Food has varying effects on your medications. They can reduce how much of the medicine is absorbed, they can INCREASE how much is absorbed or they can delay when the medication is absorbed.
Reduced absorption means you don’t get as much of the medication into your bloodstream and therefore it may not work as well as expected. Increased absorption means that you can get more side effects once the medication reaches its peak concentration in your bloodstream. Delayed absorption means that it takes longer to have the desired effect. This becomes most important with the sleeping medications
Here is the list – you can download this as a handout below.
Should take with food
- lurasidone (Latuda®)
- vilazodone (Viibryd®)
- ziprasidone (Geodon®). Bioavailability decreased by 1/2
Should not take with food
- Quetiapine XR (Seroquel®)– increases max concentration and therefore side effects
- Zolpidem (Ambien®)– delays absorption
- Eszopiclone (Lunesta®) or zaleplon (Sonata®)
- Trazodone (Deseryl®)– peak concentration 1hr nl, 2 hr with food
Should take consistently either with or without food
- Buspirone (Buspar®) – bioavailability doubles with food
- Paliperidone (Invega®) – increases with food
Click here to download the list and keep it handy.
Want to get downloads automatically as soon as they are published? Join my email community and they will be sent to directly to your inbox. No need to come to my website to get it.
This would explain why in the past. Some meds seemed to stop working.
Now it makes sense why sometimes Trazodone knocks me out within a half hour and sometimes it doesn’t seem to work. Thank you!
Yep, there you go…Glad this was helpful.
What about prozac?
With without food and how much gap?