Healthy Truth

[Roland]

Health eTalk with the Bel Marra Doctors.

Doctor-Approved Advice and Products For Your Health and Well-Being

Grapefruit Juice and Drug Overdose

Chief Scientific Advisor, Dr. Victor Marchione, Shares His

Views on Why You Should Say No to Grapefruit Juice

 

Dear All

As a doctor, I am not one to recommend the consumption of store bought fruit juices. As you've heard, many of the juices that claim to be "100 percent natural" with "no added ingredients" can often be pasteurized, processed, and stripped of their beneficial nutrients and enzymes. Not to mention the fact that consuming isolated fruit juice, without the presence of the fiber that the fruit originally contained, can wreak havoc on your blood sugar levels. Despite these facts, I will usually look the other way when I see someone consuming fruit juice. There is one exception though: grapefruit juice.

Grapefruit juice, found on many breakfast tables around the world is a whole different story. Consuming a cup of fresh grapefruit juice may seem like a tasty, healthy way to quench your thirst – but you may be shocked to learn it may actually be putting your life at risk!

Grapefruit Juice and Drug Overdoses

Although not too many people are aware of this, over 20 years ago, researchers discovered that grapefruit juice can interact with certain types of prescribed medication and result in severe drug overdoses. Today, more than 85 different medications have been found to interact with grapefruit juice, 43 of which can cause serious health effects such as acute kidney failure, bone marrow suppression, renal toxicity, respiratory failure and even sudden death.

What Exactly Makes Grapefruit Juice So Dangerous?

The issue with grapefruit juice is a group of chemicals called furanocoumarins. When the grapefruit is squeezed to make juice, the furanocoumarins are forced into the juice. These furanocoumarins inhibit natural enzymes (called cytochrome P450) in your body. Cytochrome P450 is responsible for drug metabolism in humans. The furanocoumarins from the grapefruit juice block your body from metabolizing certain drugs, causing them to build up in your system to a potentially toxic level.

What is even more alarming, is that just one serving of grapefruit juice can begin this process of drug build-up in your body, so that your body responds to a single dose of medication as if you had just taken several doses at once. Drug overdoses can occur even if you drank your grapefruit juice several hours before taking your medication!

Perhaps the most unnerving part of this story is that many doctors aren't even aware of the dangers associated with grapefruit juice consumption while on medication. And many doctors who are aware are not warning their patients.

 

To make matters worse, the highest consumers of grapefruit juice are adults over the age of 45, which is also the age group most likely to regularly take prescription medication. And as this age group also typically demonstrates a decreased ability to metabolize excessive concentrations of drugs, the build-up of medication caused by grapefruit juice can pose an even greater danger to them.

The Groups of Medications That Can Negatively Interact With Grapefruit Juice

There is an extensive and ever expanding list of the medications that react to grapefruit juice. Some of the broader categories of medications that can interact with grapefruit juice include:

Certain anti-cancer drugs

Anti-diabetic agents

Anti-effective agents

Anti-inflammatory agents

Anti-lipemic agents

Cardiovascular agents

Central nervous system agents

Estrogen drugs

Gastrointestinal agents

Immunosuppressant agents

Urinary tract drugs

For a list of the 85 drugs currently found to interact with grapefruit juice, CLICK HERE

Yours in Good Health,

[TheHigg]

IF YOU ARE ON ANY OF THE STATINS FOR HIGH CHLORESTRAL YOU CANT TAKE IT EITHER