Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Antihistamines and fruit juice

Currently there is a commercial for an antihistamine which brags that unlike its chief competition, you CAN drink it with orange juice: a strange marketing angle. I investigated this claim: not only can you not drink orange juice with the competitor product but you cannot drink apple juice or grapefruit juice with it either. It is presumed that since these juices are acidic (apple juice is only very weakly acidic), that the acids tie up the product and inactivate it. Hmm.. except the compound is orally active meaning it will hit the very acidic stomach and the compound is already sold as an acidic salt. Now I can see why an antacid would negatively interact with it (and they are contraindicated also) but not weakly acidic fruit juice. Grapefruit juice is another story as grapefruit contains a substance that interferes with cytochromes that metabolize some drugs leading in some cases to overly high drug blood levels (not decreased levels).
Well it's no skin off my teeth as I do not need an antihistamine. The only time I ever took them was  when I was predosed with them, steroids and proton blockers so I wouldn't react to Taxol and the vehicle it comes in.
But as time goes on, more and more drug interactions are discovered along with food interactions. One has to be very careful.
I had unwittingly made myself  hypothyroid by taking antacids around the same time as my Synthroid inactivating it.
Usually Thursdays are our chief study days but Naomi has something else she needs to do tomorrow so study day was today made difficult by Maya's crankiness. We were supposed to get freezing rain today but it does not look like it. Still, it will not feel like spring for almost another week.

Boring post...so sorry.

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