The Grapefruit Effects

People find that grapefruit juice tastes good, and it can also lower bad cholesterol in their body. However, when grapefruit juice and cholesterol-lowering medications are taken together, people could get adverse effects on their body. Knowing about this potential adverse effects, readers of this article will be able to free themselves from the adverse effects and will be able to enjoy the good effects of grapefruit juice. Here are the good and the bad of grapefruit juice.

Grapefruit Tastes Good and It Also Helps Removing Bad Cholesterol

Many people enjoy drinking grapefruit juice. Because they enjoy drinking it, some even grow grapefruit trees in their backyard so that they can pick it and make juice out of it. Others drink grapefruit juice because they believe that grapefruit can remove bad cholesterol from their body. What is in the grapefruit that removes the bad cholesterol from the body?

Natural-Homeremedies can answer this question. In an 2007-2008 article ‚”Grapefruit Diet”, Natural-Homeremedies writes that grapefruit contains beta carotene substance that removes bad cholesterol from people’s body. This means that the beta carotene burns fats in people’s body. This burning of fats stops the bad cholesterol from building up in the body.

Grapefruit Can Have Serious Effects on Some Patients

Although grapefruit tastes good and helps remove bad cholesterol from a person’s body, it is very important that a person who is taking a cholesterol-lowering medication consults with his or her doctor before drinking grapefruit juice or eating the fruit because grapefruit and medications do not go together sometimes. The combination can even kill a patient who has a high blood pressure.

Why is the combination so dangerous? In a January 26, 2005 ScienceDaily article ‚”Grapefruit Juice and Medication Can be a Dangerous Mix”, Amy Karch, an expert on drug interactions, says that, ‚”grapefruit juice is one of the foods most likely to cause problems with drugs, because it is metabolized by the same enzyme in the liver that breaks down many drugs” ( accessed March 08, 2010). The enzyme for breaking down drugs and other substances is called ‚”cytochrome P-450 3A4″ (ScienceDaily, Accessed March 08, 2010).

When people drink a lot of grapefruit juice, the cytochrome P-450 3A4 enzyme in the liver will metabolize or break down the grapefruit juice for use in the body. But, at the same time, because the enzyme in the liver is very busy with breaking down the grapefruit juice, the enzyme could not break down other substances. This type of interactions causes harmful effects to patients who are taking cholesterol-lowering medications. Therefore, those patients should consult with their doctor before drinking the grapefruit juice.

As people can see, grapefruit juice tastes good, and it can also lower bad cholesterol. However, sometimes, it is very dangerous to people’s health. Therefore, to stay safe and healthy, people should follow the good, the bad, and ugly described in this article.

References:

Natural-Remedies (2007-2008). ‚”Grapefruit Diet.” Natural-homeremedies.org Accessed March 25, 2010.

ScienceDaily (January 26, 2005). ‚”Grapefruit Juice and Medication Can be a Dangerous Mix.” ScienceDaily.com Accessed March 08, 2010.