Grapefruit: Who Knew?

Sorry, it's been a long time since I last posted, and this one isn't really about me cooking.  Actually, I've been thinking lately that I should write about some other things that interest me, but we'll see how lazy I am when it comes to actually doing anything about it.  It's hard enough for me to just take pictures of my food before I eat it, let alone posting said pictures with description.

Anyway, this post isn't about that, it's about grapefruit, and the mystical interaction grapefruit have with drugs (I'm assuming grapefruit is its own plural).

You see, for the past couple of weeks, I've been suffering from a bad case of folliculitis barbae, or barber's itch.  It's an infection of the hair follicle, usually by your common Staphyloccus aureus bacteria.  I finally went to the doctor about it, and he prescribed me a course of oral Erythromycin.  Erythromycin is some basic broad-spectrum antibiotic with a pretty rich history of its own, so I suggest you check out the wikipedia article. 

Everything seems to be working out, and though I've only been taking the Erythromycin for two days, I'm seeing a great reduction in itchy bumps in my beard area, and little-to-no side effects!

I was doing some research on my condition and treatment, mostly wondering why I was given an oral treatment instead of a topical one, when I came across this little gem:

"Do not eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice while you use Erythromycin."

From here.  That caught my attention.  Nobody told me not to eat grapefruit.  What's going on?

Well, it seems that grapefruit isn't just your usual citrus fruit; it also messes with an enzyme in your stomach that generally breaks down a bunch of the medications that are usually taken orally.  If you eat grapefruit with your medication, the enzyme doesn't work, and you end up with a lot more of said medication in your system than your doctor intended.  At least that's what I gather from this source and this source [pdf].  I think that's pretty awesome, and I wanted to share.  That second source is a pdf listing a lot of the drugs known to have an interaction with grapefruit, if you're curious about your own medications. 

Oh, and if you were wondering, I think my doctor prescribed the oral treatment because my case was pretty advanced.  I mean, my condition had actually improved a bit in the few days previous to my doctor visit, but the fact that it comes back with a vengeance whenever I shave convinced him that we needed to come at this hard.