How long should you wait?

Unless your doctor gave you specific directions, usually one should take medications that require empty stomach one hour before a meal or two hours after a meal.

@kounoupi is right. As a general rule, medicines that are supposed to be taken on an empty stomach should be taken about an hour before a meal, or two hours after a meal. You should also take them with water instead of juice, milk, coffee, etc.

What about other medicines that say “empty stomach? cCan you take them together or just starve for the first 3 hours of the morning to take them separate?

I would think it would depend on the medicines. Like, you don’t want to mix bleach and baking soda together! But you could mix bleach and water together ok. Are your meds bleach and baking soda?

@Judi Your GP will tell you which medication you can take together and which not. When one takes two or more medication that require empty stomach we usually adjust the dosage/pharmaceutical type so that you can take both but on different times of the day, eg. the one before breakfast and the other before dinner. If two medications do not interact with one another and there is no other option than taking before the same meal then it is usually suggested that the patient takes the one, waits a bit, ~15 mins or so and then takes the second. Meal time is ~1h from the time the last “empty stomach” medication was taken.

Your pharmacist is another wonderful source of accurate information such as you are asking about, readily accessible and usually more patient than your doctor. I always use him (pharmacist and not doc) for similar questions.

@Dutchess_III Actually you can mix bleach and baking soda together. I do it from time to time to make the bleach even more basic. What you never want to do is mix bleach and ammonia. That creates very toxic fumes.

Ah! I knew it was something like that @snowberry. It, like…almost killed me once!

I’m seeing a naturopath so he has me taking thyroid and other supplements. I’ve never been a pill taker so I’m having a tough time remembering them all.

During the past two month when I had to juggle pain meds, Tylenol and then two different anti-biotics (one every twelve hours and one every four), I wrote everything down daily in a small notebook on my night table. Otherwise I was in a state of complete confusion. The easiest food to take with the pills that required food at 4:00 AM was a banana.