Let’s find out ‘Does Consuming Lemons Affect Cholesterol Medicines?’ Lemons give flavor to many different recipes and even revitalize a glass of water. For a healthy salad, use lemon juice in place of the usual salad dressings. Lemon, a citrus fruit, provides a lot of health advantages.
However, some of this fruit’s relatives, like the grapefruit, can have negative pharmacological interactions, particularly with medications used to treat high cholesterol. Does Consuming Lemons Affect Cholesterol Medicines? Read on to find out.
Cholesterol Medications
When high cholesterol has an impact on your life, cholesterol medicines are essential. Your risk of heart disease, a heart attack, and a stroke are all reduced thanks to them.
Your doctor can prescribe a variety of cholesterol-lowering medicine types, each of which operates in a certain way. While resins improve the excretion of cholesterol from your body, selective cholesterol absorption inhibitors absorb more cholesterol in your intestines.
Statins, a type of pharmaceutical that decreases your body’s creation of cholesterol, are among the most widely used and effective cholesterol therapies. Citrus fruits can unfavorably interact with this group of medications.
Lemons and Cholesterol
A study conducted by the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Utrecht University in the Netherlands suggests that lemons may help reduce cholesterol. Two groups of hybrid hamsters were fed various diets over the course of eight weeks; one group got cellulose while the other got lemon peels.
At the end of the experiment, the hamsters eating lemon peels had lower cholesterol levels than the hamsters eating cellulose. Citrus fruits are among the types of soluble fiber that can considerably lower your cholesterol, according to Harvard Health Publications, which extends the cholesterol-lowering advantages of this fruit to humans.
Grapefruit is one citrus fruit, nevertheless, that you shouldn’t consume if you take cholesterol-lowering medication.
The Danger of Grapefruit
The compounds in grapefruit can prevent your body from correctly metabolizing some drugs, including statins like simvastatin, lovastatin, and atorvastatin.
Consuming grapefruit or grapefruit-derived items can stop your liver from breaking down these medications, resulting in the medicines staying in your blood for a longer duration.
This ups both the medication’s potency and your chance of suffering negative side effects. For 24 to 72 hours after consuming 8 ounces of grapefruit juice, your cholesterol medicine may not work as it should.
Final Thoughts
When using a cholesterol-lowering medicine, all other varieties of fruits and fruit juices, including other citrus fruits like lemons, are appropriate substitutes for grapefruit juice.
Pomelos and Seville oranges, however, might be able to duplicate grapefruit’s effects. Before consuming any citrus fruit while taking simvastatin, lovastatin, or atorvastatin, see your doctor.
