Really. What about those you do take that have not been tested in combination with grapefruit juice? I have never liked grapefruit juice but just the mere suggestion that this citrus does not play well with prescripts is enough to make me avoid it.

i was warned of taking grapefruit juice or fruit when prescribed Lipitor 10 years ago. How diligent Doctors or Pharmacists are at warning people is probably not consistent.

This is old news. The problem with grapefruit juice has been known about for a long time. The problem is that many doctors still do not advise their patients of the potential problem and very few people actually read those printouts with warnings, among other information, that the pharmacist gives them with their prescriptions.

This is a rather poorly written article ... the drugs don't interact with grapefruit, they interact with the CYP3A4 enzyme. It's the enzyme that interacts with grapefruit. (which is stated briefly) The result may be the same but the process is not as direct as is implied.

I rememember years ago, a nurse told my mom that she should not eat or drink grapefruit with some of her meds. We then asked her doctor and he said to not worry about it. She was stubborn and loved grapefruit, so she refused to stop eating it (she would order cases of it through one of those companies that delivered every month). I always wondered if that contributed to her failing health before she passed away.

My cholesterol medicine Simvastatin states no grapefruit. Read your labels.

This is a very poorly written article. It missed several key points.

1) The problem ONLY occurs when you consume both the drugs and grapefruit juice at the same time. If you have grapefruit (juice) for breakfast and take your lipitor and beta-blockers at night (which is what is always recommended), then there is no problem since the grapefruit juice is long gone. Five hours apart is a good separation that should prevent any problems.

2) In 1986, Merck patented all the possible causes of drug interaction in grapefruit juice. Why? Because grapefruit juice is a powerful adjuvant. That means that it increases the effect of other drugs. This is valuable because Merrck had plans to release their own version of lipitor with the grapefruit furanocoumarins that would require only about 1/3 of the dosage. But Merck MBAs decided that it was not cost-effective, even though medically a very good thing, to accomplish lipitor's medical objectives with a smaller (and presumably cheaper) dosage and less profit.

3) Not using furanocoumarins from grapefruit to amplify the effects of such a large number of medications is bizarrely bad science and horrific medicine. Why not administer smaller doses of drugs with huge numbers of side effects if you can achieve the same results with a much smaller amount with a consequently smaller number of side effects?

This article is nothing more than a very sad attempt to justify a medical practice that cannot be justified. It is not science or medicine to tell people to avoid grapefruit. It is simply capitalism exerting its control over medicine and continuing to consume a huge portion of the GDP without contributing anywhere near as much as it could.

Chris, you've burst my bubble. Although I've known for several years that some of my meds have a reaction with grapefuit, I alwaysed assumed it was a negative reaction. After reading the article, I though wow! this might lead to a scientific breakthrough wherin using the compound from the grapefruit to increase the efficacy of the medication could lead to significant cost reductions and make some of this incredibly expensive medication affordable to people (like both my sons) who do not have and cannot afford health insurance, but have a very high genetic disposition for coronary artery disease. Now you tell me that Merck has patented all possible variation of this combination and is setting on it!

I guess that is capitalism at it's worse.

I would also point out very clearly what the article did not: the "interference" is a side effect of the drugs, not a side effect of grapefruit. The listed drugs actually interfere with the proper absorption and protective effects of grapefruit furanocoumarins. Any attempt to twist this into "grapefruit is bad" is neither good science nor good medicine (still substantially an art, not a science.)

Sorry about that bubble, @PO

great death by grapefruit !!! makes you wonder what's really happening to your body..these doctors pushing pills like dealers and if you ever notice the pills you take half are to counter-act the symptoms of the first half of your pills...

GET HEALTHY AND GET OFF THE PILLS, YOU ARE ONLY MAKING THE PHARMACUETCAL COMPANYS RICH WHILE YOU WALK AROUND IN A FOG !!!

coumadin/warfarin and grapefruit juice not good at all...

There are several drugs on this list I'm sure you've heard of. The problem is this list only includes the generic names, not the name you see on TV all the time. For example sildenafil which is more commonly known as Viagra.

