h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If this thread is helpful I will be pleased - even if it should only help one

No, paulh, it's not just between me and my . It's between me and all the others who haven't been told this valuable lesson.

I'm still wondering how my could not know this He has always come across as very competent and I have just as much confidence in him now as I had before. (One should never have 100 percent confidence in humans - they tend to err)

I have just checked my mother's medication and its reaction to grapefruit/grapefruit juice. It is advised not to eat/drink any at all.

So I'll tell her that tonight when I phone.

I texted my sister first. She put into words what I had in the back of my mind - i.e. that Mum likes her half grapefruit for breakfast and would probably not be happy about having to change her ways. Would it help if she took the tablets in the evening, we wonder. Or are there other tablets. *Any* way she can continue to eat her grapefruit???

Pierce, I didn't realize how many people [including doctors] didn't know about grapefruit juice. It was well-publicized when the information first came out, but maybe it just sank out of the public's consciousness, and many doctors assumed their patients knew. So, yes, this thread is turning out to be useful, as you intended.

I think that there's an unholy alliance by the more alarmist media and the more impressionable public [aided, no doubt, by merchants who want to make a buck ] when some new study comes out. The trouble is, science does not work b y individual studies. All studies need to be peer-reviewed and duplicated. If they don't produce the same results every time, they become suspect among scientists. The public tends not to witness the debunking of earlier studies, so they go by what they think *used* to be true . Cholesterol is a case in point, though not the only one. The science behind governments' attempts to reduce public consumption of saturated fat and national cholesterol levels was not as clear-cut as the early enthusiast for the theory were willing to admit. But companies like Quaker Oats knew they could make a buck by promoting oatmeal on the basis that it lowered people's cholesterol.

Now, oatmeal is at least a mostly harmless food except when eaten to excess. The Dutch used to eat four bowls of it every day. They also tended to suffer from obesity, which can hardly be said to be harmless. Did the oatmeal contribute to the obesity? With four bowls a day, I doubt that we can rule it out.

As far as I know, the science behind grapefruit interactions with meds is pretty secure. So, yes, by all means make sure people know about it. I assumed everyone did. Apparently I was wrong.

As for the spinach thing - that is really big in Germany. That and mushroom dishes. Shouldn't be re-heated. They say. As that article linked to above shows, there is some truth in this, but not so that anyone in any other country knows about it.

I have re-heated spinach and am here to tell the tale. I have also re-heated food with mushrooms in it and - again - I live to tell the tale.

"Urlaubsbekanntschaften und Pilzgerichte soll man nicht wieder aufwärmen" - Holiday friendships and mushrooms should not be warmed up again.

I think the spinach thing is big here because we eat so much of it. I remember the (then 7 and 8) year old Gruesome Twosomes telling the similarly aged children in my parents' village that their favourite meal was (and probably still is) egg, spinach and potato - and without exception the English children made a face and said "yuk".

I'll tell my mum about the grapefruit thing and she can check it against any meds she's taking.

I'd never heard of it at all.

re posting 24:

I would consult your mother's doctor, TC.

Because according to the link I mentioned earlier: "One glass of grapefruit juice could elicit the maximum blocking effect, and the effect may persist for longer than 24 hours. Since the effects can last for such a prolonged period of time, grapefruit juice does not have to be taken at the same time as the medication in order for the interaction to occur."

Maybe there is no problem at all with the medicine your mother is taking, maybe her doctor can prescribe something different. I don't know.

Here's that link again. Please observe there are three pages.

http://www.medicinenet.com/grapefruit_juice_and_medication_interactions/views.htm

That link is kind of scary, Pierce. They only discovered grapefruit's effects 10 or 15 years ago. I only take one of the meds listed [simvastatin], but expected to see more. Who knows what else is as yet undiscovered?

That *is* scary, isn't it?

And they discovered it by pure accident. I wonder how many other "innocent ingredients" in scientifical tests have completely altered the outcome of those tests.
Since it has happened once it probably happened more than once - according to Murphy's Law.

Such discoveries continue to be made. Science has far to go in explaining the world. When I was in graduate school, if I ever said the word "science," my professor would say, "science as we know it."

Wise. Science is forever on the move

One of my prescriptions has a note that says: "Consult with doctor on side effects and interactions."

When I was a reference librarian, people would call me on the phone and ask me to look in Physician's desk reference for side effects from various medications. The wording could be hard going and technical. If the average person read PDR, no one would ever take their medicine, as the side effects sound so scary.

And yet, I've known people to have some terrible effects from prescriptions that were supposed to be safe. Everyone has a different metabolism.

I notice that my father often has half a grapefruit for breakfast in the morning. I don't know if he's on any cholesterol meds. I hope they aren't statins. My mother made sure we all knew about the grapefruit connection, so probably Dad is okay.

Reading about side effects can indeed be scary

Seems like every time you take a new drug you conduct a scientific experiment with yourself as the guinea pig

But there is hardly anything that hasn't got side effects - even water - and not all side effects are bad. Plus the risk of getting the severest side effects are usually pretty low.

Like I may have mentioned earlier in this thread: It's all a question of balance

http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2013/03/common_food-drug_interactions.html

Thank you *very* much for that link, Baron!

Quote from the above:

"As little as one cup of grapefruit juice or two grapefruit wedges can cause trouble with certain medications. And Seville oranges (often used in marmalade) and tangelos (a cross between tangerines and grapefruit) also contain furanocoumarins (the compound in grapefruit that's responsible for drug interactions), so you may need to avoid these as well, if your medicine interacts with grapefruit juice"

The "link in the link" appears to be useful:

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/default.htm

Thanks for the link, Baron Grim.

I knew about almost all the interactions mentioned. In fact, I think they left out some foods with MAOI, which stands for Mono=-Amine Oxidase Inhibitors. I knew a woman who was on that medicine. In addition to the foods listed, she also could not eat bananas or shellfish.

I did not know that Seville oranges and tangelos contained the same stuff as grapefruit. I'm going to use a couple of navel oranges in a mango cake soon, but I've not had trouble with oranges and my blood pressure med.