QUESTION ABOUT GUMMIES AND VITAMINS

[anonyme2022]

Hello, I'm living with hiv and now undetectable. I just bought some vitamin C and glutathione gummies for my skin...and I would like to ask if it will interfere with the biktarvy pills. Thank you. And I did ask my doctor if I can take some vitamins or other pills beside biktarvy and she said that as long as I have a 2 hour interval everything is fine but I didn't specify which kind of vitamins since I was still looking for what exactly I want.

[leatherman]

basically taking vitamins for a deficiency is good. Anything else just makes your urine very expensive.

I can't imagine why a 2hr interval would be needed. Maybe ask your doctor for that rationale next time.

[Jim Allen]

Vitamins themselves should not be an issue, as far as I know. Still, plenty of HIV meds have the warning not to take iron and calcium supplements with the meds at the same time, so my guess is your doctor is concerned the vitamins might contain a calcium or iron supplement as some multivitamins do, or prehaps they are worried as they don't know what is in the gummies and therefore how it will interact, or they simply don't have the specific knowledge... the list could go on.

As Leatherman said, ask your doctor why. We don't know what their rationale is behind this. 

Page 12 - Table 3:
https://www.gilead.com/-/media/files/pdfs/medicines/hiv/biktarvy/biktarvy_pi.pdf

[Towel]

The rationale behind waiting times is to not interefere with absorption and also phase out digestion time for your internal organs (liver). This is not just about HIV medication, even when you take other vitamins, you are not supposed to take them all at the same time but space them out during the day so there is a higher chance of your body actually using them. I take around 3-4 different types of vitamins. I take most of those in the morning / daytime, and take my hiv medication in the evening, so the vitamins are absorbed by the time I take the medication, so they don't interact. The doctor is absolutely right in recommending you to wait 2 hours between different pills, as that is an ideal waiting time.

[Jim Allen]

Calcium, iron, magnesium a few others are known to mess with absorption. Basic reference already provided but do you have a source for vitamin C interfering with Biktarvy?