The problem ONLY occurs when you consume both the drugs and grapefruit juice at the same time.

Wrong, Chris. The article clearly states, "And it doesn’t matter whether the grapefruit is consumed hours before the pills, the researchers found". Don't make undocumented comments that others might read and mistake as fact. In this case, you could kill someone. However, you are correct in stating that the interference is a side effect of the drugs, not a side effect of grapefruit. This is nothing new. David Bailey first published research on drug interactions with grapefruit in 1991 (Lancet 1991; 337: 268-269).

This is just another sensationalized, poorly written "science" article published by the NBCNews.com news team, much like the joke of an article that was published within the past couple of weeks on the negative side effects of breakfast sandwiches. That article was written by Tracy Miller, who was not even able to accurately report the parameters of the study after reading the original paper. She reported that the test group ate two breakfast sandwiches when, in fact, they ate only one. She also reported that the control group ate nothing, when, in fact, they did consume a meal. The NBCNews.com science reporters can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

Curious that in all the years I've taken Statins I was never warned by physicians to avoid grapefruit though always knew I should because that's what the labels instructed. Go figure...

Thankfully, I hate grapefruit - of any kind. I take prescription oxycodone every day, and have along with other stronger pain meds for well over 10 yrs now. I never heard of such interactions with this fruit. None of the doctors I've been thru with the VA had ever mentioned nor asked if I ever had grapefruit juice on a regular basis, or at all.

Oxycodone is on the list and they have it under the "high" risk factor for respiratory problems. With all the pain meds I do take daily, I'm at risk for that anyway. Adding this fruit would surely put me in an accidental o.d. I can't believe out of all the years I've been taking these meds that no one doctor or nurse has ever mentioned this to me - of course dealing with the govt VA system, I guess I'm not really that surprised.

Alas, I haven't been able to enjoy grapefruit for the past 14 years thanks to my cholesterol medicine.

Chris: If the drugs "actually interfere with the proper absorption and protective effects of grapefruit furanocoumarins" then how does Grapefruit "amplify" the effects of the drugs?

@ABCxyz,

Nope, the article is wrong. The drug and the grapefruit furanocoumarins MUST be in the stomach or first third of the small intestine for the interaction to accur. Five hours is sufficient for the grapefruit to pass the critical segment of the digestive tract before the statins (as an example) are ingested. There are literally thousads of pubs documenting this because grapefruit furanocoumarin interactions are something that are currently required to be tested for.

The reason that it is difficult to find these sorts of studies is that those studies are generally never published, but instead are a confidential part of the drug safety application process run by the FDA. The research you cite as well as this one:

http://www.nature.com/clpt/journal/v68/n4/full/clpt2000117a.html

were conducted using "high dose" concentrations of that were around 20 times the concentration of grapefruit juice that one would normally drink. They did this to shorten the study time. If you reduce the concentration from "high dose" to a normal grapefruit concentration, the effect falls below background noise at around 4.5 - 5 hours. In other words, according to the research you cited (from Wikipedia) it was necessary to concentrate the grapefruit juice by a factor of around 20 to get the persistent effect they published on. No one on here would drink something that nasty by mistake.

@Basil,

Grapefruit juice is a potent inhibitor of CYP3A4-mediated drug metabolism. In short, CYP3A4 is generated by the body to help remove toxic substances before they can be absorbed into the blood stream. So, if you take your statins straight, the CYP3A4 enzyme produced by your body will attempt to metabolize the statin into compounds the liver can out-process safely. Medicators increase dosages of the drugs to overcome the CUP3A4 mediation. But, if you drink a glass of grapefruit juice with your statin, the grapefruit juice will block the drug mediation of CYP3A4 and allow much more of the statin to get into the bloodstream. That is how grapefruit juice results in the "amplification" of the drugs. The process is called adjuvant amplification.

Research in the past had said that grapefruit is very healthy for you. However, once you have a problem that requires one of the medications on the ever-increasing list that reacts with grapefruit, you have to stop eating it and lose its health benefits. More and more medications react negatively with foods that are supposed to be healthy for you. Before long, we are going to be a population that only pops pills and doesn't eat any food.

