn't, but the FDA isn't required to listen to the advisory panel. And, the same researchers pointing out problems today also questioned the effectiveness of the drug back in 2007 when the FDA declined to act.

Even if the FDA moves forward with pulling products with this ingredient from the market, it will take time to complete the process and stakeholders will be allowed to weigh in. An FDA spokesperson declined to say when the agency would move forward with taking action, and the Advisory Committee did warn the public would need to be educated on why these common drugs were removed.

Since these products are likely to continue being sold for a while, it's important to be an informed consumer so you don't charge cold medicine on your credit card that doesn't provide the relief you're looking for.

If you're among the 50% of households that studies showed used an oral decongestant last year, you may want to look for meds with pseudoephedrine instead of phenylephrine. Drugs containing pseudoephedrine can be sold without a prescription as well, but they are kept behind the pharmacy counter, so you'll have to ask for them.

The added hassle of asking a pharmacist to get your meds may be annoying, but it's a lot less annoying than continuing to struggle with a stuffy nose while throwing away your hard-earned money on meds that may do nothing at all to provide relief.