Is it okay to drink water while eating? How to take medicine with food. The art of being healthy. Is it possible to divide tablets and open capsules

Proper nutrition is a system that allows you not only to lose weight without many hours of training in the gym and severe food restrictions, but also helps to improve health. The work of all organs and systems of the body improves if a person eats healthy foods according to a certain regimen. And here it is important to observe proper nutrition by the hour and a competent ratio of essential nutrients.

Very often, wanting to lose weight, people try to increase physical activity and significantly reduce the number of meals and portion sizes. But such actions can lead not only to the loss of extra pounds, but also to disrupt metabolism, worsen digestion, cause cellulite and other problems that do not paint even a noticeably thinner figure.

As a result of a lack of vitamins and minerals coming from food, the body tries to live in an economy mode, all processes in it slow down, and some even stop altogether. As a result, weight loss stops or goes very slowly. Proper diet and rational distribution of products during the day can solve this problem. Experts recommend eating 5 times a day:

breakfast (8:00-9:00);
second breakfast (10:00-11:00);
lunch (12:00-14:00);
afternoon tea (16:00-17:00);
dinner (18:00-20:00).

It is worth remembering that this diet for weight loss by the hour and the given meal times are only approximate. Each person lives according to his own biorhythms, has individual characteristics (age, gender, occupation, etc.) and diseases. All this must be taken into account when choosing a diet and time of meals. So, for example, there is a rule that for a good figure you can not eat after 6 pm. But experts recommend adhering to another rule: the last meal should be no later than 3-4 hours before bedtime. Therefore, the time of dinner and snacks may shift slightly.

Important! A proper diet and well-chosen foods only have a positive effect on health and weight loss if you make these rules your lifestyle.

The correct ratio of dietary components

Eating with appetite brings joy and pleasure. Proper nutrition will help you enjoy delicious meals and become slimmer. Experts call the main principles of such a system 4:

fragmentation during the day;
regularity and a clear schedule of meals;
rational selection of products;
the correct ratio of components during the day.

Breakfast should be rich in proteins - important building blocks for all body systems. It should also contain complex carbohydrates, which give a charge of vivacity and energy for the whole day. So, nutritionists recommend eating cereals, eggs, cottage cheese and other dairy products, fruits, whole grain bread for breakfast.

It is desirable to make the second breakfast light, but rich in useful substances. Fresh seasonal fruits and fruit salads, a glass of freshly squeezed juice or kefir, yogurt will do just fine with this role. Some people who do mental work like to carry a handful of nuts in their bag for lunch, which also helps to snack.

For lunch, experts recommend eating protein, complex carbohydrates and some fat. So, lean meat or fish, salads with olive or other vegetable oil, grains and legumes are best suited. An afternoon snack can be made the same as a second breakfast, for example, eat fruit or yogurt.

Dinner is the most important meal of the day, as overeating at this time can quickly affect your figure in the form of extra pounds. Here it is better to eat something light, but that will saturate you for the whole evening and will not make you walk in circles near the refrigerator, experiencing a strong desire to refresh yourself with something harmful. Lean meats, vegetable dishes, salads are suitable.

Important! It must be remembered that in addition to the diet, food compatibility plays a huge role in food. At first you have to look into specially designed tables, but after a few days you will remember what goes well with each other, and which foods are better to dilute for different meals.

Advantages and disadvantages of eating by the hour

Proper nutrition has its pros and cons. Among the main advantages of this system:

the presence of a variety of products in the diet - you can even eat some sweets without harm to the figure;
the possibility of regular use at any age and for any diseases;
long-term effect of weight loss and general recovery;
digestion, blood sugar levels, the work of the endocrine, immune, cardiovascular and genitourinary systems are normalized, metabolism and the removal of toxins are accelerated;
guaranteed result.

And among the minuses, the need to observe a certain meal time with proper nutrition, planning in advance and preparing dishes only from healthy and natural products, the mandatory presence of breakfast.

