So, it doesn’t look like one has to worry about grapefruit affecting our natural chemistry. In fact, if anything, the Harvard Nurses’ Study found a decreased risk of the scariest breast cancer type. But, subsequent studies on even larger groups of women found no evidence of a link. If suppressing our drug-clearance enzymes with grapefruit juice elevates levels of ingested estrogen, what might it be doing to our own estrogen levels? This study, associating grapefruit consumption with breast cancer, freaked out the medical community. Taking the pill with grapefruit may increase blood concentrations by 137%. Women taking the pill are at a higher risk of blood clots, particularly, perhaps, if they have been consuming grapefruit. Now, this may be good, if you want a better caffeine buzz from your morning coffee, or your doctor wants to help you save thousands of dollars boosting the effects of expensive drugs, instead of just peeing them down the toilet.īut, higher drug levels may mean higher risk of side effects. But, certain phytochemicals in plants can affect the metabolism of drugs in the body, and 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 so, less drug clearance means higher drug levels in the body. Now, hopefully, if you eat lots of fruits and veggies, you won’t need a lot of drugs. But, ironically, combine grapefruits and drugs together, and you can make drug side effects even worse. To prevent heart disease, you really have to get down to a total cholesterol of around 150-the average cholesterol of those eating diets composed exclusively of plant foods, not just grapefruits.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, whereas grapefruit alone don’t have any side effects. But, as you can see, though, they went from one life-threatening cholesterol level to another life-threatening cholesterol level. This was one grapefruit a day for 30 days. Other studies have found a legitimate cholesterol-lowering benefit-especially eating red, as opposed to white, grapefruits-and, even a little dip in triglycerides. But again, it’s because the grapefruit just didn’t do any better than placebo. “Conclusion: This study suggests that consumption of grapefruit daily for 6 weeks does not significantly decrease body weight, cholesterol, or blood pressure.” What?! That made me do a little double take. Here’s the latest, showing grapefruit consumers had a drop in weight, significant drop in cholesterol, 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, you repeat the experiment, and instead ask people to drink a half-cup of water before each meal, you get the same result. In this study, the grapefruit-eaters not only saw their weight go down, but their waist got slimmer, and their body fat melted away. But, that’s no more than if they ate three apples or pears a day. If you have people eat half a grapefruit three times a day before each meal for a couple months, they may lose about two pounds. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content.
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