Medication mix: The surprising dangers of everyday drinks

Many people take medication daily and consume various kinds of vitamins or supplements. As it turns out, not only the time and dosage matter. It is also important what we drink with the medication. What is convenient may not always be a good choice.

Practically everyone knows how inadvisable the combination of medication and alcohol is. However, you might be surprised to learn that other beverages, which are generally considered healthy and recommended, can negatively affect our medication, specifically in how they behave in our bodies.

For medication to work correctly, it must be absorbed into our body and get into the bloodstream. If we drink the wrong beverages with it, they may be less effective and harm our bodies.

Milk is the best food for calcium, as it provides the body with calcium. Calcium in the stomach interferes with medication absorption. Citrus juices or fizzy drinks like cola, which increase stomach acidity, are also bad.

Coffee or tea are also bad choices for drinking with medication. The caffeine and theine in them make it harder for medications, especially painkillers and antibiotics, to absorb.

As with cola, energy drinks are a poor choice as well.

As mentioned earlier, alcohol is the worst choice. It not only doesn’t help with the effectiveness of pills but actually increases the occurrence of side effects and can even lead to liver damage.

The best choice for drinking with medication won’t surprise anyone. It’s a glass of water. It can be any kind of water - bottled, filtered, or boiled. It’s also worth remembering that in many cities in our country, tap water is completely safe to drink. This helps if, for example, you are somewhere outdoors and don't have a bottle of mineral water handy.

Dr Pradip Shah from Fortis Hospital in Mumbai emphasises that water neither changes the properties of the medication nor interacts with it.