^A bit radical. Perhaps, like you say, solubility and co-administration of food/drugs might change which organs and enzymes grab a hold of the original drug. The could change the metabolites as well as what % reaches the bloodstream.
Perhaps most meals contain 20 grams of fat soluble nutrients, and would therefore interfere with absorption? It also probably depends upon the drug, and which liver enzymes it fits into. It also probably depends on the individual, who might have increased or decrease metabolism (owing to defective alleles) for any given enzyme. If left unverified, these things could be used as a scapegoat for inconsistent effects from most medicine.
I agree that the advisory to "eat with a meal" on many drugs is to prevent indigestion, since they shouldn't assume everyone has large quantities of fat with every meal, or maybe they should. It makes me wonder why some things are to be taken on an empty stomach though. Are the doctors just saying this because their brainwashed, or is there a real justification for taking certain chemicals on an empty stomach. I notice my noots/supplements digest more quickly on an empty stomach, as evidenced by the faster rate of burping. On a full stomach, it takes usually 20-30 minutes for me to burp flavors of the supplements I took. I just took my aniracetam with other assorted noots on an empty stomach, and not even 10 minutes later, I had burped twice, each burp containing all the flavors and smells of all the supplements I had taken (some are very difficult to taste on your burps, like ALCAR, ginkgo, or apple pectin).
In addition to telling people that swallowing powders probably provides similar bio-availability as taking in capsules, I would also tell people obsessed with
taking fat-soluble noots with fat to cool it. Before recommending you put pure powders in your mouth, I suggest you think twice before doing this with the acidic noots, since this will harm your teeth if you're careless.
Generally, we can understand how a chelator works, see this study about tetracycline (Ag/Hg...not Ca, tho):
http://www.nature.co...ja2010119a.html. We're not quite advanced enough to determine the chelation properties of an arbitrary compound via theory. At best, we can observe a chelator at work, and then try to determine how it might react with given heavy metals. And it's only if noots chelate the good metals that we have a serious problem (even then, we can probably minimize the problem by separating noots from minerals/metals by 8-12 hours...and not taking them together), since if they chelate heavy metals only, the worst they will do is move heavy metals around our body to undesired, new locations. Not that this is 100% relevant, but I fear many supplement suppliers use bad labs to test for heavy metals, and I fear that heavy metals have very bad effects upon homeostasis. This might be a contributing factor in their long-term (lack of?) efficacy. We can thank the Soviets for introducing alpha lipoic acid, which is metabolized into the mercury- and arsenic-chelating compound dithiol dihydrolipoic acid. Pectin (MCP, kinda pricey) may assist in cadmium, lead, and (again) arsenic poisoning (provided, like ALA, that is if it is taken consistently:
http://onlinelibrary...r.1953/abstract. One can also rely on man-made chelators which have selectivity for certain metals, if your metal poisoning is very severe. The best thing to do is avoid shitty supplements, fillings, holding lead, all the obvious stuff. Our bodies only need trace amounts of these heavy metals, not mega-doses. But interesting idea that some noots might be chelating the good minerals out of our body. It will surely have to be addressed, sometime.
Edited by dasheenster, 28 March 2012 - 01:30 PM.
