dianeseattle
Member
A lot of people have said a lot of things about how they consume their vitamins and supplements and prescription medications postoperatively. You don't have the same addvantage that you had before when you had a complete digestive system with a focus on stomach acid.
I wanted to add one thing here, as a person who takes chewables and capsules and gel caps and tablets everyday in four different doses. Personally, I did a solubility test on each pill that I took, testing them either in my cheek or in water or under my tongue or on my tongue to see how well they dissolved. It is extremely important that you get adequate supplements after surgery because you can never eat enough food it has enough vitamins and minerals in it to sustain life.
You can definitely always succeed with liquids and you can definitely always succeed with liquids and chewables. But you may also do just fine swallowing tablets and capsules. Your doctor and nutritionist will advise you and certainly, in the beginning, everything that you take in should be very well broken down before it gets to your stomach because you just don't have what it takes to absorb the vitamins and minerals.
There is one thing that your surgeon and or nutritionist should have told you and just in case you didn't know it, I'm going to mention it here. You cannot benefit from sustained release medication like you did before. Nothing stays in your absorptive areas long enough to benefit you. A thing that is supposed to be 12 hours sustained release is gone within a couple of hours. So make sure that you don't get sustained release medications.
Also, you cannot break the pills in half in hopes of getting the powdery Interiors into your system after being painted with an enteric coating. It is not supposed to be taken in such a large dose. But it cannot be dribbled out in a sustained release pattern because you simply do not have the ability to hold it in your system that long.
Also, nowadays it is very very popular for meds and supplements to be coated enterically. The enteric coating is like putting a thick layer of paint on a powdery tablet and you have to dissolve that before you can absorb the medicine inside. It really irritates me when I get something that is supposed to be short-acting and it has an enteric coating. So I have told my pharmacist not to give me anything enteric if they can find one that isn't.
Make sure you find out what you need to know when you start taking your vitamins minerals and supplements after surgery.
I wanted to add one thing here, as a person who takes chewables and capsules and gel caps and tablets everyday in four different doses. Personally, I did a solubility test on each pill that I took, testing them either in my cheek or in water or under my tongue or on my tongue to see how well they dissolved. It is extremely important that you get adequate supplements after surgery because you can never eat enough food it has enough vitamins and minerals in it to sustain life.
You can definitely always succeed with liquids and you can definitely always succeed with liquids and chewables. But you may also do just fine swallowing tablets and capsules. Your doctor and nutritionist will advise you and certainly, in the beginning, everything that you take in should be very well broken down before it gets to your stomach because you just don't have what it takes to absorb the vitamins and minerals.
There is one thing that your surgeon and or nutritionist should have told you and just in case you didn't know it, I'm going to mention it here. You cannot benefit from sustained release medication like you did before. Nothing stays in your absorptive areas long enough to benefit you. A thing that is supposed to be 12 hours sustained release is gone within a couple of hours. So make sure that you don't get sustained release medications.
Also, you cannot break the pills in half in hopes of getting the powdery Interiors into your system after being painted with an enteric coating. It is not supposed to be taken in such a large dose. But it cannot be dribbled out in a sustained release pattern because you simply do not have the ability to hold it in your system that long.
Also, nowadays it is very very popular for meds and supplements to be coated enterically. The enteric coating is like putting a thick layer of paint on a powdery tablet and you have to dissolve that before you can absorb the medicine inside. It really irritates me when I get something that is supposed to be short-acting and it has an enteric coating. So I have told my pharmacist not to give me anything enteric if they can find one that isn't.
Make sure you find out what you need to know when you start taking your vitamins minerals and supplements after surgery.