Grapefruit can also raise blood levels of the cholesterol drugs atorvastatin and simvastatin, prompting muscle pain and, eventually, muscle breakdown. “On the list of concerning food-drug interactions,” Dresser told me, “arguably, this is the most important one.” When paired with certain heart medications, grapefruit could potentially cause arrhythmias with some antidepressants, it might induce nausea, vomiting, and an elevated heart rate. The possible consequences of these molecular clogs can sometimes get intense. It doesn’t take much: Even half a grapefruit can be enough to trigger a noticeable interaction, says George Dresser, a pharmacologist at Western University, in Ontario. And the jamming culprit is a compound found in the pulp and peel of grapefruit and related citrus, including pomelos and Seville oranges. In this case, the garbage disposal is an enzyme called cytochrome P450 3A4-CYP3A4 for short-capable of breaking down a whole slate of potentially harmful chemicals found in foods and meds. It’s the rough physiological equivalent of jamming a garbage disposal: Waste that normally gets flushed just builds, and builds, and builds. Some chemical in grapefruit was messing with the body’s natural ability to break down felodipine in the hours after it was taken, causing the drug to accumulate in the blood. Hoping to mask the distinctive taste of booze for his volunteers, Bailey mixed it with grapefruit juice, and was shocked to discover that blood levels of felodipine were suddenly skyrocketing in everyone-even those in the control group, who were drinking virgin grapefruit juice.Īfter running experiments on himself, Bailey confirmed that the juice was to blame. Some three decades ago, the clinical pharmacologist David Bailey (who died earlier this year) was running a trial testing the effects of alcohol consumption on a blood-pressure medication called felodipine. Grapefruit’s medication-concentrating powers were discovered only because of a culinary accident. No one can agree on exactly how much the world should worry about this bittersweet treat whose chemical properties scientists still don’t fully understand. But that leaves grapefruit in a bit of a weird position. For most people, chowing down on grapefruit is completely safe it would take “a perfect storm” of factors-say, a vulnerable person taking an especially grapefruit-sensitive medication within a certain window of drinking a particular amount of grapefruit juice-for disaster to unfurl, says Emily Heil, an infectious-disease pharmacist at the University of Maryland. The fruit, for all its tastiness and dietetic appeal, has another, more sinister trait: It raises the level of dozens of FDA-approved medications in the body, and for a select few drugs, the amplification can be potent enough to trigger a life-threatening overdose. Read: Why science can be so indecisive about nutritionīut for every grapefruit evangelist, there is a critic warning of its dangers-probably one with a background in pharmacology. And yet, the diet has survived through the decades, spawning a revival in the 1970s and ’80s, a dangerous juice-exclusive spin-off called the grapefruit fast, and even a shout-out from Weird Al its hype still plagues nutritionists today. If people were losing weight with the regimen, that’s because the citrus was being recommended as part of a portion-controlled, low-calorie, low-carbohydrate diet-not because it had exceptional flab-blasting powers. The Grapefruit Diet, like pretty much all other fad diets, is mostly bunk. All a figure-conscious girl had to do was eat a lot of grapefruit for a week, or two, or three. Hollywood starlets such as Ethel Barrymore supposedly swore by it the citrus industry hopped on board. Roughly a century ago, a new fad diet began to sweep the United States.
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