Taking these two medications means you shouldn't eat grapefruit, NHS warns
A warning has been issued to two groups of people to avoid grapefruit, as the NHS warns it could increase side effects of some medication.
While grapefruit could give you your daily dose of vitamin C, it also blocks a vital enzyme that breaks down medications in the body, making it a health risk to those on two medications.
This could result in more of your medicine entering your blood stream than is supposed to, causing more or intensified side effects. The British Liver Trust warns: “When you have too much of the medicine in your body you are at risk of severe side effects. These could be very dangerous.”
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Each person has different levels of the enzyme affected by grapefruit, so everyone could have a different reaction even while eating the same grapefruit and taking the same medication, reported Surrey Live.
The NHS warns people on statins, generally used for cholesterol, and sertraline, an antidepressant, to avoid the fruit.
It notes: “Grapefruit juice can affect some statins and increase your risk of side effects. A doctor may advise you to avoid it completely or only consume small quantities.”
In terms of sertraline, the instructions are clear: “Do not drink grapefruit juice while you're taking this medicine. Grapefruit juice can increase the amount of sertraline in your body and increase the risk of side effects.”
Drinking a lot of grapefruit juice while on statins will leave too much of the drug in your body, putting pressure on your liver and kidneys and possibly increasing your risk of muscle damage, according to experts at News Medical.
The British Liver Trust explained: “The effect of grapefruit on the enzyme can last more than 24 hours. So even if you only take your medicine once a day it is not safe to have grapefruit at the other end of the day.”
The FDA in America has a longer list of warnings around medications that could be impacted by grapefruit juice. This includes some prescribed meds used to treat high blood pressure, organ-transplant rejection, anxiety, Crohn’s disease and even certain antihistamines for allergies.
In the case of fexofenadine, better known as the allergy medication Allegra, grapefruit juice could decrease how well it works. The FDA noted this medication also interacts badly with orange and apple juice.
