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Will Fruit Juice Interfere with Pill?

Q. I take felodipine for high blood pressure. I know I can’t take it with grapefruit juice. I recently read that orange and apple juice may also affect medications.

Is there a fruit juice I could use for taking my felodipine? How about pineapple juice? It’s getting so you just don’t know what is safe to eat or drink.

A. Drug-food interactions are incredibly complicated. Grapefruit juice increases blood levels of nearly 50 medications including felodipine. Apple and orange juice have the opposite effect for certain drugs. This might reduce effectiveness for medicines like the antihistamine fexofenadine (Allegra) or antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin.

We could find no evidence that pineapple juice interacts with felodipine, but it can affect dozens of other drugs, including pain relievers and antidepressants.

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About the Author
Terry Graedon, PhD, is a medical anthropologist and co-host of The People’s Pharmacy radio show, co-author of The People’s Pharmacy syndicated newspaper columns and numerous books, and co-founder of The People’s Pharmacy website. Terry taught in the Duke University School of Nursing and was an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is a Fellow of the Society of Applied Anthropology. Terry is one of the country's leading authorities on the science behind folk remedies..
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