By the way, most of the supermarkets in my area have signs in the produce department and dairy department warning that grapefruit juice can react with certain medications.

I'm on a medicine that states not to take grapefruit juice and it's NOT on that list.. so always read up on whatever meds you take

Thanks Chris. It makes sense. So the danger is that the furanocoumarins will potentiate the already high doses of medications that physicians prescribe in order to offset the effects of cytochrome P3A4. BTW: What's your background in all of this?

put options on grapefruits ....hahahahahahaha

@Chris:

Not using furanocoumarins from grapefruit to amplify the effects of such a large number of medications is bizarrely bad science and horrific medicine.

Actually, this is very good medicine. First, if a person is on multiple medications...well, you can figure out the rest. Secondly, Though furanocoumarin does inhibit enzyme production, it's effect is different throughout the population. It's just easier to deal with dosage for the drug itself.

Mitchell

and they say MJ is bad for your health................................

Total propaganda article paid for by the pharma industry. It's not the natural fruit that's killing you folks. It's the pharmaceuticals. They call this article "journalism." It's a paid ad, and the author is a shill for Big Pharma, as is any "researcher" who produced the alleged findings!!!

@chris,

decent post, but some inaccuracies. The one the struck out the most was this claim:

Not using furanocoumarins from grapefruit to amplify the effects of such a large number of medications is bizarrely bad science and horrific medicine. Why not administer smaller doses of drugs with huge numbers of side effects if you can achieve the same results with a much smaller amount with a consequently smaller number of side effects?

If you think about this statement you'll see why it makes no sense. The blood concentrations of medications will be the same with a small dose and an inhibited liver metabolism or a high dose with normal first pass metabolism. Thus, any side effects will be unchanged. You might make an argument for decreased effects related to the liver alone, but even this is a stretch as normal arterial concentrations will eventually reach the liver cells

The one thing I hope readers pick up from the article is that it's NOT just grapefruit. The same thing happens with limes/lime juice, pomelo, and Seville orange. Seville orange is also known as bitter orange and is used in orange marmalade, some liqueurs, and some teas.

Note: Bergamot, which is used in Earl Grey tea is often called a sunspecies of bitter orange, but it does not contain synephrine. (Side note - it has been found to contain Melitidin, which has statin-like properties.)

Bitter orange is also used in weight-loss OTC supplements as a substitute for ephedra, which was banned. If you're taking a supplement that specifies it is ephedra-free, you might want to check the label for bitter orange. My biggie is that I like a soft drink at a local fast food joint called a "lime squeeze." They also make lime rickeys. Guess I'll have to watch out for those now, too.

GET HEALTHY AND GET OFF THE PILLS, YOU ARE ONLY MAKING THE PHARMACUETCAL COMPANYS RICH WHILE YOU WALK AROUND IN A FOG !!!

Mike, I wish it were that easy. For many years I ran 28 miles per week and bike another 40 per week. I ate more carrots and oatmeal than anyone would believe and ate NO hi cholesterol foods, and my cholesteral would not come below 225. After a heart cath found significant coronary blockage, and 2 stents later my dr finally began the cholestral meds. Probelm is genetics. My maternal grandfather died of a heart attack at 54 ys. My paternal grandfather survived a heart attack when he was 60, my father had a massive heart attack when he was 43, my mother has, and both grandmothers had coronary problems - so don't assume that I can "get healthy" by eating and exercising. Many can't and shame on narrow minded people who refuse to believe that. Probably many of those who are against national healthcare believe the same.

I am fortunate to have good employment and good health insurance, but even with that, I pay over $2000 per year out of pocket for my prescriptions. If I didn't have prescription coverage I would be slipping away.

@eric,

Just keep thinking. LOL You are making an assumption in your reasoning that is wrong.

