Food and Drug Interactions (Nursing)

00:01 Okay, let's look at some common, everyday household things that can cause interactions, like the food we eat every day.

00:08 Food and drug reactions can be all over the map.

00:12 You may end up with a delayed result, a decreased result, an increased result, or sometimes, it won't affect it at all.

00:19 Now, I recommend for students when they're studying for NCLEX and for Pharmacology, you cannot memorize drugs that should be taken with food, drugs not with food.

00:27 That's what those stickers are for, so don't try and overload your brain with that.

00:32 I'll teach you some really key concepts to know which food interactions are most important for you to know as we walk through the rest of this pharmacology class.

00:41 So we'll talk more about Parkinson's meds and Coumadin, warfarin, those types of food and drug interactions.

00:48 But as an overall concept, I want you to be aware that food can interact with drugs and it may be all over the map in how it impacts the drugs: delayed, decreased, increased, and sometimes it doesn't impact it at all.

01:01 But I want to give you just a few examples to kind of get you warmed up to the concept.

01:07 Grapefruit juice is really problematic.

01:09 If you take grapefruit juice with cholesterol meds, you're going to end up with a higher risk for toxicity.

01:16 The patient ends up getting a higher dose of that than that was originally ordered.

01:21 But also, grapefruit juice can decrease the amount of medication in some others.

01:26 So, grapefruit juice is a big player.

01:28 If there's going to be one food I was going to keep in mind, it's like don't take grapefruit juice with anything, just as a rule, but particularly, with cholesterol medications.

01:39 Now, if I'm taking Coumadin or warfarin… Warfarin is the generic name.

01:44 Coumadin is the trade name.

01:47 The…actually, the antidote for an overdose of warfarin is vitamin K.

01:52 So vitamin K exists in all the things that are good for you, particularly green, leafy vegetables.

01:59 So, if we have a patient who's taking warfarin and they love to eat a big kale salad every day, we're going to have a problem.

02:06 So you'll learn as we go over those anticoagulants, if they really want to have that kale salad, they're going to have to eat the same size kale salad every day, at the same time, and we'll have to adjust their dosage to meet that.

02:21 Usually, people become less committed to that kale salad every day, if they have to eat it every day.

02:27 Now, the next category is salt substitutes.

02:30 The problem with these is that they're made of potassium.

02:33 So you want to watch people with renal problems really closely.

02:36 If they already have elevated potassiums, you don't want them taking a salt substitute.

02:40 Or if they're on a medication that raises their potassium, you don't want them to be taking salt substitute.

02:46 And we talked before in other videos, what we'll keep bringing this one up for you, MAOIs are a psych drug.

02:52 And if you eat them with tyramine-containing foods, it can cause a hypertensive crisis for your patient.

02:58 So, here are 4 that actually are worth you memorizing.

03:03 These are 4 that you want to reinforce in your notes, that you want to remember these as really common food and drug interactions that are particularly dangerous to your patients.