The Grapefruit diet

[julie.groenewald]

Hello my fruity friends,

I do not know if any of you are aware of this so called Hollywood diet. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit_diet

It is said to be a short term fad diet. Claims are made that grapefruits burn fats by reducing insulin levels.

It is said to be very dangerous because it apparently changes the livers way of taking up fats. Instead of taking it from the food, it takes it from the body, so causing weight loss. So what if your body does not have anymore fats to burn up?

What I was wondering is that grapefruit can cure many diseases. It has in the past. So I was wanting some of the fruitarians on this forum to tell us about their experience with grapefruits in the details thereof. Share your thoughts please♥

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Dear Julie, life itself is already dangerous and honestly i would not like to eat my whole life only grapefruits but i believe that they are very healthy, specially when people get some candida infections. Most of the people who say, grapefruits should be dangerous, won't tell, that food-adiction is dangerous.

As i heard and i know it by experience: Grapefruits are very healthy, may be not for everybody, that i cannot say - for me they are healthy in a healthy ammount.
Grapefruits may be also clean the liver, with it's bitter stuff in it...who knows..?!..

I had been reading a lot about dangerous food, also about the dangerous fruits.
Also i had been reading about brainwash, and brainwash indeed is more dangerous, then some believe.
I think sometimes autosuggestic hysterical and panic articles are mainly written to scare people off.

Most of the people who do not know about food pretend to know most of it and stop human race from developement..f.e. We do it as we always did, as my mother does and guess what, she had already two heart-attacs and others died already.

If fruits are so unhealthy, as some say - i do not understand, why my fruitarian friends are more healthy than the majority.

Once i had a fruitarian friend cleo-bella and her parents and her family gave her a pretty hard time while she wanted to be a fruitarian for religious reasons.
I guess that it is always better to follow the own dreams, then live in an old dream of others, that did not work.

Sandras (her real name) family had been also Christs, who wont tolerate her daugther to be less violant and to complish with the rules of the bible. They gave her various nervous break-downs and forced her to eat meat also and to consult the psychiatrist. It took about one year and the poor girl was the most unhappy person i knew that time. Her family reached their goal and turned the young lady off the fruitarian diet and broke her mind.

Was that brainwash better or even healthy for Cleo Bella?

I don't think so. It made me sad to see how adult still dependent but already motivated humans who decided to get fruitarians, still get manipulated and turned off their path.
May be one of the reasons is fear to loose control of a familiy-member for having different habits and new friends, like Cleo-bella..

May be the parents had been afraid to loose influence or their beautiful baby, who wanted to make it different and also a diffenrence, as the common way did not work for her. Anybody will suffer under circumstances of total intolerance, ignorance and mental stress.

Mental stress is more unhealthy than all the grapefruits of the world, i guess.

[julie.groenewald]

Hello Rudolf,

Thank you for your reply.

My one friend who is not a fruitarian is using the contraceptive birth control pills. When she uses this together with grapefruits, her skin becomes red, like having a rash.

So it is true that some fruits may not be for everyone, but you also need to use it correctly?Like if she did not take the pills, I am sure her body would not reject the fruit in the same way?

I wanted to ask also what fruits do you mean are potentially dangerous?Are their any?

[avatar]

Most of fruits are not dangerous, nor toxic, but they may get dangerous -or.. react toxic with other substances some fruits are even made toxic..
...usually a healthy organism will never get ill with healthy untoxified organic fruit substances,
One can get ill combined with pesitcides, fungicides or various medicaments

Grapefruit Juice and Medication Can Be a Dangerous Mix
January 18, 2005

Grapefruit juice can be dangerous for people on certain medications, nurse researchers remind doctors, nurses, and everyone who takes medicine and enjoys grapefruit juice, in a paper in the American Journal of Nursing, a journal of the American Nurses Association.

Amy Karch, R.N., M.S., of the School of Nursing at the University of Rochester Medical Center reported on a man from a northern climate who moved to Florida for the winter – one of tens of thousands of “snowbirds” who head south each winter – and began drinking two to three glasses of grapefruit juice each day. The man became critically ill as a result of an interaction between grapefruit juice and his cholesterol-lowering medication.

