Ask the Expert Archive Week 15
Grapefruit Juice
If your morning ritual includes grapefruit juice, good for you. It's low-fat and full of vitamin C. But if you're using it to wash down your prescription drugs, you better listen to this advice from Dr. Neil Sheer.
The number one concern that patients share with us when they're worried about their medication is the possiblity of drug interactions. By that we mean one drug, interacting with another drug, and causing a side effect. But there is some new wrinkle in this. Some foods will actually interact with drugs, in a way we haven1t seen before. Grapefruit juice is the current culprit. What happens is that grapefruit juice has chemicals in it that give it its bitter taste. These chemicals actually block the breakdown of drugs when they go into the body. So if you have a big glass of grapefruit juice, and then take your medication with it, you may find that rather than medication being broken down the way it usually is, you get higher levels in the blood, and that can lead to unwanted side effects.
Some of the medications that are involved are very common. It includes drugs for high bood pressure, durgs that help us sleep, antihistemines, drugs that supress the immune system in transplant patients. Drugs that affect the way our bowels move, so it can be very problematic trying to look at which drug you should be worried about when you1re drinking grapefruit juice. The easiest way to avoid a problem is not to use grapefruit juice as a liquid when you1re taking your medication. And also if you1re taking a lot of drugs, and it becomes too much to try and figure out, it's time to sit down with your physician, and your pharmacist, go over all the medications that you use, whether prescription of over the counter, and see if any of them will interact with grapefruit juice. If you would like to send a question to Ask the Expert you can either email us at rx@tvo.org or fill out our form.
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