Drug manufacturers well know that the digestive system is designed to recognize and remove toxins and "foreign" substances. The way that pharmaceuticals get around it is to overwhelm the digestive system to the point that some of the drug gets through. So, in order to get "x" amount of drug in your bloodsteam. the pill might have to contain as much as several hundred times the amount. For example, to get one mg of a heart medication, such as Micardis, into your blood stream, the pill would have to contain 80mg of the drug. This is because the body breaks down most of the drug into non-clinical molecules. But if you add a adjuvant such as the active ingredients of grapefruit to the drug you might have to administer as little as 3 mg to get the same one mg in your bloodstream.

But, by administering the drug more efficiently, you have potentially greatly reduced the exposure to many of the side effects. As one example, the 80 mg hypothetical drug could have as a side effect, "increased risk of GI bleeding." If you could cut the amount administered to 3 mg, the side effect could well disappear into statistical insignificance.

What the article has happening is that the 80 mg is given and the person drinks grapefruit juice as an adjuvant. Instead of 1 mg in the bloodstream, there are now several mgs. It's exactly the same thing, just working backwards. And it would be cheaply and easily done. While there are individual differences in the reaction to the adjuvant, this is true of the medications as well.

Think about it for a while and it will come to you. :) LOL

couple things:

1. This "LOL" and ":)" stuff is juvenile and counterproductive. It makes people take you less seriously. I know for a fact youre in your late 60s, and yet you use terms befitting a preteen girl texting her middle school girlfriends. Not to mention Im sure you wouldn't say things like that without a hefty dose of internet bravado. Just stick to the facts.

2. You have widespread use of analogy in your post, which is usually the mark of an individual who doesn't understand the core concepts, and glosses over these, as you have. I could take the time and point all of them out, but instead I'll concentrate on the main fallacy

3. You completely missed my point, and I think i know why. You seem to think that the drug concentration in the intestine contributes most to side effects rather than the blood concentration.
This is simply not true for the majority of adverse reactions. The majority of side effects are mediated by blood concentrations, which are unaffected by either low dose/grapefruit combo or high dose drugs. Lets take micardis, your example. One of the main adverse effects of this med is renal failure--how can medication which stays in the intestine affect the kidney?? See?

Even for GI complications, many are not mediated by a direct toxic effect on intestinal epithelial cells. Increased bleeding, as in your example, is most often mediated through a coagulopathy either through hepatic or bone marrow suppression. Again, as a direct consequence of blood concentrations

Hope that helps.

For years almost any kind of medication I have been prescribed has had the grapefruit warning on the bottle. This is not news. Besides, I really loathe grapefruit or grapefruit juice so it's not a problem for me, but it surely could be for others who do eat grapefruit for breakfast on a regular basis.

I would first like to thank Chris and Eric for a rare, (mostly) intelligent discussion on Newsvine.

Second, I wonder if this phenomenon has contributed to the urban legend of grapefruit amplifying the effects of recreational drugs? I still recall that one of the many humorous images from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is that of Hunter S. Thompson driving around with multiple cases of grapefruit in his back seat.

thanks...

I bet grapefruit would amplify recreational drugs as they are not all that different from pharmaceuticals in their metabolism. Many rec drugs even have a useful medical effect (heroin, cocaine, marijuana)

"Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint." Mark Twain

Same applies to taking the information provided by posters on Newsvine as fact. Do your own research or ask a doctor, pharmacist or other professional that you trust.

And now I know why grapefruit should never have been classified as an edible fruit. I never did find it tolerable. It's kind of like greens. Who decides which should be in salads and which are weeds?

My physician told me many years ago to be safe just avoid grapefruit including the juice. Not a big deal.

A lot of people are too lazy to read warnings then become sue happy when something goes wrong.

The AF gave me Lipitor without warning me about grapefruit. It wasn't until I received a civilian prescription after I retired that I found out.

If you mix it with vodka or gin.

Tim, More so when one gets to the point of just skipping the Grapefruit juice.

Does drinking a greyhound have more of an effect than drinking other mixed drinks?

@fhg,

Interestingly, Merck discovered the "grapefruit effect" when trying to determine the effect of alcohol on the absorption of statins and high blood pressure meds. They used grapefruit to mask the taste of the alcohol. This means (contrary to the bad information in the article) that they gave the grapefruit to both the people receiving the statiuns and other drugs as well as the people who received them with alcohol. What they observed was a much higher level of these drugs in the blood stream than should have been there and the lowered blood pressure and serum cholesterol that one would only have expected with higher dosages of the drugs. It was quite a mystery for a while because they were looking for effects in only the "alcohol" group, but got them in both groups..

Cris, you sound very knowledgeable .No metter whether you have med. diploma or not your comments are to the point!!! I absolutelly agree with you.

For EACH farm. medicine there is a( plant) drug from nature. Without side effects!!!! I never take any med. And I`m not young.

PHARMA GREED!!!!!!

If the industry was really about expanding profit as much as possible they'd just start making and selling homeopathic remedies.

I am surprised that it isn't common knowledge already. My mother told me about this when I was a small child, and it always stuck with me (I am in my mid-30's now). If she (an art student turned housewife) knew about it 30 years ago, I don't think the pharmaceutical companies are all that concerned about their "secret" getting out.

See James-4436154 it is not just about profit and money. So that will not happen because its also about pride and hurting people.

@James,

1) Most homeopathic and "natural" remedies are actually mareketed by the same pharmaceutical companies that make regular prescription drugs. They operate under different brand names and corporate structures for the simple reason that these so-called "food additives" have little to no FDA oversight. You can't sell an aspirin without a warning about gastrointestinal bleeding and Reyes syndrome, but you can sell willow extract, chemically the exact same thing, with no warnings at all. This is why "natural" aspirin substitutes cause most of the Reyes Syndrome cases these days.

2) The big pharmaceutical companies routinely patent all compounds that they isolate from "natural" sources such as plants and other organic sources. The patenting is done without any sense that the compound can be of any possible benefit. This leads to big trouble. For example, in the "oirganic" farming industry, ConAgra and ADM wrote the descriuption of "organic." Since virtually all pesticides, herbicides, fungicides (the worst), and other crop sprays are developed from naturally occurring persticides, etc, they can be used on "organic" crops and the foods stil labeled "organic." For example, Pyrethrum is a common pesticide that was found in chrysanthemums. You can spray all the Pyrethrum you want, even to levels "ionconsistent with human life" on crops and not only fail to disclose it, but to still label it as "organic." Similar situations occur with medications marketed as "natural food additives" and not subjected to any testing.

3) Grapefruit is not the only adjuvant that is being suppressed by the drug companies. There are literally hundreds, though most only effect one family of drugs. These adjuvants interfere with the body's ability to see the drug as "foreign" and to metabolize it to less harmful compounds. Tiny amounts of adjuvants are used in most vaccines, for example, so that far less of the virus or viral bits are necessary to train the immune system to recognize it. This means that less vaccine and less of the virus has to be administered and there are less and fewer side effects. The reason why grapefruit is suppressed instead of being used as an adjuvant with statins is because a smaller statin dosage would yield smaller profits.

I am not a fan of homeopathy or "natural" drugs/additives, but I am not an opponent of them either. I point to zinc as an example of my position. For at least 3,000 years zinc has been used to treat cold and flu and viral illnesses. When someone started selling it as a "natural" remedy for colds, the FDA was prodded by the pharmaceutical industry to "test" it off the market. Unfortunately for them, zinc turned out to be very effective (shortening the duration of colds by over half) and having few side effects. But what we need is that "natural" remedies be subjected to the same evidence-based science as prescription and over-the-counter drugs. The ones that work should be left and the ones that don't should be banned.

What keeps so much of this discussion going is the placebo effect. For any given illness, as many as 30% will show a positive response to a drug, even if it is completely inert (a capsule filled with diatomeceous earth for example.) Most natural and homeopathic depend on three things: a) a vague or non-existent description of the expected result, b) anecdotal "evidence", and most of all, c) the plecebo effect.

What I would like to see is a complete and total ban on patents on any substance found in organic nature. No compounds from plants, animals, bacteria, etc should be able to be patented. The drug companies did not "invent" them and thus are not entitled to patent protection. Likewise, elemental chemistry, such as bioavailable zinc, should not be able to be patented. It is not new and medical uses, long documented, are not patentable. Many times more often than not, these patents are used to suppress drugs and to inhibit research than to produce new and useful drugs.

