What you eat and drink can affect the way your medicines work. Use this guide to alert you to possible “food-drug interactions” and to help you learn what you can do to prevent them.
In this guide, a food-drug interaction is a
change in how a medicine works caused by food, caffeine, or alcohol.
A food-drug interaction can:
- prevent a medicine from working the way it should
- cause a side effect from a medicine to get worse or better
- cause a new side effect
A medicine can also change the way your
body uses a food. Any of these changes
can be harmful.
This guide covers interactions between some common prescription and over-the-counter medicines and food, caffeine, and alcohol. These interactions come from medicine labels that FDA has approved. This guide uses the generic names of medicines, never brand names.