Calcium channel blockers, sometimes called calcium antagonists, are used to treat high blood pressure and a number of other diseases. Grapefruit, is an exceptionally healthy food. But the mix of calcium channel blockers with grapefruit or grapefruit juice can be hazardous to your health.
Calcium Channel Blockers
Calcium channel blockers are prescribed to prevent calcium from entering the cells of your heart and blood vessel walls. Blocking calcium from the heart and blood vessels has the effect of lowering your blood pressure. These medications relax and widen the blood vessels.
Other Benefits and Uses
In addition to lowering blood pressure, calcium channel blockers tend to slow your heart rate, which can reduce blood pressure even more, relieve angina, or chest pain; and control heart arrhythmia. Calcium channel blockers have also been used for migraine headaches, brain aneurysm complications, circulatory conditions such as Raynaud's disease, and damage to the lungs from high blood pressure.
Effectiveness of Calcium Channel Blockers
Calcium channel blockers aren't as effective as other treatments for high blood pressure, according to the Mayo Clinic. Citing research studies, the Mayo Clinic says that diuretics, beta blockers, and angiotensin-converting enzymes do a better job of lowering blood pressure. So calcium channel blockers are usually not the first medication of choice for treating high blood pressure.
Grapefruit and Medications
Chemicals in grapefruit juice and grapefruit pulp interfere with the enzymes which metabolize various drugs in the digestive system, says Mayo Clinic nutritionist Katherine Zeratsky. Those drugs include calcium channel blockers as well as cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins. As a result, mixing grapefruit and calcium channel blockers can result in an excessively high amount of these drugs in your blood system, creating a risk of serious side effects. In short, grapefruit makes calcium channel blockers more potent than they are meant to be.
Considerations
Pomelos and Seville oranges, a bitter orange often used in cooking, can have a similar effect on medications as grapefruit.