Karch’s paper, “The Grapefruit Challenge: The juice inhibits a crucial enzyme, with possibly fatal consequences,” appears in the December 2004 issue of the journal.

Interactions between grapefruit juice and medications have long been recognized. Last year, the Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics devoted an entire issue to grapefruit juice and the dangerous drug interactions that can result. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration requires all prospective new drugs that are thought to interact with this enzyme system to be tested for interactions with grapefruit juice. And a warning about grapefruit juice is included in the “food-drug interactions” that come with dozens of medications. Nevertheless, Karch says many health-care professionals and patients don’t know about the risk.

“The potential of drug interactions with grapefruit juice has been out there a long time, but most people just aren’t aware of it,” says Karch, a clinical associate professor of nursing. “There is so much information bombarding people all the time, that a lot of people may have heard this but forgotten it. But the problems can be life-threatening.”

The patient profiled in Karch’s article had high cholesterol and other risk factors for cardiac disease. The doctor put the patient on atorvastatin (Lipitor), and the patient began dieting and exercising. Two months after the patient went to Florida for the winter, he suddenly had muscle pain, fatigue and fever, and went to the emergency room. The patient ended up going into kidney failure and ultimately died.

The only major change in the person’s lifestyle had been that, upon arriving in Florida, he began picking grapefruit off a tree on the patio and drinking two or three glasses of fresh grapefruit juice every day.

Karch, an expert on drug interactions, explains that grapefruit juice is one of the foods most likely to cause problems with drugs, because it is metabolized by the same enzyme in the liver that breaks down many drugs. The cytochrome P-450 3A4 enzyme breaks down grapefruit juice into useful components for body, just like it breaks down dozens of medications. Karch says when the system is overloaded, the grapefruit juice can “swamp” the system, keeping the liver busy and blocking it from breaking down drugs and other substances.

Drugs that use the same pathway and interact with grapefruit juice target some of the most common health problems doctors see today. The list consists of more than 50 medications, including some drugs used to treat high cholesterol, depression, high blood pressure, cancer, depression, pain, impotence, and allergies.

Karch notes that interactions with grapefruit juice are well known and documented among drug researchers, and that an appropriate warning label is included with each prescription. Nevertheless, she says that many patients, nurses and doctors aren’t aware of the interactions or the potential serious consequences, and that many people fail to read the warning labels about drug-food interactions.

The consequences of an interaction depend on the drug involved. A person on an anti-depressant might have too much or too little energy, depending on the specific medication. Someone on antibiotics might end up with diarrhea or could be ill longer than usual because the some drugs won’t work as well as they should. A heart patient might not get the lowered blood pressure that a medication should deliver, or the heart’s rhythms might become irregular if an anti-arrhythmia drug can’t do its job. The juice could also affect the effectiveness of a woman’s hormone-replacement-therapy medication.

The most severe effects are likely with some cholesterol-lowering medications, Karch says. While the liver devotes its resources to grapefruit juice, the medication could build up to dangerous levels, causing a breakdown of the body’s muscles and even kidney failure. This is likely what happened to the patient discussed in the article, Karch says.

To prevent such problems, Karch repeats what doctors and nurses tell their patients every day: Read a medication’s warning label carefully. If an interaction with grapefruit juice is possible, the patient should stop drinking the juice until speaking with his or her doctor. In some cases it might be possible to switch a patient to a different drug without the risk; in other cases the patient might simply have to give up grapefruit juice.

She says that more people than usual are vulnerable at this time of year, because losing weight is among the most popular New Year resolutions, and some diets are built around drinking lots of grapefruit juice.

Karch’s paper is the latest in a column the journal devotes to “practice errors,” where nurses report unusual clinical problems and Karch looks into how widespread the problem might be. Last year she also reported that nurses had found that some types of skin patches could catch on fire when patients receive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

# # #


Drugs that Interact with Grapefruit Juice:

(from the December 2004 issue of the American Journal of Nursing)

Antibiotics: clarithromycin, erythromycin, troleandomycin

Anxiolytics: alprazolam, buspirone, midazolam, triazolam

Antiarrhythmics: amiodarone, quinidine

Anticoagulant: warfarin

Antiepileptic: carbamazepine

Antifungal: itraconazole

Anthelmintic: albendazole

Antihistamine: fexofenadine

Antineoplastics: cyclophosphamide, etoposide, ifosfamide, tamoxifen, vinblastine, vincristine

