Why do we need food in thr stomach for some medicines, and based on this, is there a “best food” to have before taking medicine?
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Most of the time when a medication is to be taken with food, is because the medication itself stimulates the secretion of stomach acid. If you are making stomach acid but have nothing in your stomach to digest, you get gastritis and reflux. In bad cases it leads to stomach ulcers. Any food is generally fine, just something for that acid to digest.
You don’t NEED food for any medicine, they tell you to do that because if the medication is rough on the stomach, it can cause a stomach ache if eaten on an empty stomach
Other than otherwise written about, sometimes the reason is the medication is not water soluble, so it needs some fat to dissolve in. Mostly any food has enough fat but I believe there are some medications requiring specifically fatty food.
Some medicines can be very irritating to the stomach, and food reduces the irritation and build up of acid in the stomach that might cause heartburn / reflux.
There’s really no best food, other than avoiding food that you already experience discomfort eating. It’s more a matter of quantity and a small snack or light meal should suffice for most people. If you notice stomach irritation, take the medication with a larger meal.
It’s just so it won’t irritate your stomach so much, AFAIK you can take it by itself and it still works but will be uncomfortable
The solution to pollution is dilution.
Many medicines are acidic by themselves and so you don’t want it sitting around by itself burning your stomach lining. Instead just having anything else in there with it dilutes the acid to meaningless levels while still giving the full dose of medicine.
Source : I’m a pharmacist
They can be a BUNCH of reasons so i’ll try and list the most common without making this too long.
Médecines are made of two parts : an active molecules (drug) and a galenic vector (tablet, liquid, cream, you name it)
Now when you take a medecin in any form, your body will absorb it.
According to the kind of drug, they can be different paths to absorb the drug, and differents mecanisms in your body can be activated upon absorbtion.
First, to absorb a molecule, your body has various paths : for greasy molecules (oils), water affined ones, sugars, ions etc…
Active drugs might need to piggy back on one of these paths, and to increase you drug uptake, having a full stomach (oily drugs will piggy back on cholesterol absorbtion path for exemple) or an empty one (some drugs will compete with food for a specific pathway, and so eating at the same time will reduce absorption) can help.
Then, some drugs might be prodrugs. Imagine a car without wheels, that will need wheels added to be “active”. That’s the case with codein for exemple. Usually, your liver will transform them (not always but let’s stay simple). Well some foods can increase or decrease your liver’s speed of transformation, and change your uptake. The most well known is grapefruit juice. So then it’s not only weather you’ve eaten or not but what you ate.
Lastly, as I saw in another comment, some drugs can trigger your stomach’s acid secretions, and are then better taken with food to avoid stomach’s Burns (ulcers). That’s after they have been absorbed
Drugs behavior and absorbtion might also change according to the galenic form, so there is no “perfect drug meal”, noe is there a perfect time of day (better to take the pill in the evening, but propranolol can give you nightmares so better in the morning…) ask your pharmacist or physician or read the instructions for each medication you take 🙂
Hope this was clear !
I take a medication labeled “take with food” because it’s to help me digest it. (My body doesn’t make a certain enzyme to break down fat. I take it because I’m eating, not eating because I’m taking it.) I once got into a fight with a school “nurse“ because it was a half day and we weren’t eating lunch, but she kept trying to make me take it. (Pre-internet era, though she still should have had resources to to look things up…) She wouldn’t believe me, so she called my mom who set her straight. Mom was not pleased about that phone call.
There are a lot of factors as to why you might need to take a medication with food, and there are even some foods and drinks that may be contraindicated. For instance some medications are not recommended with grapefruit juice because it blocks an enzyme in the small bowel that is responsible for digesting the medication and as a result, more of the medication will wind up in your bloodstream doing potential damage to your liver. Somewhat counterintuitively it can also block certain transporters responsible for circulating the drug in your body, thus reducing the dosage and effectiveness.
Best food to take with medicine is fruits, preferably sweet fruits, like pears, melons, nectarines, apples, figs…
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