Were it not for the absurd medical patent system, we would be saying that aspirin, penecillin, zinc, yew sap as a treatment for breast cancer, etc were thousands of years old instead of being brand new patented "discoveries." Patents should be reserved for compounds that are uniquely man-made and do not appear in places like Chinese and Hindu folk medicine.

I would also like to see the government have the ability to use eminent domain to take, with fair compensation, any new drug that is considered to be able to significantly influence major diseases. This was what happened with vaccines and it has been very successful.

Why didn't the airlines just cancel the flights that were going to be hijacked on 9-11 in the first place?

That's called the historians fallacy, automatically assuming that today's knowledge was available to the people of yesterday.

Orthosophy, doing what you suggested would boost bioavailability of other drugs too. It would make things very difficult when you're on more than one such drug. That's why it's not a good idea to do this universally.

CYP inhibition (and not just 3A4) is a very common and well-studied problem. You can't just knock them out because they exist for a reason: they are part of your natural metabolic and defense systems. What makes it worse is that there are naturally occurring genetic differences in CYP levels across populations so adding metabolic inhibitors just complicates the problem rather than solving it. The best bet from a pharm company standpoint is to make drugs that are minimally metabolized by CYP pathways. In reality though, the best solution is for patients and doctors to know and understand the risks of any drug they prescribe or take.

I guess I dont see why it's so complicated to just skip the grapefruit...

@James,

It is less of a "historians fallacy" than you seem to think. A major source of pharmaceutical patents is plants and compounds that have been used since antiquity. Pharmaceutical companies have scads of researchers who interview shamans and healers, and read old medicinal texts in places like Coptic monasteries and Tibetan archives looking for already known treatments and cures so they can patent them. Things like penicillin, chemotherapy drugs, and aspirin are all well over 3,000 years old.

Since at least 1986, all pharmaceutical companies knew that grapefruit furanocoumarins would serve as an adjuvant. If you count folk medicine in, you can even take that back to the ancient Greeks who used bitter lemons which also contain the same furanocoumarins to kick up the effects of drugs like digitalis.

A good example is "rescue therapy" chemotherapy. Rescue therapy is actually poisoning the body and hoping you can stop the effects leaving the disease cured and the human body still relatively intact. Do you think that in Galen's time, a palpable tumor would have been ignored? No, they would have used chemo in the form of arsenic. For a cold or the flu they would have prescribed powdered zinc. For an infection, they would have bound moldy apple slices containing penicillin to the wound. For syphilis, a tincture of mercury, carefully dosed would have stood a good chance of a cure.

The queston I raise is exactly the opposite of your "fallacy." Why, if the adjuvant effects of some citrus fruit have been well-documented for around 3,000 years, are we discussing this as though it is something new?

The queston I raise is exactly the opposite of your "fallacy." Why, if the adjuvant effects of some citrus fruit have been well-documented for around 3,000 years, are we discussing this as though it is something new?

Because someone needed to publish something, and consequently did a review of a well known and relatively unimportant phenomenon and found it to affect more medicines than most people realize

Good luck with that. Grapefruit juice does diddly-squat to help my hypertension.

SH - cut down on sodium (salt) intake, lose weight, drink more water and YES, grapefruit juice because it has a lot of potassium.

See my post 9.1. If I weren't taking medication for my hypertension my kidneys would have been toast by now. And I'm getting potassium from other sources.

Sorry to hear that, dude, sounds serious. I have a very mild form of hypertension which I control quite well with diet alone. But when things get totally out of whack, these drugs may be the only option. For good kidney health I drink one dark beer every day... that is some good medicine, I tell you... ;)

Keeping in mind that I'm almost 65 years old, my weight's good, I bicycle 10-20 miles a day depending on the weather and my work schedule, I figure I'm in reasonable shape, healthwise.

And sometimes I'll drink two dark beers in a given day. Life's too short to drink cheap beer.

