
Medications & Nutrition
Helping busy clinicians access clinically-useful drug-nutrition interactions research
Join the increasing number of innovative, busy clinicians who integrate pharmaconutrition into their daily clinical practice.
The images are linked to the resources
As you note the medications in your clinical assessment, do you ever wonder whether there are any impacts on nutritional factors such as vitamins and minerals?
Have you ever searched for drug-nutrient interactions or drug-food interactions and found it was very costly in time and effort and with very little reward … so you gave up?
If you could easily access information on the impact of prescribed medicines on nutrition – would you? And would you integrate it into your daily clinical practice?
Although the research in this area of pharmaco-nutrition is steadily increasing, it is published in a vast range of journals and therefore costs time and effort to be found – and given you’re always busy, this is time you don’t really have to spend on something with so little immediate reward.
What we do is collate and curate the research into simple dot points that you, as a busy clinician, can easily access and integrate into your reports – this is the basis of our online platform Medications & Nutrition.
Including this information in your clinical reports results in -
Medications have profoundly and positively changed health outcomes however they do generally come with some nutritional harms. By identifying and addressing the nutritional harms, optimal health outcomes are closer to being achieved.
Innovative clinicians are always looking for new expertise and/or new skills and/or new knowledge so they can continue to provide their best service to the people in their care – are you an innovative clinician? Will the integration of pharmaco-nutrition become an integral part of your clinical practice?
This resource lists a comprehensive range of drugs (~ 6,000) that are associated with the drug:nutrition interface i.e. drug effects on nutritional factors (drug-nutrient interactions, drug-food interactions) and the effects of nutritional factors on drug effects (eg malnutrition, weight change).
Included as available is the evidence relating to many of the following:
Drug-nutrient interactions
Whereby a prescribed medicine alters the availability of a nutrient or a nutrient alters the availability of a prescribed medicine.
Drug-food interactions
Whereby a food alters the effectiveness of a prescribed medicine.
Drug-alcohol interactions
Whereby an alcohol-based food or drink alters the effectiveness of a prescribed medicine.
Impacts of side effects
For example some statins negatively impact appetite with ongoing loss of weight as the outcome.
Impacts of specific nutrient supplements
For example iron supplements alter gut microbiota in favour of pathogens.
Potential excipient harm
Excipients (the ingredients mixed with the active ingredient) may cause harm for those with specific food allergies and intolerances such as gluten, lactose, galactose, phenylalanine.
Manufacturers’ administration recommendations
This is particularly relevant to those with impaired swallow reflex or for those requiring enteral feeding. Alteration in medicine form or delivery format potentially alters its rate of absorption and extent of effect.
Thiamine transporters
Which drugs can be transported by and/or inhibit the function of thiamine transporters? “Drug transporters” are in reality, physiological transporters that can also conveniently transport certain drugs; this area of drug transport is currently undergoing significant research.
Comprehensive range of prescribed medicines.
Each prescribed medicine's information is listed by both brand and generic names.
All entries referenced
Not included - papers that contain a mismatch between data presented and Conclusions
Updated on a regular basis.
Changing to periodic regular updates to a process of ongoing frequently added new content.
You form your own conclusions.
The data is objective therefore you will apply it based on your own experiences and clinical practice.
Includes interactions between prescribed medicines and foodstuffs, alcoholic beverages, some "drug" transporters, and vitamins and minerals.
Also includes impacts on BSLs, binding to plasma proteins, adverse reactions (relating to nutritional impacts), impacted nutritional biochemical factors, non-oral feeding, impaired swallow reflex.
Introducing change is always difficult as your current habits and systems are well established ... non-inclusion of new stuff can be an inconvenience.
Initiating new "habits" or systems takes time as you ask questions such as how do we include this important information on our already-crowded assessment page, and/or how do we integrate this information into our clinical management strategies; it requires discussion and resolution.
You also have to decide whether the investment of your time, learning and testing provides a reasonable benefit to the people in your care.
As it is difficult to decide whether a resource like our Medications & Nutrition is worth your investment, this Cheatsheet was developed as a sample of the broad range of applicability of this field in your clinical practice. This is a free gift for you to download - it does not even require your contact details!
Change isn't easy to recognise as it arrives, but it's impossible to forget once it's here.
Visionary
Helping busy clinicians access clinically-useful drug-nutrition interactions research