Grapefruit and the Pill Don't Mix

This is scary

Apparently a woman might lose her leg due to a rare and nearly lethal combination of extreme dieting, chemical interaction, and just plain rotten luck. A 42 year old woman went on an 800 calorie, grape-fruit centric diet and she happened (as millions of woman are) to be on the pill. She developed a huge blood clot that could have killed her and her leg developed gangrene.

There are tons of things that can interfere with the Pill, (by Pill, I mean oral contraceptives--pretty much 99% of our readers will know that, but just to be clear). Things like antibiotics, the drugs used at the dentists office when you get a filing, tons of caffeine taken with the Pill can even cause problems. Grapefruit is also known to interfere with Statin drugs, like Lipitor.

This story has a two fold lesson I think: 1. its important to try to become aware of how drug/food interactions work with your particular medications, 2. extreme diets can kill even without the freaky drug interactions.

I hope that this the doctors will be able to save this woman's leg. Healing energy your way! Peace.