BBC Morning Live regular Dr Xand van Tulleken is issuing a stark warning to people people take medication. He warns that if you take it alongside certain foods you could be making it ineffective - and you're probably taking it wrong too, he notes.

The doctor said: "80 per cent of people who take regular medication in the UK are not taking it exactly as prescribed and that includes all the doctors who have ever taken your medicine" - including himself, he admitted.

Talking about fruit, he warned that people need to be cautious when they are eating grapefruit, anything containing it - such as jam - or drinking its juice. He said: "If you're eating grapefruit and you take drugs regularly, you should definitely have an alertness and a knowledge of what’s going on because grapefruit can be dangerous."

Explaining that in the wild the fruit's main aim is to survive and spread seeds, he notes that because of this, it produces chemicals 'to stop it being eaten by the wrong kind of animals'. With this in mind, he reveals that it "interferes with an enzyme that breaks down drugs.

"When we take medication our bodies break them down so we can excrete them harmlessly after they’ve worked - so grapefruit can either stop breaking down the drugs so you got a very high dose and that can have quite toxic effects," he said.

"Sometimes it can even have the effect of not breaking the drug into the molecule that’s actually active in your body so you can get a toxic effect and the drug isn’t even giving you the benefit as well."

What medication is affected by grapefruit?

• Statins


• Blood pressure medication


• Psychiatric medication


• Immunosuppressants


• antiarrhythmics

Talking about these drugs he said that the fruit can affect 'all kind of drugs', and even 'half a glass can be enough to alter the way you process that drug for many days'. He said: "I’d say if you’re on a regular medication check with your pharmacist check with your GP before you eat a grapefruit."

Is blood pressure medication affected?

In another example, he notes that warfarin, which is a blood thinner, is a popular one. Its antidote is vitamin K and as the expert reveals, this is in a lot of foods we're told to eat on a daily basis to keep heathly.

Vitamin K is found in:

• avocado


• egg yolk


• green, leafy vegetables


• blue cheese


• broccoli


• chickpeas


• olive oil


• seaweed


• spinach


• lettuce

With this in mind, he says try and not have a lot of this in bulk and instead "spread it out" have have "a little bit each day" noting that "consistency" is key.

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How to take medication correctly

• Swallow properly and lean forward


• Don’t crush our alter tablets


• Don’t take hot drinks - try room temp tap water


• Avoid dairy