Popping pill with your morning coffee can be risky

BAD TASTE: Having a paracetamol while drinking coffee at the same time is bad for your liver.

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New Delhi: Food and drug interactions are not uncommon, especially when your schedule is packed and you pop in a pill whenever you remember.

The pill actually gets dissolved in your stomach and then reaches your blood.

But what about when you swallow your pill along with your morning cup of coffee?

And the times you have remembered to take your medicine, swigging it down with a drink?

That is the time you need to be very careful.

“You have certain enzymes that basically hampers the absorption of drugs which are secreted at the time of digestion. So there are certain drugs which may be prematurely metabolised, degraded or may be destroyed inside the intestine,” says Internal Medicine, Max, Dr Mukesh Mehra.

Here are the most common combinations that you should avoid:

Coffee and paracetamol

Your morning cup of coffee may help perk you up, but reaching out for a paracetamol at the same time is bad for your liver. Researchers have recently found that after studying the damage done in rats. However, more studies are needed to back the discovery.

Bronchodilators vs fat meals

If you have asthma and are on bronchodilators of the theophylline group avoid high-fat meals. The combination can cause side effects including nausea, vomiting, headache and irritability. And if you are on oral bronchodilators, then you also need to cut out the caffeine.

BP medicines vs Vitamin K

“Hypertensive people who are on BP drugs should be careful. They should be avoid high fibre diets like oatmeal, cereals, sprouts and high roughage fruits,” says Dr Mehra.

Warfarins vs Vitamin K

And the same goes for blood thinning drugs called warfarins or the diurectics, both used to treat heart patients. Avoid foods that contain Vitamin K because they can hamper the absorption of the medicine.

And the one thing that hampers with the absorption of all the drugs is alcohol.

So the thumb rule for you is to take your doctor's advice on what would work the best for you.