Grapefruit Interactions with Drugs

Many people would think that a diet which allows you to eat various foods with the only restriction that you have to eat half fruit after each meal is a healthy one, and that it is safe to lose weight this way. Those would be diets that work without triggering health-related consequences.

At first sight, this weight loss method really sounds healthy, and if we think that the grapefruit diet dates back from the 1930s, then we may think that it has to be something good about it.

What you may not know is that the real reason why the grapefruit diet works is not the magic compound in the grapefruits which helps the body burn fat, but the restriction of the daily calories consumption to about 800, which is lower than the average need of an adult person.

Recently, scientists discovered that actually the grapefruit juice interacts with a series of drugs, thus causing troubles to the patients who ingested such drugs on daily basis, due to their chronic diseases.

This is a list of drugs which are known to interact with the grapefruit juice, leading to unpredictable effects:

• Antihistamines (anti allergy medication): Ebastine, Seldane (terfenadine, taken off the U.S. market)
• Anti-HIV medication : saquinavir (Invirase)
• Antiarrhythmics (anti heart arrhythmia): amiodarone (Cordarone)
• Calcium Channel Blockers (Blood Pressure Decreasing Drugs): nimodipine (Nimotop), Felodipine (Nitrendipine, Plendil), Pranidipine, nisoldipine (Sular), nicardipine (Cardene), verapamil (Verelan)
• Statins (Cholesterol Reduction Drugs): lovastatin (Mevacor), atorvastatin (Lipitor), Simvastatin (Zocor), simvastatin/ezetimibe (Vytorin)
• Impotence Drug (erectile dysfunction): sildenafil (Viagra)
• Immune Suppressants: cyclosporine (Neoral), (tacrolimus) Prograf
• Pain Medications: Methadone
• Psychiatric Medications: buspirone (Buspar), triazolam (Halcion), carbamazepine (Tegretol), diazepam (Valium), midazolam (Versed), sertraline (Zoloft)

(Source: MedicineNet.com)

As you can see, there are a lot of classes of drugs which interfere with the grapefruit juice, and they treat serious ailments, so you shouldn't ignore them if you think to try the grapefruit diet to lose a few pounds.

To give you only one example, there's been this study, where people in a tests group were given grapefruit juice in combination with felodipine (Plendil), while the control groups received orange juice and FC-free grapefruit juice.
FC stands for furanocoumarins, which were believed to be the culprit in grapefruit juice, causing higher concentrations of felodipine in the blood, thus leading to severely low blood pressure. To confirm this suspicion, the scientists created FC-free grapefruit juice, and this one proven to be harmless, in the above mentioned study.

Have you ever thought that you could actually kill someone with grapefruit juice?

Who Shouldn't Follow The Grapefruit Diet

As you've seen, the Grapefruit diet is one on the most permissive weight loss diets, as it allows you to eat in desired quantities, provided that you keep the number of meals at 3 per day and you eat half grapefruit at each of those meals. This is quite simple, and it can guarantee you that you'd get rid of at least 10 pounds at the end of 18 days of diet.
Does it sound reasonable for you? If it does, take into consideration two small facts about grapefruits:

1. Grapefruits belong to the citric family, and they are acid foods. Acid foods may attack the stomach walls, leading to gastritis or even more severe conditions like ulcer. Note also the once you got an ulcer, you'd have to completely change your lifestyle, because your nutritional rules will become so strict, that you'd be sorry you did such a foolish thing like harming your health for a few pounds less.
2. Grapefruits are known to interact with certain substances used in drugs, like felodipine. This is the active component of a series of heart medication, therefore if you mix grapefruit with such pills, they won't have the expected effects anymore, leading you in trouble. Heart failure is serious, I think everybody is aware of that. Is it worth dying slim?
3. I've encountered some specialist opinions that grapefruit inhibits the insulin production of the pancreas. If you are in good health, this won't probably cause you any harm, but if you already suffer from diabetes, you may even get into coma because if your insulin level decreases suddenly, the body would react in a very violent way and you'll end up by seriously dis-balancing your disease. Repeated dis-balances of an ailment like diabetes will have effects upon many organs in your body, like the legs and the eyes. Would you rather lose weight and go blind or stay chubby and see the surrounding world?

As a conclusion, anybody who knows himself to be suffering from any medical condition should seek for his doctor's consent prior to attempting the grapefruit diet. Who said fruits can't kill?