Hi all. Hope you are all coping with the heat and sun!
I learned a surprising fact yesterday which was to not take vitamins with caffeine because it prevents absorption. I then did some research and found the same is true for medications (it can either speed up or prevent absorption).
I've been taking lupus meds for about five years, but not once has a doc said this to me. One of my great pleasures (and there aren't many) is having a morning cup of black tea, and I take my medication at the same time. But seemingly I've been doing it all wrong.
So here's my question: How much of a gap should you leave between ingesting caffeine and medication, so, if I have my morning tea, how long should I wait before taking pills?
Thanks all xx ☕☕☕☕
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Treetop33
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You would have to drink an awful lot of tea/coffee/other caffeine containing drinks for this drug interaction to happen. Probs best to leave about an hour between drinking caffeine and taking drugs though.
This was one of my research interests in a previous life so it must be true
Interesting, isn't it. I think to some extent, the likely effect will depend on whether you are already weak in that area. I did some basic genetic testing a few years ago along with some functional testing and found that my CYP1A2 both theoretically and actually runs a bit slow. (Part of cytochrome P450 enzyme family). My CYP1A1 is theoretically fast, but actually reasonably normal. Slow CYP1A2 may reduce speed of breakdown of caffeine, which I never did well with, and also oestrogens and meds such as amitriptyline, which always affected me disproportionately even in small doses. Fortunately I could manage just fine without the amitriptyline and had already stopped it (slowly) a few years before. I decided I could live without caffeine too! If CYP1A1 is too fast, you may build up more toxic intermediates than your phase 2 CYP1A2 (and others) can deal with, especially if it a bit slow. A whole bunch of foods which can affect both. Some that speed up A1, some that inhibit it, and some that inhibit A2, best avoided if slow. Cheers
Same here! Anything affecting methylation can mess up your oestrogen(s) processing. MTHFR is common and overemphasised but if MTHFR is a little bit slow, it can have an effect further downstream, like with COMT. Magnesium is very useful, I find, as well as getting B vitamins optimal (after making sure you don't have low B12 in serum and assuming no family history of B12 deficiency or PA. B12D is strongly genetic. Supplementing will make an already difficult diagnosis much harder, so if symptomatic, assume deficiency and do as much testing as you can first. Sorry to nag, you no doubt are well aware of all that!) Cheers
It makes sense to leave at least one hour gap between your caffeine intake and medications. Medications are absorbed into the bloodstream in the stomach, so if you just took a dose of caffeine, there will be a lot of caffeine in your stomach and it might prevent the medication from being absorbed properly. You should also let the caffeine wear off before you take another medication.
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