Grapefruit Diet Plus Contraceptive Pill Led To Dangerous Blood Clot In Woman's Leg

In the Daily Mail we read that "Doctors are warning of the dangers of the grapefruit diet after a woman almost lost a leg three days into the eating regime. The 42-year-old developed a blood clot in her left leg after the fruit interacted with the contraceptive Pill she was taking."

For some years now grapefruits have been singled out from among the citrus fruits as being inadvisable to eat when taking certain medications. As well as oestrogen-containing pills, these medications include statins and calcium channel blockers. Further explanation and a longer list of drugs that have potentially serious interactions with grapefruit products is given on this Mayo Clinic webpage.

Quite apart from the harmful effect of the grapefruits as such to this particular woman, there is a strong case to be made against extreme diets of all kinds. These diets tend to contain far too few calories and this in itself leads to hunger, tiredness and feeling cold and unwell. Coupled with the inadequacy of calorie content there is the inadequacy and lack of variety of nutrient intake.

The grapefruit diet for instance provides scarcely any protein or fat and only a limited vitamin and mineral content. Similarly with other extreme diets. A moment's thought tells you what the banana diet lacks, what the egg diet lacks, etc.

A healthy diet for human beings is low in salt/sodium and consists of a wide variety of foods which provide a comprehensive range of nutrients in adequate amounts. The woman in the story was trying to lose a little excess weight, and as far as losing excess weight is concerned, extreme low calorie diets are neither appropriate nor necessary.

Overweight is caused not by eating too many calories as we have been encouraged to believe. It is caused by fluid retention/salt sensitivity and is easily, swiftly and safely reduced by cutting down on salt and salty food. This means in practice avoiding convenience foods to which manufacturers have routinely added lots of salt. These include ready meals, bread, cheese, bacon and ham, sausages, most breakfast cereals, etc. You will find that if you give up dieting and counting calories, cook 'from scratch'/from fresh, and eat good hearty meals with plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables you will lose excess weight as if by magic. Why not try it? Reducing salt intake, unlike extreme diets, is completely safe and has many other health benefits as well as reducing excess weight.

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk