Avoid grapefruit juice if you’re on lovastatin or simvastatin.
Thank you for giving me a reason to resume drinking Fresca! 
Generally health warnings tend to be more general than needed because a lot of people aren’t very good at remembering details. Perhaps they’ll remember that X and Y statin are ok with grapefruits, but when they were really told that they were not OK with grapefruits. It’s much safer to just say to everyone “don’t eat/drink grapefruit (juice) if you’re on statins”.
ISTR hearing that only white grapefruit interferes with the effectiveness of statins, and this is the primary reason that I only see pink/ruby red grapefruit products around anymore. Did this turn out to be bogus?
I think the fact that pink and red grapefruit are usually sweeter than white grapefruit has more to do with them being more common than medical issues.
Rather like it’s getting harder and harder to find watermelons with seeds in them anymore, and there seems to be a race on to breed the World’s Sweetest Apple.
Grapefruit interferes with the metabolism of statins, and some other drugs, because of a certain P450 enzyme. Exactly how it happens and why is still being studied, and it doesn’t do that to everyone.
My father took this path to the point of suicide.
He was a lifetime smoker and a closet alcoholic. When he developed COPD he was told no more smoking and no more alcohol. He ignored both.
He always was terrified, from middle age on, of getting old and losing agency. I don’t know whether it was a conscious decision or if he was in denial till the end, but he essentially chose death over old age.
The doctor may be the expert on medicine in general, but that does not always mean that he knows more about that specific patient than the patient does. For comparison, consider my grandfather (who sounds like he was cut from much the same cloth as FairyChatMom’s FIL), who got hit by a truck at age 83. The doctors who didn’t know him said that he’d never walk again. The doctors who did know him said that he wouldn’t be walking again for six months. It took him one month. Now, granted, he still couldn’t handle stairs, and that was a big impact on his quality of life, but not walking at all would have been an even bigger impact.
Worked for Valentine Michael Smith … :rolleyes:
It’s a guy thing.
I am told that for several years after I graduated highschool my former teachers would twitch involuntarily at the words “Science Project”. :rolleyes:
OK, so I made a thermite volcano - and set it off inside - and shocked the bejesus out of two of my classmates - one of them with a biology project! :smack:
Plus the death threat I got from the chemistry teacher when I paid too much attention to the crystalline iodine. Despite her being 2/3 my mass, I took her seriously.
He’s a good role model. 
Good timing – I was just internally ranting about that commercial where the doctor warns the lady to take it easy on her leg but she goes ahead hiking and running anyway. I thought, yeah, great ignore the doctor’s orders, super. (And wondered if there was a tiny disclaimer on the ad!)
But then I thought, for other things you may consult the doctor and then make your own decision. My mom had what was clearly a tumor in her breast but didn’t go in to have it looked at. She went in for the usual annual check-in and let the doctor tell her what they would typically do for what she had, and decided not to pursue anything. I discussed my hypothyroid with my doctor and relunctantly agreed to take a pill but still toy with stopping. Long term there may be effects on my heart but maybe that’s not enough for me to care to keep taking it.
No, it’s not always rational but it’s my own decision to make.
Eat me!
For some people, “being mature” seems to equal “making problems for others for absolutely no benefit to myself”, or at least no intelligible benefit. Some even refine their opposition to a specific person: “If they tell me to do something, I’m definitely not going to do it”, yea, even unto keeping their hand on the hot stove just because that one specific person suggested they might avoid being burned by taking it off. Completely self-sufficient, except for all the problems their actions cause others, ayup.
For an 87 year old, this is more true than for, say, a 67 or a 47 year old. Aging does a number on the body. I’m witnessing the effects on my parents, who are hitting 77 and 75. One exercise my dad does is sitting down and getting up from a chair. Yep, just that. It was recommended by a specialist because people begin to lose strength in their muscles, and start having to push themselves up with their hands, and the next thing you know, they are immobile without help.
My aunt went into the hospital - she was 69, but in poor health from a lifetime of a) kidney damage in her 20s, b) smoking like a chimney during a blizzard, c) heart disease leading to a heart double bypass, d) decline in kidney performance requiring her to go on dialysis, e) having a stroke caused by the blood thinners she was on. She was getting a kidney transplant, but complications kept her on bed rest for over a month. She already didn’t have much strength, and that long on bed rest is detrimental to your ability to move. She ended up having the new kidneys fail and get infected, so they were removed, and then she was beginning the long journey back to mobility and decided to try to make coffee on her own, got up out of her wheelchair, fell and broke her hip.
For the elderly, there really is a case of “use it or lose it”, the “it” in this case being physical ability to stand up and walk on your own, or get out of bed without help.
For all we know, early use might lead to more scarring due to being stressed while trying to heal, and he winds up with more limited mobility, or permanent pain.
Why is it that people gripe that conventional medicine is all about treating and not about preventing like holistic woo, but when doctors try to talk about prevention, they are ignored because people don’t want lifestyle changes, and they are mocked for “covering their bases” and “just in case”?
Partly a guy thing. We think we’re invincible, that we are better than all the other dumb schmucks who blew-their-finger-tip-off/used-a-chainsaw-one-handed-dangling-from-a-ladder/whatever.
Can’t happen soon enough, IMO. Get rid of the tart.
For my aunt, it was the heart surgery that drove her to stop smoking.
Anecdotes and Hasty Generalizations…
I’ve ranted about this before in other threads. There seems to be a subsection of humans (I’ll stop short of calling them sub-humans) that seem to object to the whole practice of analyzing/investigating/researching/blasphemously snooping around the inner workings of God’s creation when such workings are best left as mysteries of our non-heavenly existence. This tends to mean that scientists and engineers (in general) and biologists [especially human biologists] and doctors are treated not just with disrespect but actively maligned among those of a religious bent.
In arguing with my friend/former sensei about treatment of my ex-girlfriend’s (his sister’s) cancer, I kept insisting she needed to be given scientifically tested-and-proven therapies. His response tended to be an irritating, “Well, there ARE other paradigms…” in a way of suggesting his crystals and essential oils would do just as well or better to help her if only the oncologists would get out of the way and let him work his magic.
And, as a general backlash against the sacrilege of pursuing knowledge (after all, that’s why we’re no longer in the Garden of Eden) there are some who just distrust and malign smart people in general. We’ve had threads around here about the value – or lack thereof – of high school diplomas, college degrees, technical certifications, et cetera.
My wife’s ex-husband often commented about me to his daughter, “Well, he ain’t really all that smart^…” because I might have earned my degree in contrast to his dropping out of college, but I knew less than him about electrical wiring.
And even up above in this thread, there are disdainful comments of “Those guys [i.e. scientists, medical researchers, doctors, physicians, et cetera] claim to know what’s going on in our bodies but then they change their great pronouncements all the time.” and the only thing left unsaid$ is “They ain’t really all that smart!”
And even I admit to rejecting some of the widely-distributed medical wisdom like “Drink at least 8 glasses (64oz) of water a day” and “Salt is bad for your health” but that, after all, is because the first is a popular Woo misconception and the latter is [popular] unsupported speculation that was never investigated.
Hey, I happen to like tarts!
[Oh, and the slightly sour apples make better pies.]
–G
^But, then again, I’m not the one who went out in a rainstorm and got hit by lightning while to trying to fix a diesel power generator. I was busy in another part of the world at the time, studying for my last finals to get that worthless college degree.
$The general gist being something like “So-called scientists are just making shit up to make us think all the money we throw at them is producing results. At best, they’re guessing at reality. To KNOW reality all ya gotta do is read yer Bible.” and there’s a whole lot of profit to be made by discrediting science in general.