Can You Eat Grapefruit With Statins
However how much grapefruit juice one needs to consume to produce a clinically significant drug interaction isnt entirely known.
Can you eat grapefruit with statins. Certain classes of drugs most notably statins are metabolized broken down in your intestines by an enzyme called CYP3A which normally reduces the amount of drug that enters your bloodstream. Learn If Your Levels Are Putting You At Risk. There are several studies about grapefruit and statin interaction and recent ones suggest that moderate grapefruit consumption can be compatible with taking lovastatin and other statin drugs.
When taken 12 hours apart as your doctor recommends blood levels go up by 90 percent. When grapefruit and simvastatin are taken together blood levels of the drug increase by 260 percent Lee Morris Wald American Journal of Medicine Jan. You only need to avoid grapefruit if your doctor prescribes.
Find Out 16 Foods that Lower Cholesterol. Grapefruit can increase the side effects of some statin cholesterol medications causing muscle damage. They might be able to switch your prescription to something unaffected by grapefruit or even advise you to simply watch the timing of when you eat it.
You know grapefruit can interact with some statins. Grapefruit juice may increase the plasma concentrations of atorvastatin. It is known that grapefruits contain a group of chemicals furanocoumarins which can alter drug metabolism the amount of time it takes for a drug to be broken down by the body.
Essentially compounds in grapefruit prevent the. Grapefruit juice can cause that statin to stay in your body much longer and the drug can build up. But some researchers arent so sure.
The furanocoumarins in grapefruit may affect how the body processes other medications such as allergy medicine according. Past research has warned that eating grapefruit or drinking grapefruit juice and taking statins for high cholesterol may increase your risk for complications such as rhabdomyolysis the breakdown of muscle tissue that may lead to kidney damage joint pain and muscle pain. In reality its only related to the 3 statins we mentioned above.