Grapefruit Juice – How To Get 4x The Cancer Drug Bang, For Your Buck

Last week I met a clever specialist who’d help launch a US cancer drug.  It wasn’t so much the deep dive science, but the method by which the drug actually works, that caught my attention.  This ‘ground-breaking’ cancer drug has a claimed patient oral bio-availability of: 4% in a fasting state, 9% in a fed state, but a whopping 16% bio-availability when consumed alongside… grapefruit juice.  All that, to help turbo-charge drug effectiveness with a starting yearly price of $115,000 per patient.  That sure is a lot of grapefruit juice.  And, no, I’m not taking the ‘pith’ – but perhaps I should be?

On the Isle of Man, a grapefruit costs around 55 pence – yet transforms, by four fold, the positive medicinal effects of a $2000 per week cancer drug.  Go figure.  So, when Pharma talks of ‘sweating their drug asset portfolio’ perhaps we should also ask them to ‘go juice a grapefruit’ until the ‘pips squeak’.  We’ve yet to hear that this (not so humble) juice, makes you hairless – so again we applaud sweet Mother Nature.  Clearly, you should always read the label, but maybe also peel back the skin?

It’s not just fruits, veggies too help prevent colorectal and other cancers, verified by PubMed cited research.  Cancer reducing phyto-nutrients like cabbage and broccoli are leading the ‘charge of the green brigade’.  For guys in the fight against testicular cancer, apparently you should get your hands on your nuts and seeds: a daily intake of those tasty legumes is cited to help slow the rapid release of dietary sugars – depriving tumours of their chosen sweet foods.  Now that, naturally, is tasty.