Let’s be honest, you don’t hear too many people craving Grapefruit as a food or dessert choice during the week or weekend, but some people do recognize its dietary benefits.
To quickly name some:
• It may benefit your immune system.
• Grapefruit has weight loss benefits.
• Grapefruit may help prevent insulin resistance and diabetes.
• Eating grapefruit may improve heart health.
• It's high in powerful antioxidants.
But this may be new to you, but many health institutions and medication manufacturers have issued “Grapefruit Warnings” because of the effect it can have when mixed with your medication.
But what’s that got to do with your CBD? Are there any similarities between CBD and Grapefruit? What happens if I am or know someone who does take CBD and loves Grapefruit on the regular?
Keep reading because there can be SERIOUS HEALTH IMPLICATIONS if you ignore the potential risks.
Let’s explore some of the facts.
How does grapefruit affect my medicine?
Eating grapefruit or drinking grapefruit juice can affect some medicines. In most cases, it increases the level of the medicine in your blood. This can increase the risk of side effects or alter the effect the medicine has.
If your usual diet includes grapefruit or grapefruit juice and you've been prescribed a medicine that's affected by grapefruit, speak to your GP or pharmacist. Do not stop taking your medicine without advice.
The list of medications that can interact with grapefruit includes commonly prescribed medications that:
• Fight infection
• Reduce cholesterol
• Treat high blood pressure
• Treat heart problems
• Prevent organ rejection
• Treat anxiety
• Control seizures
• Minimize motion sickness
• Treat erectile dysfunction
• Replace hormones
• Reduce cough & control pain
Now that we know a bit more about Grapefruit and its potential risks with mixing with other medications, lets discuss the commonality with CBD.
In an article from Forbes, CBD was compared with grapefruit and outlined a couple of facts:
What CBD and grapefruit have in common
The reason for the warning is that grapefruit contains compounds called furanocoumarins that bind with and effectively neutralize enzymes in the gut (specifically a type called CYP450 enzymes), which help break down and eliminate drugs from the body. When these enzymes can’t do their job, too much of the drug enters the liver and flows unprocessed into the bloodstream. That elevates risk of having dangerously high levels of the drug in your system.
CBD is similar to grapefruit in that it also binds with those enzymes, but research suggests that it’s possibly even more potent because it binds in multiple parts of the gut and liver (grapefruit mainly affects enzymes within the small intestine). Once an enzyme has been inhibited, the effect isn't immediately reversed. It can take days for enzyme function to return to baseline and start the process again.
In particular, research has found that CBD is a "potent inhibitor" of two enzymes (CYP3A4 and CYP2D6) that affect many common drugs, including antihistamines, benzodiazepines, certain antidepressants, and statins.
What’s the risk?
The enzymes that both grapefruit and CBD inhibit are thought to break down a significant percentage of prescription and over-the-counter medications, so the potential for problems could be hig
A low dose of a med could become a high dose if it’s not properly broken down and eliminated. A high dose of a med could become a dangerously high dose, or even an overdose. Drugs with a narrow “therapeutic window” (they must stay within a certain blood-concentration range) are especially susceptible.
One of the big problems with CBD at the moment is we don’t really know yet which drugs are affected the most, and it’s difficult to identify exact levels of risk because the research has a lot of catching up to do after decades of science-blocking illegality. But since the compound appears to exert similar effects as grapefruit, caution is needed.
What’s the best path forward?
At a minimum, the evidence at this point suggests that grapefruit warnings on medications should also apply to CBD. And it’s important to check with your doctor before taking CBD, especially if you’re taking other medications.
The market for CBD products is predicted to pass $22 billion over the next four years, and that's coming with the expected hurricane of fact-obscuring hype. With so much fanfare, it’s easy to ignore the fact that CBD is a potent compound that's far from exhaustively understood. Research is uncovering upsides of taking it for a variety of conditions, and we’ll likely see more to come, but it’s also on us to recognize that this is an unfolding story and proceed with caution.
Final Thoughts
TAYCO FARMS prides itself on ensuring we produce the cleanest, purest, and free of harsh solvents like carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, propane, butane, and ethanol. Our goal is to provide the people with the herbal and holistic benefits that CBD may contribute to your overall Health & Wellness.
We feel confident in our CBD products but want to educate the public on factors that we have NO CONTROL over, like what meds or diet an individual may have. If you include grapefruit in your normal diet or taking CBD with your meds, PLEASE CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR FIRST FOR PROFESSIONAL HEALTH ADVICE.
TAYCO FARMS’s staff are here to educate you on the quality of our CBD but cannot offer you any medical advice on; however, our communication channels are always open for you to reach out if you have any questions concerning CBD, our CBD products, and what some of the potential risks are of taking CBD.