The Bizarre Ways Food Messes With the Medicines We Take

It was an embarrassing problem. And, after five hours with a constant erection, a painful one.

Doctors were initially baffled by the predicament of a 46-year-old man who turned up at a hospital emergency room in Tamilnadu, India. He had taken the drug sildenafil – better known as Viagra – for erectile dysfunction before having sex with his wife. Yet, even though he had taken the drug well within prescribed doses, nothing he could do would deflate the situation.

When questioned further, his doctors learned the man had also drunk a hefty slug of pomegranate juice beforehand. They treated him with a jab to counteract the effects and advised him to lay off the juice in future – it had, they concluded, inadvertently boosted the potency of the drug he was taking.

The case is just one example of how the food we eat can interact with medications in unpredictable ways. There is a rich body of medical literature detailing bizarre – and sometimes worrying – occasions when foods have combined with drugs to produce unusual side-effects. While most of this exists as anecdotal reports of individual or small clusters of cases, there there is also now a growing body of research detailing the several ways that foods, drinks and herbs can interact with pharmaceuticals inside the human body. Grapefruit, for example, has long been known to boost the power of a wide range of drugs, increase the risk of side effects or even make normal doses toxic. Fibre-heavy foods, on the other hand, can make some drugs work less effectively.