![]() Don’t take an extra one to make up for it. If you forget to take your tablet, carry on as normal the next day.This is except for atorvastatin and rosuvastatin which you can take at any time. That’s because the liver is more active in making cholesterol at night. Your doctor or nurse might suggest you take your statins at night, before you go to bed.Take your statins every day to keep your cholesterol levels down.PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch my full 2012 – 2015 presentations Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death, More than an Apple a Day, From Table to Able, and Food as Medicine. Anti-Angiogenesis: Cutting Off Tumor Supply LinesĪnd another video on the risks associated with taking estrogens: Plant-Based Bioidentical Hormones. ![]() If you don’t want to give up your grapefruit, you can ask your doctor about switching from a grapefruit-affected drug like Lipitor to one of the citrus-proof alternatives (the replacement drug chart can be seen in my video, Tell Your Doctor If You Eat Grapefruit). ![]() The Harvard Nurses’ Study even found a decreased risk of the scariest breast cancer type, so it doesn’t look like we have to worry about grapefruit affecting our natural chemistry.įor those prescribed unnatural chemistries, it may be a good idea to discontinue grapefruit consumption for 72 hours before use of a drug that may interact with it. If suppressing our drug clearance enzymes with grapefruit juice elevates levels of ingested estrogen, what might it be doing to our own estrogen levels? A study associating grapefruit consumption with breast cancer freaked out the medical community, but subsequent studies on even larger groups of women found no evidence of a link. Taking the Pill with grapefruit juice may increase blood drug concentrations by 137 percent. Women taking the Pill are normally at a higher risk of blood clots, but even more so, perhaps, if they have been consuming grapefruit. This may actually be good if we want a better caffeine buzz from our morning coffee, or our doctors want to help us save thousands of dollars by boosting the effects of expensive drugs instead of just peeing them away.īut higher drug levels may mean higher risk of side effects. Grapefruit is the poster child, described as a “pharmacologist’s nightmare.” Natural phytochemicals in grapefruit suppress the enzymes that help clear more than half of commonly prescribed drugs, and less drug clearance means higher drug levels in the body. If we eat lots of fruits and vegetables, we hopefully won’t need a lot of drugs ( Say No to Drugs by Saying Yes to More Plants), but certain phytochemicals in plants can affect the metabolism of drugs in the body. While grapefruits alone don’t have any side effects, ironically, combining grapefruits and drugs can make drug side effects even worse. To prevent heart disease, we really have to get down to a total cholesterol of around 150, which is the average cholesterol of those eating diets composed exclusively of plant foods, not just grapefruits (See, for example, One in a Thousand: Ending the Heart Disease Epidemic).Įven though grapefruits alone don’t do much, the researchers suggest that people might be more likely to stick with them than cholesterol lowering drugs, noting that most people with heart disease stop taking their statin drugs within a couple years because of the adverse side effects (see Statin Muscle Toxicity). For example, one study showed a decrease in cholesterol, but only from one life-threatening cholesterol level to another life-threatening cholesterol level. Other studies have found a legitimate cholesterol-lowering benefit of grapefruit, and even a little dip in triglycerides, especially eating red as opposed to white. That made me do a little double take, but again, it’s because the grapefruit didn’t do any better than placebo. They concluded that consumption of grapefruit daily for six weeks does not significantly decrease body weight, cholesterol, or blood pressure, though. The researchers reported that grapefruit consumers had a drop in weight, a significant drop in cholesterol, and a significant drop in blood pressure. So this belief that grapefruit has some special fat-burning quality appears to be just a long-held myth. If, however, we repeat the experiment and instead ask people to drink a half cup of water before each meal, we get the same result. In one study, the grapefruit eaters not only saw their weight go down, but their waist got slimmer, and their body fat melted away. If someone eats half of a grapefruit three times a day before each meal for a couple months, they may lose about two pounds - but that’s no more than if they ate three apples or pears a day. Does grapefruit in particular help people lose weight?
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