As you can see, eating according to the regime during the day is a very useful system for everyone. If you decide to follow such a diet for weight loss, you will soon notice that those extra pounds go away quickly and almost imperceptibly. Especially if you connect sports and other physical activities. It is important not to skip a single meal during the day. Don't be afraid, sticking to a routine isn't hard. To the power system by the hour quickly becomes addictive. And when someone alone in the family begins to use it for weight loss or recovery, often other household members will soon join him.

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When prescribing pills several times a day, most doctors mean by this a day, i.e. 24 hours. Internal organs work around the clock, bacteria in the same way work without rest and sleep. Therefore, medication should be divided at regular intervals, especially for antimicrobial agents.

With short-term courses of drugs, it is easier, because for a couple of days you can follow all the rules, and with long-term courses, certain difficulties often arise. A person takes a pill, and then forgets and drinks a second one “just in case”. Well, if the medicine is not potent. There are a lot of methods of dealing with such forgetfulness, everyone chooses for themselves: checkmarks on the calendar help someone, others put medicines in a conspicuous place, someone starts alarms and puts reminders on their mobile, etc. Pharmacological firms produce special calendars in which you can mark each appointment.

Before or after meals

All medications are divided into groups according to their connection with meals: "do not care", "before", "after" and "during meals". At the same time, in the mind of the doctor, the patient eats according to the schedule, without snacking during breaks, and the patient is sure that the eaten apple or pie has nothing to do with food.

A medicine prescribed to be taken “before meals” assumes that a person has not eaten anything before taking it and will not eat anything for at least a specified period after eating. The tablet must be taken in an empty stomach so as not to be exposed to gastric juices, food components, etc. in this case, a glass of juice or candy two hours or an hour before taking the medicine can drastically affect the result of treatment. There are cases when you need to eat exactly at the indicated time of admission, so it is advisable to clarify what exactly the doctor has in mind.

"With meals" is the easiest way to take it, but if the diet is far from ideal, it is better to ask the doctor which foods are preferable while taking this or that medicine.

Drugs that are prescribed "after eating" include drugs that irritate the gastric mucosa or help normalize digestion. In this case, a small amount of food will be enough.

Medication Rules

Most drugs must be taken separately. This is not very convenient, but swallowing the pills with a “handful”, you can get an unpredictable effect, at least half an hour should pass between doses.

Also, keep in mind that vitamins, combination cold remedies, herbs, and hepatic protectors should only be taken during treatment after consulting your doctor.

Not every tablet can be divided into several doses, some drugs are coated, damage to which can significantly affect the properties of the drug. The absence of a dividing strip on a tablet most often indicates that it is forbidden to divide it.

With rare exceptions, drugs are washed down only with water, plain and not carbonated. The exception is certain drugs that need to be washed down with acidic drinks, milk, mineral water or other separately specified liquids, the rules for taking are most often specified in the instructions.

The way you take the drugs is also important, for example, a chewable tablet that you swallow whole will take a very different time to work or will not produce any healing effect at all.

The form of release of the drug should also be taken into account. If the tablet has a special shell, then it cannot be crushed or cracked, because. its main function of the coating is to protect, for example, the stomach, esophagus or tooth enamel from the active substance. The capsule form indicates that the main medicinal substance should be absorbed into the body only in the intestine after a certain period of time, so they should not be opened.

Often in the annotation to the medicine you can read “take after meals” or “half an hour before meals”, or there are no recommendations at all in the instructions. In addition, the doctor gives advice when he prescribes the drug - drink it twice or thrice a day, or once, at night, etc. Why do these instructions, what do they change in the action of the tablets, do they need to be strictly observed or is it not important ? Does food, time of day, and sleep affect how drugs work? Let's figure it out.

The basic rule for taking any pills is the frequency of their use. When a doctor prescribes taking drugs several times a day, most specialists mean the whole day as a whole, and not the waking time, which is approximately 15-16 hours (minus the time that the patient spends in sleep from the day).

