A previous blog post alerted you to the dangers of consuming grapefruit juice with many medications. However, the same mechanism that can cause grapefruit juice to lead to dangerously high levels of some medications has also been shown to be incredibly beneficial in one instance – it can increase the effectiveness of anti-cancer medications.
A clinical trial just published in Clinical Cancer Research showed that consuming just one glass of grapefruit juice per day could offer cancer patients the same benefits from an anti-cancer drug as they would get from more than three times as much of the drug by itself! This is because grapefruit juice blocked the breakdown of the drug in the body, which allowed the drug to be much more effective at much lower doses.
This has potentially huge implications for chemotherapy treatment. By using a combination of grapefruit juice and chemotherapy a patient may be able to take much less medication while achieving the same cancer-fighting effects. This means less side effects (associated with higher doses) and significantly reduced medication costs to the patient.
More studies are needed to determine the exact right combination of grapefruit juice and various chemotherapy drugs, but this research is very promising and provides a prime example of Hippocrates famous quote – “Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be food.”