Why most alopathic medicines should not be taken on empty stomach ?

Answer 1

As civilizations emerge, medicine is initially founded on a mixture of magic, religion and empirically tested folk remedies. As magic and religion both declined during the middle ages in Europe, medicine sought a new basis. It had to be something that would impress patients, a substitue for the incantations that no longer impressed: something that gave the impression that the healer was doing something.

The answer was the principle of allopathy, which had been developed in the Middle East around the first century B.C. The idea was simple: when the body's workings deviate form the normal, the doctor should try directly to restore normal function. Thus, if a man is feverish, he should be cooled down; if constipated, given a laxative. Illnesses were seen as something toxic that should be eliminated, so treatments concentrated on cleansing the body of poisons. This led to approaches such as bleedings, leeches, enemas, purgatives and so on. If one harsh treatment failed, another, harsher one might be applied, depicted cynically by Molière. The war metaphor became entrenched in early medicine: doctors battled disease and waged war on sickness.

Many doctors worried about the aggressive nature of such treatments, but the alternative of rest and food appeared passive and implied that the doctor had nothing to suggest. Indeed, the only real alternative was homeopathic medicine. Only with Pasteur's discoveries did allopathy develop a scientific basis for at least some of its remedies. Germs offered a good target for allopathic treatments and so the battleground switched to the microbial wars.

By the end of the nineteenth century, a growing consensus arose that allopathic medicine was the ideal approach; homeopathy seemed to be losing ground. The term 'allopathic' was discarded to imply that all true medicine followed this approach, and other forms of medicine fell into disrepute. In general they were not regarded as sufficiently threatening to the orthodoxy to be actively opposed.

Disillusionment started around the 1950s when, despite wonderful advances in "conquering infectious disease" and developing new drugs, disease seemed as widespread as ever. Hospitals remained full and waiting lists stayed long. Perhaps the very success of allopathic medicine allowed people to survive to ages at which degenerative diseases afflicted them, but against these the allopathic approach was less effective. Then drug-resistant organisms also developed, so more powerful drugs were developed to combat them. But powerful drugs produce significant side-effects; allergic reactions increased; iatrogenic disorders (those produced by treatments) rose in importance (see the famous book Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illich). Events such as the Thalidomide disaster brought the limitations of modern drugs to public attention. Awareness of the need to strike a balance between doing good versus harm stimulated the entire edifice of controlled clinical trials. But economic pressures in support of the allopathic approach are immense: we are all familiar with the the political pressures exerted by major pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Meanwhile many of the basic teneds of the allopathic approach have been discarded from routine practice. Physicians feel less of a need to treat every condition, even though patients have long been trained to expect a prescription. Helping the body to cure itself, the approach of many alternative therapies, is becoming common, but it is not yet clear what balance will be struck between the allopathic approach and alternatives. As a physician in the allopathic system, you will certainly be caught between the demands of some patients for a prescription and the recognition that many others are using alternative therapies.

Answer 2

some meds need to be taken on an empty stomach so that they can be absorbed properly into the bloodstream and depending on where they are most absorbed, and how they are metabolised, food in the intestines or stomach can interfere with the absorption and make the meds not work properly.

Answer 3

Most of them cause nausea and can irritate the lining of the stomach as they are made up of synthetic compounds.