Antitussive: dextromethorphan

Antivirals: amprenavir, indinavir, nelfinavir, ritonavir, saquinavir

Benign prostatic hyperplasia treatment: finasteride

β-blockers: carvedilol

Calcium channel blockers: diltiazem, felodipine, nicardipine, nifedipine, nimodipine, nisoldipine, verapamil

Erectile dysfunction drugs: sildenafil, tadalafil

Hormone replacement: cortisol, estradiol, methylprednisolone, progesterone, testosterone

Immunosuppressants: cyclosporine, sirolimus, tacrolimus

HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors: atorvastatin, fluvastatin, lovastatin, simvastatin

Opioids: alfentanil, fentanyl, sufentanil

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: fluvoxamine, sertraline

Xanthine: theophylline


For Media Inquiries:
info source:
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story...cfm?id=720

Tom Rickey
(585) 275-7954
Email Tom Rickey

Further:
Edible fungus foils dangerous grapefruit-drug interactions
February 2, 2009
An edible fungus added to grapefruit juice could reduce side effects people have when drinking that juice while taking prescription drugs, scientists report. Credit: Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne

Scientists in Florida report that adding an edible mushroom-like fungus to grapefruit juice may help to reduce the serious side effects that can occur when people taking certain prescription drugs drink grapefruit juice. Their study is in the January 14 edition of the ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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In the study, Kyung Myung and colleagues explain that furanocoumarins (FCs) — chemicals found in grapefruit and some other citrus — block a key enzyme critical for metabolizing, or breaking down, certain prescription medications. This "grapefruit/drug" interaction — sometimes called the "grapefruit effect" — can turn normal drug doses into toxic overdoses. Researchers have tried to remove FCs using chemical, physical and microbiological methods. Myung and colleagues, for example, had previously discovered that an inedible fungus can be used to remove most of the FCs from grapefruit juice.

Now they report that the edible fungus Morchella esculenta, which is from the same major fungal group as the previously tested inedible fungus, removed most of the furanocoumarins from the grapefruit juice. It also reduced grapefruit juice's inhibition of the enzyme by 60 percent. Dried M. esculenta also worked, leading the researchers to suggest that it could be useful in removing the compound from grapefruit juice and identifying the specific components in the fungi that bind to furanocoumarins.

Article: "Removal of Furanocoumarins in Grapefruit Juice by Edible Fungi", http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/pres.../jf802713g

Source: ACS

http://www.physorg.com/news152794985.html




Personally I avoid the intake medicaments pesticides and fungicides or other chemicals.

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http://www.physorg.com/news169152201.html

Grapefruit juice found to give cancer treatment a boost
August 10, 2009 By Vanessa McMains When Albina Duggan of Bourbonnais, Ill., was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, it had spread from her liver to her spine and lymph nodes.

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"(The doctor) told me I had three years -- if lucky, five -- to live," she said. Having endured four surgeries and intensive radiation treatment, Duggan enrolled in clinical trials as a last resort.

Five years later, the 41-year-old mother of four has defied expectations: Her tumors have shrunk by half and doctors no longer are setting limits on her life expectancy.

Duggan attributes her new hope to an unusual cancer treatment being tested at the University of Chicago -- the drug rapamycin, supplemented by grapefruit juice.

Unlike most beverages, grapefruit juice contains a chemical that boosts the potency of many drugs in the body. To avoid a dangerously high dose of medication, patients are often advised to not wash down pills with grapefruit juice.

University of Chicago cancer researcher Dr. Ezra Cohen wondered if that quality could be used for good -- if drinking the juice could boost the effectiveness of cancer drugs.

For example, rapamycin and related drugs normally must be taken daily to be effective against cancer. Taking it once a week would lower the cost and decrease adverse side effects, including suppression of the immune system and diarrhea.

This spring, at the American Association for Cancer Research's 100th annual meeting in Denver, Cohen presented early results finding that drug levels in patients taking rapamycin once a week and drinking 8 ounces of grapefruit juice every day were similar to the levels that would be expected from taking the drug daily without juice.

