What Medications Are Gluten Free?

If you use either over-the-counter or prescription medications, you need to know which are gluten free. Gluten is a filler ingredient that can be added to medications. This article will walk you through how to identify which medications have gluten.

Do Medications Have Gluten?

Unfortunately, many medications may use wheat or wheat starch as fillers. Fillers are inert ingredients that help fill the capsule or help enable a pill to be more time released.

This is not going to be a long post listing every medication. It is physically impossible to list every medication when thousands upon thousands of medications are on the market, both over the counter and prescription. This is not even counting all of the generic manufacturers.

How To Use DailyMed To Look Up Medications:

I will teach you how to look up your medications on this government website, DailyMed. The National Library of Medicine runs the DailyMed database and it contains labeling submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by drug companies.

You have full free access to this government medication database, and you can look up any medication by manufacturer, including all generics!

*Note, this database lists what the manufacturer submits to the National Library of Medicine. Because the FDA does not require gluten to be declared in pharmaceuticals, they may or may not submit gluten as an ingredient. Many pharmaceuticals also source their ingredients from outside manufacturers who may not declare gluten in their ingredient list.

Step 1: Log into DailyMed by clicking the link above. This is what the home screen looks like. Enter the medication name in the search at the top. For this example, I am using Advil.

If you are using a prescription medication, enter the full name on the prescription bottle. Use the name in large letters on your bottle.

Step 2: You will notice in many cases a drop-down will appear. Click on the one that is match to the name of the medication on the pill bottle. This example pulled all of the different types of Advil.

Note, if you put ibuprofen into the search, it would have pulled pages of different generic ibuprofen manufacturers. If you are using generic Advil, you would need to click on the generic brand in your list.

Step 3: Once you click on the medication, you will see a list of information with "+" signs next to each. Those + signs open to more information if you click on them.

In this example, there is just the Liqi Gels. In prescription medications, you may see multiple listings of the medication. Usually, they are listed individually by dose (how many milligrams of medication are in the pill).

Step 4: Click on the "Ingredients And Appearance" button.

Step 5: This is the list of ingredients in the medication. If there is gluten in the medication, it should be listed here. As I mentioned above, because the FDA doesn't require drug makers to declare gluten, they may not submit this ingredient.

*If you have any further questions, you need to contact the medication manufacturer. You can find the contact information of any drug manufacturer, including generics, on their brand website. You can also talk to your pharmacist to get the information on gluten in your medication.