9 ms·
I remember many years ago when I first moved to Asia, people looked at me wide-eyed whenever I took medicine with orange juice or a can of soda. I dismissed it
by pattusk 6y ago
I remember many years ago when I first moved to Asia, people looked at me wide-eyed whenever I took medicine with orange juice or a can of soda.
I dismissed it as some urban legend on the level of the fan-death [1] until a doctor explained to me the adverse interactions of citrus fruits on all sorts of medicine.
I have been taking my medicine diligently with water ever since, but it still amazes me how incredibly different the distribution of such common and potentially life-saving medical knowledge can be across countries and cultures.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
- strogonoff 6y agoBeing a little pedantic, the drug interactions part of the article applies to bitter citrus specifically: not just grapefruit (despite the title!), but not all citrus either. Typically “orange” is used to refer to sweet oranges, not sour oranges. As to soda, I struggle to imagine a soda that has any amount of juice worth taking into account…
- simonh 6y agoSodas often contain significant amounts of ciric or phosphoric acid.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thw0rted 6y agoPer the article, the drug-interaction problem comes from furanocoumarins depleting your cytochrome P450. There's nothing in there to suggest that refined acid (as opposed to unprocessed juice) would include furanocoumarins.
- schwartzworld 6y agoOrangina?
- xtracto 6y agoI once read that CocaCola is the largest consumer of lemon oil in the world. So I am sure their syrup has plenty of it.
- kingbirdy 6y agoI don't think this logic tracks - there are so many Cokes produced annually that even if every can had only 0.1 mL of lemon oil they'd still probably be the largest consumer.
- llarsson 6y agoNot too mention that the Coca-Cola company also own a staggering amount of more or less known brands, the bigger of which of course being Sprite and Fanta, which are likely large consumers of lemon oil.
- mlyle 6y agoFresca is right on the line, with a can shown to increase serum concentrations of some drugs by 50%--- not enough to matter in most cases.
- chimeracoder 6y ago> As to soda, I struggle to imagine a soda that has any amount of juice worth taking into account… It's not just the juice. The acidity level of your stomach affects absorption of many drugs - some are absorbed faster in an acidic environment and some are absorbed slower, which means drinking even Coca Cola (pH: 2.5) with your medication could potentially have the effect of negating your medication or increasing the effective dosage substantially, depending on the drug.
- et2o 6y agoYour stomach is already much more acidic than Coca Cola
- refurb 6y agoIndeed. It’s typically a pH of 1. And your body is really good at buffering acids and bases. Once your stomach empties into your small intestine, bicarbonate is released which raises the pH to around 5.5 I believe which is necessary for digestive enzymes to work.
- skunkworks 6y agoThink you'd be surprised. Coke pH is 2.5, and it seems that ideal human stomach pH is 1.5 to 2.5. Fun fact: you can use Coke to clean your toilets.
- Shivetya 6y agoAcross cultures and countries is not even the least of concerns, simply across doctors and other medical professionals, the communication to patients is not consistent. How this is solved is probably at the facility level and probably something that needs to be in the packet given to patients along with all those wonderful privacy and health notices. This based on my mom doing chemo which came with other types of drugs to counter issues arising from that treatment and surgery. Suffice to say some doctors warn about the issue with grapefruit while others even dismissed the concerns. However this goes back to her quip about diabetes, you can get four opinions by asking three doctors.
- sroussey 6y agoMy mother is doing chemo, and they definitely warned against grapefruit and the kind of oranges used in marmalade (not orange juice).
- carlmr 6y agoI'm wondering if this could be related to how common Pomelo (柚子) is in China (and maybe some other Asian countries, not sure), which per the article has the same effect and is also consumed in sizeable quantities.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoOoh, that's good intuition. Citrus genetics is complicated, but pomelo is the ancestor of grapefruit. (Bergamot and bitter orange are also closely related.)
- savanaly 6y agoI'm curious what you ever made, if anything, of the looks you would get for drinking ice water. I know it is considered very unhealthy with a strong taboo there (at least, my data is from China, not sure if applies to other asian countries). I once asked a Chinese friend would they rather their hypothetical child habitually drink ice water or smoke cigarettes, and she knows the health risks of cigarettes, and she was genuinely on the fence and torn.
- nefitty 6y agoWhat is the feared effect?
- not2b 6y agoWater-borne diseases, I'm sure. It's easy for ice to be contaminated; if you go to a part of the world where tap water can't be relied on to be safe, skip the ice.
- garmaine 6y agoNo, that’s not what he’s referencing. There’s a Chinese belief that cold water makes you sick. Even sanitized, filtered water and ice made from the same. The fear is over the temperature, and is akin to Korea’s fear of electric fans in its irrationality.
- not2b 6y agoI understand, but my guess is that the origin of this belief was from times when cold water would make you sick because it was likely to be contaminated. Given that, it's not irrational at all. If you believe something that increases your survival but you believe it for the wrong reason, it still increases your survival.
- garmaine 6y agoThat might be the origin of the belief, but it’s not what people are fearing today.