Cohen says about a third of the 25 patients enrolled in the study long enough to be evaluated have seen their tumors stop growing while on the treatment, with Duggan the most dramatic example.

"Mrs. Duggan amazed everyone in the study," he said.

Most of the other participants have cancers that have reacted well to rapamycin in past studies, such as kidney and prostate cancer. Duggan's rare cancer, which involves blood vessels, apparently is also responsive to the drug.

Rapamycin prevents cells from multiplying, which is important for keeping cancer growth in check. But because an enzyme in the intestine breaks down the drug, only a fraction of the rapamycin a patient swallows gets into the system, Cohen said.


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Grapefruit juice contains chemicals that block this enzyme, which he said "normally protects us from other toxic chemicals and metabolizes them to harmless byproducts." These chemicals, called furanocoumarins, prevent rapamycin from being broken down so the body can absorb more of it.

However, not just any grapefruit juice will work. The grocery-store grapefruit juice Cohen initially used did not cause an increase of the rapamycin levels in the blood. "We were scratching our heads trying to figure out what was wrong," he said.

By a stroke of luck the Florida Department of Citrus saw a report about Cohen's work on television. The department contacted Cohen and told him the key chemicals in grapefruit juice have a short shelf-life and can break down during the time it takes to process and sell the juice.

The citrus department sent Cohen a more potent juice that had been freshly frozen, which turned out to be effective for raising drug levels in the blood.

Dr. Brian Rini of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute cautioned people against thinking of grapefruit juice as an all-purpose booster. Certain medications, such as blood-pressure medicines, can be unsafe when taken with grapefruit juice. "It can elevate drug levels for good or bad," he said.

Still, he praised Cohen for helping to find ways to deliver drugs that are cheaper and more convenient for patients.

"The University of Chicago has led the way in finding more effective ways to use cancer drugs," Rini said. "You have the right approach from people who know what they are doing."

Duggan said that when she was enrolled in other clinical trials with different cancer drugs, she experienced sore legs and feet, rashes and hair loss. With this combination, though, "side effects are minimal. I feel healthy and full of energy," she said.

Duggan said she walks three miles daily. "Once a week I take my rapamycin and that is the day that is hardest because I feel fatigued, but I sleep it off," said Duggan, who has been enrolled in the trial since March 2008.

The typical monthly cost for rapamycin treatment is $1,000, but taking less frequent doses with grapefruit juice brings the price down to about $250, Cohen said.

Thrilled with her cancer treatment, Duggan said her life expectancy now is "indefinite."

"There is nothing in my charts that will point to any number," she said. "I might outlive everybody."

___

© 2009, Chicago Tribune.
Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

Grapefruit juice boosts drug's anti-cancer effects
April 20, 2009 In a small, early clinical trial, researchers at the University of Chicago Medical Center have found that combining eight ounces of grapefruit juice with the drug rapamycin can increase drug levels, allowing lower doses of the drug to be given. They also showed that the combination can be effective in treating various types of cancer.

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For two decades, pharmacists have pasted DO-NOT-TAKE-WITH-GRAPEFRUIT-JUICE stickers on various pill bottles because it can interfere with the enzymes that break down and eliminate certain drugs. This interference makes the drugs more potent. In data presented at the AACR 100th Annual Meeting 2009, the Chicago researchers examine ways to exploit this fruit's medication-altering properties.

"Grapefruit juice can increase blood levels of certain drugs three to five times," said study director Ezra Cohen, MD, a cancer specialist at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "This has always been considered a hazard. We wanted to see if, and how much, it could amplify the availability, and perhaps the efficacy of rapamycin, a drug with promise for cancer treatment."

This trial was designed to test "whether we could use this to boost rapamycin's bioavailability to the patient's advantage, to determine how much the juice altered drug levels, and to assess its impact on anti-cancer activity and side effects," he said.

The study followed 28 patients with advanced solid tumors, for which there is no effective treatment. The dose of the drug increased with each group of five patients, from 15 milligrams up to 35. Patients took the drug by mouth, as a liquid, once a week.

Beginning in week two, they washed it down with a glass of grapefruit juice (Citius paradisi), taken immediately after the rapamycin and then once a day for the rest of the week.

