Fruit juice could reduce the effectiveness of some medicinesI've previously had posts that pointed out that fruit juice was far from being a health food.
Mark Sisson explained some of the concerns the other day in an excellent post - Mark what's wrong with juicing?
The take-home message is this: juice can offer a decent source of nutrients on days when it’s hard to work in your usual amount of fruits and veggies, but it’s just not an adequate substitute for the real/whole source. (Note: It also requires that you recalibrate your overall carb load that day.)
Here is something else to consider:
Research presented at a US conference suggested a chemical in grapefruit juice could stop anti-allergy drugs being absorbed properly. A University of Western Ontario team said oranges, and possibly apples, had similar ingredients. Grapefruit juice is already known to interfere with blood pressure drugs.There are more details in a press release from the University of Western Ontario.
Comments
In the cytochrome P450 system there are many liver enzymes, but just 6 of them metabolize 90% of drugs. Grapefruit juice inhibits 2 of these 6 (3A4 and 1A2). This means that, statistically speaking, a substantial percentage of *all drugs* are affected by grapefruit juice (and to a lesser extent, other related juices). So when some new drug is, it isn't news. For every 5 new drugs, you should expect 1 or 2 of them to have grapefruit juice interactions.
If you're taking prescription drugs, you should assume that grapefruit juice interferes with them unless you've checked otherwise.
See for example: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3804/is_200201/ai_n9083616