This is due to the fact that, despite the patient's sleep, his body continues to work - the heart contracts, the liver actively processes drugs, and the kidneys excrete their residues in the urine. Accordingly, microbes or viruses also attack the body around the clock, and diseases do not go to sleep with their host. Therefore, it is important to evenly distribute the intake of tablets at equal time intervals (if possible), especially if they are antiviral drugs, antibiotics, or some other means.

Accordingly, if the tablets need to be taken twice a day, the interval between their use should be approximately equal to 12 hours. That is, they can be accepted, for example, at 8.00 and 20.00. If this is a three-time appointment, the interval is reduced to 8 hours, you can make a schedule like this - 6.00, 14.00 and 20.00.

Fluctuations in the interval of taking the drug at 1-2 hours are acceptable, and it is not necessary to jump up on the alarm clock an hour earlier than expected to take the pill, you can adjust the schedule for yourself. However, taking three times a day does not mean chaotic use - without observing time intervals, as it is convenient for the patient if he forgot to take the drug on time. That is, you can not take the drug in the morning, then in the evening and two pills at once, after waiting 2-3 hours, because there was no time at work during the day. To avoid confusion, many experts indicate the approximate time of taking the medicine when prescribing it.

It is often easier to follow short courses of drugs. Usually the first few days the patient is more pedantic about his treatment, especially if he is not feeling well. But, as it becomes easier, or if the course is long, the pills are drunk less and less responsibly - and this is very bad! Often, rush, stress, or forgetfulness is the reason for missing or stopping medications. This leads to the fact that the treatment does not give the expected effect due to its incomplete course. There is another option: people take pills half asleep or forget that they have already taken them, and then repeat the dose, already superfluous. If the drug has strong effects, this can end sadly.

To combat this problem, various options are offered: placing the pills in a conspicuous place, a schedule on the wall with checkmarks when taking pills, reminders on the phone or alarm clocks. So, for oral contraceptives, manufacturers have long begun to mark the days of the week or the dates of the month on the blister itself so that women do not forget to take the pill. There are also mobile applications that help to follow the treatment schedule. And recently hybrids have appeared - an alarm clock-a first-aid kit, programmable and giving out a portion of the drug on a bell.

Human nutrition can significantly affect the activity of drugs and the rate of their absorption from the intestine into the blood. If we divide all drugs in relation to their relationship with nutrition, there are several groups:

Means that do not depend on meals,
Drugs that must be taken strictly before meals,
Medicines taken after meals
Drugs taken with food.

In addition, according to the patient's assumption, nutrition refers to regular meals in the form of breakfast, which is then followed by a full lunch and the same dinner. However, doctors say that frequent and incomplete snacking is also a meal, even a banana, tea with biscuits or yogurt eaten is nutrition. But, according to the patient, they are not considered normal meals. This means that taking medications without taking into account these snacks, but only the main meals, will be wrong from the point of view of the full assimilation of drugs.

Preparations that require taking “before meals” suggest that when you take the pill you are hungry, have not eaten anything at all, and you will not eat anything for the period specified in the instructions (usually 30 minutes). Thus, the drug enters the empty stomach, in which it will not interfere with food components mixed with gastric juice. This is due to the fact that the activity of drugs, if the patient allows himself just one candy or a glass of juice, can be disturbed almost to zero, absorption in the intestine will suffer, or the drug will simply collapse.

There are exceptions to the rule, especially in the treatment of digestive disorders or endocrine pathologies. Therefore, you always need to check with the doctor how the remedy is taken correctly - strictly on an empty stomach or after waiting a couple of hours after you have eaten.

With drugs from the “during meals” group, it is most understandable, although it is worth checking with the doctor how dense the meal should be and what components the meal should consist of, especially if you have it extremely irregular.

Taking drugs "after a meal" is rare. Usually these are means for the normalization of digestive functions, stimulating the separation of gastric juice or some others. It is also important to clarify with the doctor what is meant by nutrition in this case - any snacks or a plentiful, hearty meal.

