Just when us postpartum moms think we have our meds and diets all sorted out…the medical establishment throws us another curveball. The Wall Street Journal reports that some foods may effect how your medications will be absorbed and metabolized by your body. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence about how the absorption of some psychotropic medications like benzos, sleeping pills, and mood stabilizers can be affected by whether or not you’ve just eaten a high fat meal or if you’ve taken them on an empty stomach. I actually know a few people that have altered their entire meal schedule to work around their meds. Now it looks like giving your doc the low down on your diet may be yet another thing everyone needs to worry about when taking new meds.

Grapefruit is one of the most extensively studied foods for its impact on medication. Compounds in the fruit can increase the potency of statins and other medications to potentially dangerous levels by inhibiting cytochrome P450, a family of enzymes that break down the drug. Research indicates that drinking just one eight-ounce cup of grapefruit juice a day increases the strength of the drug.

Recently, animal and laboratory studies have suggested that other fruits, including pomegranates, oranges (especially those from Seville), cranberries, grapes and black mulberries, could have a similar, although less robust, effect on statins in the body. Pomegranates and cranberries are frequently touted as healthy foods because of their high quantities of antioxidants, which supposedly remove free radicals from the body and slow the onset of disease and aging.

In the lab, some scientists’ work raises similar concern about olive oil and some statins. The oil, a principal part of the Mediterranean diet and believed to lower the risk of heart disease, also appears to contain compounds that inhibit the drug’s breakdown, according to researchers in Spain. The effects of olive oil likely aren’t as strong as that of grapefruit, but more studies are needed to figure out what quantities might actually impact humans, say experts.

John Thor Arnason, a biologist at the University of Ottawa, and his colleague Brian Foster of Health Canada, a government ministry, have investigated the effect on drugs of more than 450 food products, mainly in animal and laboratory studies.

The scientists continue to study potential food-drug interactions, as do other researchers world-wide.