ITEMS  OF  INTEREST

Healthy Living
Avoiding Food And Drug Interactions
What you eat or drink may delay, accelerate, decrease or increase drug absorption. Beware of consuming large amounts of:
Grapefruit juice - Avoid grapefruit juice when taking certain statins to treat high cholesterol - particularly simvastain (Zocor). lovastatin (Mevacor) or certain calcium channel blockers, such as felodipine , nifedipine (Procardia XL) and nisoldipine (Sular). Grapefruit juice should be avoided when taking the organ transplant drug cyclosporine (Neoral, Sandimmune, others) and anti-anxiety drug pirone (Buspar).  Grapefruit can increase levels of these drugs in the body, which can lead to more side effects.

Source: "Health Tips: Avoiding Food And Drug Interaction." Mayo Clinic Health Letter (January 2011), p.3.

See next month for more on the subject.