4 ms·
I heard this before. (Perhaps even on hacker news.) The way i stored it in my brain is “grapefruit is weird, don’t eat or drink grapefruit juice when on medicat
by krisoft 2y ago
I heard this before. (Perhaps even on hacker news.) The way i stored it in my brain is “grapefruit is weird, don’t eat or drink grapefruit juice when on medication. Why? It might make you ill or even kill you.”
Obviously that form is ovesimplified. But since I’m not a pharmacist, nor a doctor I can allow this simplification for myself because it “fails-safe”. That is it might make me refrain from eating grapefruit in a situation where I could safely do so, but it will save me from eating grapefruit in situations where it is not safe. It would be harder if I would need to remember that I must eat grapefruit in some situations and can’t eat in other situations.
The reason why I’m saying this is because this is how I would approach explaining this to someone. By oversimplifying to the point where the safe story is easy to remember. People already understand that they can’t mix alcohol and certain medications. So it is just one more thing you can’t mix with medication.
- AbstractH24 2y agoGrapefruit is a bad example, because it has a clear impact on the way certain medications are metabolized. That’s chemistry more than anything else. But your overall point makes sense because so many of these claims are based on studies that boil down to “playing the carefully controlled odds.”