Twenty-five participants remained in the study long enough to be evaluated. Seven of those 25 (28%) had stable disease, with little or no tumor growth. One patient (4%) had a partial response, with the tumor shrinking by about 30 percent. That patient is still doing well more than a year after beginning the trial.

"My first cancer doctor gave me five years to live," said that patient, Albina Duggan of Bourbonnais, IL. "That time runs out next July."

Duggan, mother of four, has a rare cancer, an epitheliod hemangioendothelioma that originated in the liver and subsequently spread to two vertebrae in the neck and to the lymph nodes. She had surgery and radiation therapy and was evaluated for a liver transplant, but evidence of cancer beyond the liver made her ineligible for a transplant. She "shopped around" for other therapies and was able to keep the disease in check for a year with sorafenib, a drug approved for kidney and liver cancers.


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After a year of stable disease, however, her tumor began growing again and she had to look for an alternative therapy. Her doctors at the University of Chicago offered three clinical trials. The most appealing to her was the rapamycin plus grapefruit juice study. She took her first dose March 11, 2008, and is still on the drug-juice combination.

"My tumor is smaller and it's no longer growing. I feel fine. I can do whatever I like and I have no real side effects," she said. "What's not to like?"

Trial subjects do not like the taste of rapamycin. "It's not pleasant," Duggan admitted. She has also tired of grapefruit juice.

Many patients in the study did report side effects. More than half experienced elevated blood sugar levels, diarrhea, low white blood cell counts or fatigue.

Duggan, more fortunate than most, has had milder side effects, including fragile toe and finger nails and curly hair. "I now have very curly hair," she said, "seriously curly. I have to adjust to it."

Rapamycin, also known as sirolimus, was originally developed to suppress the immune system, preventing rejection in patients receiving a transplanted kidney. Cancer specialists became interested in the drug when they learned that it disrupted a biochemical pathway involved in the development of the new blood vessels that tumors need to grow. But the drug is expensive and poorly absorbed. Less than 15 percent of rapamycin is absorbed when taken by mouth.

This study showed that substances known a furanocoumarins, plentiful in some forms of grapefruit juice, can decrease the breakdown of rapamycin. This makes the drug reach higher levels in the bloodstream, two to four times the levels seen without a juice boost, and thus increases the amount of the drug that reaches its targets.

"That means more of the drug hits the target, so we need less of the drug," said Cohen.

Many of the newer cancer medications, precisely focused on specific targets, are now taken as pills rather than intravenously. Some of these drugs, including rapamycin, can cost thousands of dollars a month. Hence, "this is an opportunity for real savings," Cohen said. "A daily glass of juice could lower the cost by 50 percent."

Source: University of Chicago Medical Center




http://www.physorg.com/news159461243.html

[julie.groenewald]

Thank you Rudolf, the article is very much appreciated!

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(28.12.2009 13:09)julie.groenewald Wrote:  Thank you Rudolf, the article is very much appreciated!

as you are. May be we should eat a grapefruit soon..

[julie.groenewald]

I have been eating one grapefruit per day for the past month already. I lost another kilogram this way!♥

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Soon you may shake Fruitbat Annes hand, as she does a mono orange-juice diet right now.
You are detoxing-

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(28.12.2009 08:18)julie.groenewald Wrote:  Hello Rudolf,

Thank you for your reply.

My one friend who is not a fruitarian is using the contraceptive birth control pills. When she uses this together with grapefruits, her skin becomes red, like having a rash.

So it is true that some fruits may not be for everyone, but you also need to use it correctly?Like if she did not take the pills, I am sure her body would not reject the fruit in the same way?

I wanted to ask also what fruits do you mean are potentially dangerous?Are their any?

Please tell me urgently what kind of contraceptive birth control pills is your friend using and what ingredients are in it. f.e. give me the informations about: What manufactor and the precise lable or show me the package - they might be harmful..

[julie.groenewald]

Dear Rudolf,

Thank you for your help, my friend has not yet replied to me with information, but i will give you the details as soon as I receive it.

Happy fruits!chat soon.

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Dear Julie, i am courious about health-questions. It's always important for me to learn more and i am looking forward to reading you soon.