Food and Your Meds; Food and Your Low-cal Diet

Though Shelf Life Advice doesn't usually discuss weight loss tips (since these are ubiquitous) or medications, we found the following articles so helpful that we couldn't resist passing the content on to you.  One article tells what not to eat with specific types of prescribed medications.  The other tells what you should eat to feel satisfied even when on a weight loss diet.  This Shelf Life Advice piece primarily summarizes and paraphrases the two articles named in the captions below.

WARNINGS FROM CONSUMER REPORTS ON HEALTH:

"IF YOU'RE TAKING THIS DRUG, DON'T EAT THAT"

A certain relative of mine (I won't reveal his identity except to say that he's the father of my children) NEVER reads the inserts that come with prescribed medications.  (Maybe because the print is so small?)  However, if you want your meds to do what they're supposed to do to improve your health, read these flyers and look for info about drug/food interactions that may reduce the effectiveness of what you're taking.  Alternatively, ask the pharmacist what you need to know about a newly prescribed medication.  If there is a food/drug interaction, find out how far apart the medicine and the food should be.  Should there be a few hours between them, or should you avoid that food completely when on that med?  Or is it okay to have this food in moderation?

Here are the food/drug interactions that Consumer Reports on Health lists and discusses:

Alcohol: Abstain from alcohol if the instructions that come with the medication say to do so. The combination may make you more drowsy, light-headed, and uncoordinated than you would be with just the alcohol.  Moreover, certain drug-alcohol combinations can lead to serious side effects such as internal bleeding, difficulty breathing, and heart problems.  NOTE: "Just a few drinks mixed with acetaminophen can damage your liver."

Bananas: Eat bananas in moderation only if you're taking ACE inhibitors (o lower blood pressure or treat heart failure) or certain diuretics (to decrease fluid retention or control high blood pressure).

Grapefruit:  When grapefruit is mixed with cholesterol-lowering statins (such as Lipitor and Mevacor), the result may be muscle pain and/or other unpleasant side effect.  Drinking more than a quart of grapefruit juice with statins can be dangerous.  Whole grapefruit or grapefruit juice can also interfere with certain antihistamines and some blood pressure meds.

Kale and other greens:  Consume these in moderation if you're taking a blood thinner such as warfarin (Coumadin).  The greens can reduce the effectiveness of the blood thinner because they are rich in vitamin K, which helps blood to clot. 

Dairy products: Dairy products can reduce the effectiveness of tetracycline antibiotics (Sumycin). The calcium in dairy products, calcium supplements, and calcium-fortified foods can decrease the body's ability to absorb tetracycline antibiotics.  In general, these antibiotics will work better if taken 1 hour before or 2 hours after eating.

Walnuts and high-fiber foods: High-fiber foods (for example, walnuts, soybean flour, and cottonseed meal) may reduce the effectiveness of medications (such as Levothyroid, Synthroid, and Levoxyl) taken by patients to treat an underactive thyroid.  A high-fiber diet may cause the patient with low metabolism to need a higher dosage of the medication.

Pickled, smoked, cured, and fermented food: These foods should not be eaten with monoamine oxidase inhibitors such as phenelzine (Nardil) and selegiline (Emsam), which may be prescribed to treat Parkinson's disease or depression.  "These foods are rich in the amino acid tyramine, which, when consumed in large amounts with this class of drugs, can lead to dangerously high blood pressure," says Consumer Reports on Health.  Other foods the publication mentions as being rich in tyramine: salami, some cheeses, chocolate, and red wine. 

ADVICE FROM health.com: "THE 10 MOST FILLING FOODS FOR WEIGHT LOSS"

These days, at least two-thirds of Americans are trying to lose weight, but no one wants to endure hunger pangs to accomplish this goal. What can you eat that will fill you up but not out?  In general, the advice is to consume high-protein and high-fiber food to achieve that satisfying feeling of satiety (a sustained feeling of fullness).  To read more about this claim, go to this government site: "Dietary protein - its role in satiety, energetics, weight loss and health."  The article's abstract says, "The success of the so-called 'low-carb' diet that is usually high in protein can be attributed to the relatively high-protein content and not to the relatively lower carbohydrate content."

Health.com recommends that those who want to lose weight include the following foods in their diets.  

Baked or boiled potatoes: Potatoes are "loaded with vitamins, fiber, and other nutrients."  For even more satiety, the article recommends topping potatoes with low-fat yogurt and eating them with the skin.

Eggs: According to a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, "Eggs are one of the few foods that are a complete protein, meaning they contains all nine essential amino acids that your body can't make itself.  Once digested, these amino acids trigger the release of hormones in your gut that suppress appetite."  A related suggestion: if you scramble your eggs with veggies, you'll boost the volume and fiber content and further enhance the feeling of fullness.

Bean soup: Soups in general and broth-based bean soups in particular are recommended. Bean soup contains a lot of fiber and "resistant starch--a good carb that slows the release of sugar into the bloodstream--to make that full feeling really stick."  A suggested alternative: "Throw some lentils, black-eyed peas, or kidney or navy beans in a vinegar-based salad."

Dairy products in general; Greek yogurt in particular:  Consuming dairy proteins has 3 benefits for the dieter: it increases satiety, decreases food intake, and keeps blood sugar steady.  According to a Harvard researcher, yogurt is the single best food for weight loss. Greek yogurt has these advantages over regular yogurt: it contains double the protein and less sugar.

Apples: The article quotes a study in Gastroenterology which demonstrated the following:  "Apples are one of the few fruits that contain pectin, which naturally slows digestion and promotes a feeling of fullness."  Moreover, it takes awhile to eat a whole apple, and that gives your brain more time to find out that you're no longer hungry.

Smoothies:  Be careful with this one.  Smoothies that contain nothing but water, crushed ice, fat-free milk or yogurt, and whipped-up fruit will be good for your diet.  All that air will make you feel full and likely to eat less at your next meal. But throw into your smoothie ice cream, fruit juice, and flavored syrup, and you've lost the low-calorie benefit.

I think you're getting the idea, so we can cover the next 4 recommendations quickly:

Popcorn: Compare 2 ways to eat 90 calories: 1/4 cup of potato chips or 3 cups of air-popped popcorn.  Popcorn, which takes up more room in your stomach, will help you eat less afterward.

Figs:  They satisfy a sweet tooth and are high in fiber.  High-fiber foods release sugar into the bloodstream slowly, "preventing the erratic high caused by cookies or cake."

Oatmeal: This is another high-fiber food that takes longer to digest, so it wards off hunger pains for longer.

Wheat berries: These whole-wheat kernels "contain one of the highest amounts of protein and fiber per serving of any grain." Protein tells our brain we're satisfied; fiber activates hormones that suppress appetite.

If you go to the article, you'll find links to other articles with more ideas about what to eat to diet without hunger.  Just click on the title in the caption above.

This advice should help you keep what's probably the most common New Year's resolution. Happy dieting!

Source(s):

Consumer Reports on Health, "If you're taking this drug, don't eat that," December 2014.

time.com "The 10 Most Filling Foods for Weight Loss"

http://time.com/9973/the-10-most-filling-foods-for-weight-loss/