Grapefruit may prove helpful in lowering your blood pressure, providing a natural remedy to hypertension and protecting you against heart disease. But if you take blood pressure medications, combining them with grapefruit could seriously endanger your heart health -- and your life. Grapefruit poses serious interactions with a long list of medications, so exercise caution before including grapefruit in your diet.
Blood Pressure and Cholesterol
A grapefruit study published in February 2006 in the "Journal of Agriculture" suggests that consuming grapefruit, especially red grapefruit, may be good for lowering your blood pressure due to the fact that it can lower your triglycerides, a type of fat in your bloodstream. Shela Gorinstein, a researcher at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, led the 57-person study. All persons in the study who ate grapefruit daily for a month realized reductions in their triglyceride levels. Those who ate red grapefruit lowered their triglyceride levels more than persons who ate white grapefruit. Reducing the amount of fat in your arteries will likely lower your blood pressure.
Statins
The connection between cholesterol and blood pressure is that the raising of one is likely to raise the other, just as the lowering of one should naturally lower the other. You can develop high blood pressure because the fat from high cholesterol can make it hard for your blood to pump throughout your arteries. You can develop high cholesterol from high blood pressure that tears your arteries. The tears will force your body to make repairs, leaving scar tissue behind. The scar tissue creates "nets" that can catch triglycerides and low-density lipoprotein -- LDL, or "bad" cholesterol. If you take statins to lower triglycerides or LDL cholesterol, do not consume grapefruit. The combination can produce serious side effects.
Drug Interactions
If you consume grapefruit, it stops your body's CYP34A enzyme from properly metabolizing medication. Medication stays in your system longer than intended and may build up to extremes if you continue taking the drug. This makes side effects more likely to occur and potentially more dangerous. Excess medication in your system may also mean that a drug works more powerfully than it should. If you combine grapefruit with blood pressure medication, for instance, your blood pressure may drop to very low levels.
Calcium Channel Blockers
If your blood pressure drops to very low levels, you could faint. Far worse, your heart could stop beating. This is why it can be dangerous to combine grapefruit with blood pressure medication, such as the calcium channel blockers nifedipine and felodipine, which lower your blood pressure by preventing calcium from entering your blood vessels and heart. Consult a doctor before consuming grapefruit to treat a blood pressure issue and before combing grapefruit with medications -- blood pressure-related or otherwise.
References
- "The Evening Standard"; Have a Heart, Have a Red Grapefruit; Mark Prigg; Feb. 9, 2006
- ACS Publications: Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry: Red Grapefruit Positively Influences Serum Triglyceride Level in Patients Suffering from Coronary Atherosclerosis: Studies in Vitro and in Human; Shela Gorinstein, et al.; Feb. 3, 2006
- "The Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide"; Grapefruit and Medication: A Cautionary Note; Feb. 2006
- American Heart Association: About High Blood Pressure
- "The New York Times"; Experts Reveal the Secret Powers of Grapefruit Juice; Nicholas Bakalar; March 21 2006
- MayoClinic.com: Calcium Channel Blockers; Dec 16 2010