The easiest way is with drugs that do not depend on food intake in any way, for them only the time interval for taking is set.

Why do some medicines need to be taken before meals and others after? Unless the result of treatment can depend on it or this? It turns out yes.

The question of the correct intake of medicines sooner or later confronts every person. It would seem that it is difficult to drink pills correctly. However, according to statistics, only 20% of patients correctly take medications prescribed by a doctor. Almost every second patient, leaving the doctor's office, completely forgets the recommendations received, at best, remembers the name of the drug. At the same time, the question “when and how to take medicines correctly” is far from idle, because the result and effectiveness of treatment largely depend on this.

Here are some rules for taking medications.

Accurately observe the multiplicity of reception drug.
Remember that when prescribing a medicine 2 times a day, under the word "day" the doctor means not the light part of the day, but all 24 hours. This means that it is correct to take the pills twice - after 12 hours, and in most cases it is not so important at what time, you plan the first dose of the medicine. The exceptions are, for example, sleeping pills taken closer to bedtime, heart and anti-asthma drugs, which are recommended to be drunk closer to midnight, anti-ulcer drugs, the effect of which is most expected in the morning.

How to take emergency medicines correctly? The answer is simple: at the moment when this help is needed.

How to take pills correctly: “before meals”, “during meals”, “after meals” Or even regardless of food intake? It is very important to follow the doctor's recommendations, because drugs are chemicals that interact with the environments and tissues of the body. For example, acetylsalicylic acid irritates the gastric mucosa, antibiotics of the macrolide group are destroyed by gastric juice. Some drugs, such as cardiac glycosides, antiarrhythmics, sulfonamides, do not tolerate proximity to food, it interferes with their absorption, others, on the contrary, need it and move along the digestive tract along with the food bolus, for example, enzyme preparations.

Take medicine "on an empty stomach"- this means 30-40 minutes before breakfast, when there are no digestive enzymes in the stomach yet. And before taking the pill, you can not drink anything, even tea with candy.

Drink pills "before meals" means that before taking the medicine you should not eat anything for 30-40 minutes and you will not eat for the same amount of time after you drink it. However, in some cases it is assumed that during this time you will definitely eat, and therefore check with your doctor how to take the medicine correctly.

Taking medication "while eating" more often than not raises questions. But keep in mind that the word "meal" does not have to mean a three-course meal. If taking the pills coincides with breakfast, lunch or dinner, it’s good, but if not, tea with crackers or a glass of milk will be enough.

Also keep in mind that drugs that irritate the stomach, such as aspirin, should not be mixed with spicy and sour foods, antidepressants are not combined with foods rich in tyramine, such as cheese, fish caviar, soy sauce, otherwise you are guaranteed daytime sleepiness .

How to take pills correctly "after meal"? Here it is necessary to understand. Immediately "after eating" drugs are usually taken that irritate the stomach, and 2 hours after eating, drugs that reduce the acidity of the stomach.

"Regardless of food" antibiotics, antihypertensives and antidiarrheals, antacids are most often taken.

Attention! If the doctor did not specify the procedure for taking the pills, and the instructions do not indicate how to take the medicine correctly, then the drug should be drunk 30 minutes before meals. By the way, this recommendation applies to most drugs.

Tablets should be washed down with plain water, unless otherwise advised. This is not tea, not juice, not compote, but non-carbonated drinking water.

How to take tablets or capsules correctly? Remember, everything that is dressed in a shell or capsule should not be chewed or bitten. Only "naked" tablets can be crushed, this accelerates their absorption. Chewable tablets are recommended to be chewed thoroughly, sucking - to dissolve. The release form of the drug is selected not for beauty and not even for the convenience of the patient, but based on the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of the drug.

Do not combine incongruous! Ideally, all medications should be taken separately. But how to drink pills correctly if their number exceeds 2-3 pieces and it is not possible to maintain intervals of 30 minutes between taking medications. The advice is simple - consult your doctor or pharmacist.

