Collin County Living Well Magazine Fall 2014 | Page 39

Timing
Matters When
You Take
Medications

Y

By Soujanya Donthu, M.D., and Mark Troxler, D.O., F.A.C.P F.A.C.S.M.
.,
ou may not realize it, but you have a builtin clock that helps keep you in sync with
what’s going on around you––like knowing
to be awake during the daylight hours and
at rest when it’s dark. This biological clock
also keeps you in sync with what’s going on inside of you.
It directs a host of activities that go on within your organs,
tissue and cells.
The effectiveness of this innate clock can be felt when you
take medications. The specific time of day you take a particular pill can make all the difference in how much benefit
you will get from it with the least side effects.
“The body doesn’t react to medications in the same way at
different times of the day,” says internal medicine specialist Soujanya Donthu, M.D., of Stonebridge Internal Medicine, a Texas Health Physicians Group practice in McKinney. “Some drugs are not as beneficial or as well tolerated
when taken at the wrong biological time. That’s why it’s
important to know some basics of timing when the instructions on the pill bottle say ‘take once a day.’ Through medical advances and what’s known as chronotherapy, we’re
learning more about how to modify the timing of treatments
and medications based on the body’s rhythms to achieve the
best outcome.”

Get Your Meds in Tune with Your Body
It’s often been thought that the best time to take medications is first thing in the morning, but chronotherapy
research has shown that drugs labeled “take one a day”
often work better w