When You Eat Grapefruit Every Day, This Is What Happens To Your Blood Pressure

Grapefruit may not be everyone's favorite fruit, but its sour punch can be surprisingly refreshing. While eating a lemon or lime might be too intense, a spoonful of sweet Ruby Red grapefruit can really hit the spot on a hot summer day. A cup of grapefruit sections is especially hydrating, since it's about 90% water.

Half a grapefruit can make a sweet side to your veggie omelet, but eating a whole one each day might also help lower your blood pressure. Whether you go for white or pink grapefruit, you'll get well over 300 milligrams of potassium per fruit. Potassium helps counter the effects of a high-sodium diet and relaxes your blood vessels. Even better, grapefruit contains no sodium at all (and here's another benefit of grapefruit that might surprise you).

A 2016 meta-analysis in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition found that grapefruit can lower systolic blood pressure by about 2.4 points in people who are overweight or obese. That might not seem like much, but grapefruit contains nutrients that may support lower blood pressure. Grapefruit juice may even enhance compounds in other foods that lower blood pressure.

Grapefruit juice may make your lips pucker, but have you ever mixed it with fresh beetroot juice? According to a 2020 study in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, grapefruit juice may enhance the power of beetroot juice in reducing your blood pressure. When people combined about 2 ounces of beet juice with 8 ounces of grapefruit juice, they had a lower systolic blood pressure than when they drank only beet juice. The researchers concluded that grapefruit juice contains many other compounds (like quercetin and naringin) that might also help lower blood pressure on their own or improve the effects of beetroot juice.

The popularity of the Grapefruit Diet led many to believe that eating grapefruit before every meal could promote weight loss. A 2012 study in Metabolism tested this idea by having people eat half a grapefruit before each meal for six weeks. Compared to their starting point, participants saw some positive changes when they ate grapefruit. They lost a little more than an inch off their waistlines, their systolic blood pressure dropped by over 3 points, and their LDL cholesterol fell by more than 18 points. However, when researchers compared these results to those of people on a control diet, the differences weren't significant. In other words, while the grapefruit group showed improvements from baseline, the changes weren't much different from those seen in the control group.

As nutritious and refreshing as grapefruit can be, some people need to avoid it. According to the Food and Drug Administration, grapefruit can interfere with enzymes in the body that process medications or block the transporters that move drugs into your cells. For example, taking cholesterol-lowering statins with grapefruit can cause the statin to stay in your body longer than it should, increasing the risk of side effects.

Some drugs, like the allergy medication fexofenadine (Allegra), may not work as well because grapefruit reduces the activity of proteins that help deliver the drug to your cells. In addition to some statins and fexofenadine, grapefruit can also interact with medications for high blood pressure, anxiety, and inflammatory bowel diseases. It's best to ask your doctor or pharmacist whether your medication can be safely taken with grapefruit or other fruit juices.

People with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), gastritis, or ulcers may also want to avoid grapefruit because it can aggravate symptoms. Those with heart muscle disorders or irregular heart rhythms should eat grapefruit only in moderation or avoid it altogether. Although an older study suggested a link between grapefruit and postmenopausal breast cancer, the American Institute for Cancer Research says later studies don't support that connection.