Dear Health Conscious Reader,
You may have seen this in the news, or even heard it from your doctor: Avoid eating grapefruit or drinking grapefruit juice when you’re taking certain prescription drugs.
But you might want to give up those prescription drugs before you give up grapefruit.
Let me explain…
Prescription drugs are designed to do what they do without consideration for how your body handles them. In many cases, your body considers them to be toxic. For instance, they may poison selected enzymes in your body to act on whatever ailment the drug is aimed at treating.
So what do drugs and the way they work have to do with grapefruit?
Well, grapefruit contains a flavonoid called naringenin. It’s what gives grapefruit its bitter taste. It’s also a potent antioxidant. And that’s the secret to grapefruit’s cleansing power. It binds to toxins and helps flush them from your body. It will do this even if the toxin happens to be a prescription drug.
Not only that, but naringenin can:
- Decrease your body’s insulin resistance to help prevent diabetes,1 and
- Reprogram your liver to melt excess fat, instead of store it.2
And there’s more. A study by Scripps Clinical Research found the fiber in grapefruit aided in the digestion of carbs to help stop spikes in your blood-sugar levels.3
Here’s why I’m telling you about grapefruit. This effect that grapefruit has to remove toxins from your body can be made more powerful when combined with a fast. What I mean is that you only eat grapefruit for a day. Grapefruit makes the fast much easier because you get some carbohydrates, some bulk in your intestines and some fiber. And I don’t find it difficult. If I’m hungry, I just eat more grapefruit.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
1 Goldwasser, J., Cohen, P., Yang, E., et al, “Transcriptional Regulation of Human and Rat Hepatic Lipid Metabolism by the Grapefruit Flavonoid Naringenin: Role of PPARα, PPARγ and LXRα,” Public Library of Science 2010
2 Mulvihill, E., Allister, E., Sutherland, B., et al, “Naringenin Prevents Dyslipidemia Apolipoprotein B Overproduction, and Hyperinsulinemia in LDL Receptor–Null Mice With Diet-Induced Insulin Resistance,” Diabetes 2009
3 Ibid.