Ha ha... you are absolutely right, life's too short to drink this cheap stuff passing as beer. I lived in Germany long time ago and have developed a clear taste for the good stuff early in my life.

@Max,

I agree with the German definition of beer": water, yeast, hops, and oasted barley. No other ingredients allowed. And nothing can be sold as beer if it does not contail all four ingredients or if it has additional ingredients. Originally all beer all over the world was made from loaves of bread and water.

Germans like to refer to anything that does not conform to their ingredient list as "Belgian" ale. Calling it Belgian is an insult. With the exception of bock, they generally refer to that which Americans drink as "kinderbier" or "kiddie beer."

And sometimes Germans call most American beer much less charitably, using names like "pisse"

Max (post 7.2) --

High potassium. Another reason for me to avoid grapefruit. I have to watch my pumpkin seed addiction because the high K content causes my heart rate to go wacky. (Maybe I should just use more salt. NOT!)

Besides, my Mom's not around to try to convince me grapefruit's good for me anymore.

Science is never finished, there's always new things to learn, or try. it is an interesting effect and i wonder how that would change dosages if drugs were combined with chemicals responsible for what we see with grape fruit interactions. but don't assume that just because we know this now that somehow the drug companies knew this beforehand. a lot of stuff starts out looking like the holy grail of medicine, potential 'cures' for debilitating illnesses for example, but most of them simply fail to pan out.

Grapefruit affects bioavailability of different drugs differently. Doing what you suggested will make life very complicated when someone is on more than one such drug. Think about it.

Generally speaking, the amount of drug in the pill has minimal impact on the cost of the drug. Unlike cars or food or other consumer products, the primary cost of a drug is the expense associated with development and not the expense associated with production (although there are exceptions). In other words, halving the amount of active ingredient in a pill won't double the profit of the drug . The amount of drug in a pill is selected to ensure good efficacy and good safety for the large majority of people who take it.

After three years of trying to control my hypertension (190/110) with diet and exercise my physician referred me to a cardiologist who prescribed, gasp, prescription medication! Since then my BP has been in the 118/75 range.

So you'll pardon me if I don't take you seriously.

Sheeple...wow, I thought that tired insult only got trotted out when elections were coming up. The only thing your post was missing was telling us to drink the Kool-Aid.

And sorry, I don't think grapefruit juice will do a darn thing to compensate for the fact that my thyroid decided to suddenly stop working.

dracofirst are you the leader of the sheeple?

Hmmm.... I first learned of this interaction 25 years ago, when I was taking Seldane for my allergies. Had two episodes of rapid heartbeat. Later the drug was taken off the market due to heart attacks. I used to regularly drink grapefruit juice, which increased the rate at which I absorbed the medication, likely causing my rapid heartbeat. But guess what - I was taking the drug so I could STAY healthy! Seldane was an early non-sedating anti-histamine. My allergies and exercise induced asthma had reached a point where they prevented me from getting adequate exercise. Using medication allowed me to breathe freely enough to continue working out, which I do to this day (but taking generic Zyrtec instead). Controlling my allergies and breathing allows me to control my hypertension by diet and exercise right now (although with a long family history of hypertension, even in active relatives with no weight issues, I may be destined for drugs someday).

Try telling that to someone who just had an organ transplant.

They'll be dead in a week.

That's why I don't drink grapefruit juice. (Aside from the fact I just plain don't like it.)

Suit yourself.

Hope you don't die from something easily treatable.

Good luck.

sum guy-1024733 spend some time learning about alternative medicine too.

Not if there is no indication whatsoever that drinking grapefruit juice has any impact on hypertension.

Useful trivia: combining grapefruit juice with sourkraut is an excellent intestinal cleaner.

Penicillin is natural, aspirin is natural, opium is natural.

We do. It's called the FDA, it has a very tiny budget, and republicans want to do away with it completely. At least, most of the ones making comments here do. Then they complain that it's ineffective.

More trivia: The FDA does not require drugs to be pre-tested on animals.

@fgh

What sort of circumstances allows that?