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Taking Medication

Management of illness through oral medication is the usual route of drug delivery. The limiting efficiency is the individual.

Significant to all is gastric emptying time, delayed or rapid, the result is fluctuations in response with each dose of medication taken.

 GASTROINTESTINAL TRACT

The stomach is divided into 3 regions:

• fundus, reservoir for undigested material
• body
• antrum is for mixing motions and is a pump for gastric emptying.

 EXIT OF MEDICATION

• To get out of the stomach a pill has to pass through the pyloric valve into the small intestine and its size needs to be 1 to 2 mm.

STOMACH  PH

• Empty stomach 1.5 to 2.0
• Fed stomach is 2.0 to 6.0.

A large volume of water with medication raises the PH of stomach contents to 6.0 to 9.0.

Some drugs  have a better chance of dissolving in fed state than in a fasting state.

STOMACH  EMPTYING

The rate of your stomach emptying depends on the density volume and calories consumed.

Nutritive density of meals helps determine gastric emptying time.

It doesn’t matter for this part of the process whether the meal has high protein, fat, or carbohydrate it. It is the calorific load that is significant.

FACTS

• Increase in acidity and caloric value slows down gastric emptying time.

• Biological factors such as age, body mass index (BMI), posture and disease status influence gastric emptying.

• In elderly persons, gastric emptying is slowed down.

• Generally females have slower gastric emptying rates than males.

• Stress increases gastric emptying rates

• Depression slows it down.

•  Fluids taken at body temperature leave the stomach faster than colder or warmer fluids.

• Studies have revealed that gastric emptying of some pills in the fed state can also be influenced by size. Small-size tablets leave the stomach earlier in the digestive process than larger ones.

CONCLUSION

Drug absorption in the gastrointestinal tract is a highly

variable procedure.

Delivery systems are emerging as an effective means

of enhancing the bioavailability by improving the controlled release of many drugs.

The increasing sophistication of new delivery technology will

ensure the development of an increased number of drugs that have at present absorption window, low bioavailability.

January 10, 2014 - Posted by Chris | Medication | lifestyle