Never supplement your own doctor's prescriptions with “useful” medicines, in your opinion, “strengthening the immune system”, “protecting the liver”, “accelerating recovery from a cold”, herbal preparations. Always express your wishes to the doctor and coordinate all innovations with him. For the same reason, the doctor should know about all your illnesses and appointments of other specialists.

Follow the recommended course of medication. Most often, drugs are prescribed for a long time based on the cumulative effect or to consolidate the result. There is no other way to defeat the disease, otherwise how to take medicine correctly and for a long time.

Don't skip your medication. Lay out the pills in a conspicuous place, and in case of your forgetfulness, let the alarm clock remind you of the need to take a pill.

If the medication is missed, then after 1-2 hours it is not too late to take a pill, if more time has passed, wait for the next dose, but do not double the dose of the drug. Hormonal contraceptives and antibiotics require strict adherence to the schedule of admission.

Follow the rules for taking pills! Only then the medications taken will have the necessary effect and will not cause unwanted side effects.

Source
Medkrug.ru

Can you drink while eating? This question has probably been asked by many. Let's try to figure it out.

Important processes to be aware of

Our body performs a number of processes during eating and digestion. Therefore, in order to decide whether to drink water during a meal, it is important to understand and consider each of them.

The mouth produces a lot of saliva when eating, as it contains digestive enzymes that help break down food. They are very important in the formation of a healthy digestive process.
Our stomachs contain gastric juice that aids in digestion and kills bacteria that can be ingested with food. It is important for this juice to function properly as it aids in the breakdown of food and allows the stomach to contract and "pulverize" the food to a point that allows it to move through the small intestine.
Nutrients from the foods we eat are transferred through the bloodstream to the liver, from where they are distributed to different parts of the body. The liver requires enough water to function and do its job properly.

To drink or not to drink?

The answers to this question are ambiguous. There are different opinions on this matter. The main focus of the discussion is the question: "Is drinking water during a meal good or bad for the digestive process?". There is no doubt that drinking too much water with meals can interfere with the natural and necessary levels of bile and stomach acid. This will slow down the digestion process and reduce the body's ability to produce enough digestive enzymes to digest food properly. Without proper digestion, toxic waste buildup can occur no matter what you eat. The same applies to other drinks that we could consume during our meal. Alcoholic and sugary sodas "dry out" saliva, making it even more difficult to digest food properly. Cold drinking water or other beverages slow down digestion and can create cramps in some people.

It's no secret that drinking water before and after a meal improves the digestion process. The general consensus is that by drinking water about half an hour before a meal, we protect our body from dehydration, which promotes optimal digestion. For the liver, this is no less important, and, therefore, we help its optimal work. Drinking water thirty minutes after a meal can also help keep the body hydrated and replenish fluids lost during digestion. It is important to note that in case of dehydration, it is better to drink water with meals than not to drink, since in this case it can be very difficult for the body to digest food.

The Other Side of the Medal

It's also important to note that, according to Dr. Michael Picco of the Mayo Clinic, there is absolutely no concern that water will dilute digestive juices or interfere with digestion. In fact, during or after a meal, it aids in digestion. Water and other fluids help break down food, allowing the body to absorb nutrients. Water also softens the stool, and this, in turn, helps prevent problems such as constipation. So far, the clinic staff makes no mention of the temperature or amount of water, but apparently they are confident that drinking with meals is usually good.

Based on the information provided, we can apply a few tips. It seems most important to stay hydrated throughout the day. And if you must drink with meals, don't drink too much, and avoid alcohol and acidic drinks. Drink warm water in moderation. A small glass will most likely not interfere with digestion, and by adding a little lemon, you can help with this process. If possible, try drinking half an hour before and half an hour after meals, and do not drink during meals. Watch how you feel. And if it works positively for you, then stick to that pattern, and if not, adjust accordingly.

Listen to your body. Sometimes what he feels and wants is more important than rigidly following the rules.