I've been living with type 1 diabetes for more than 40 years. You'd think by now I'd have a pretty good handle on the medical stuff.
Apparently, there's still plenty I don't know.
And it seems I needed a former White House deputy chief of staff from The West Wing to point something out.
It happened the other night while watching The Diplomat on Netflix. I was enjoying the political drama, trying to keep track of who was plotting against whom, when Bradley Whitford appeared on screen.
For those who remember Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing, Whitford will forever be Josh Lyman. At least to me. I loved that show, and seeing him pop up in another political drama was a welcome surprise.
But it wasn't the political intrigue that caught my attention.
It was grapefruit. Yes, grapefruit.
Somewhere in the dialogue, Whitford's character made an offhand comment about grapefruit and statins. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was along the lines of you can’t have grapefruit if you take statins.
Wait. What?
I've been taking atorvastatin for years. It's a daily pill prescribed to help protect my heart health, something that becomes increasingly important after decades of diabetes. Not particularly exciting, but neither are most of the things we do to keep ourselves healthy.
Somehow, I'd missed this little detail about grapefruit.
Now, I'm not much of a grapefruit guy. I can't remember the last time I actually ate one, and grapefruit juice isn't exactly a staple in my refrigerator. So the odds of this becoming a personal medical crisis are pretty slim.
Still, how had I never heard about this?
I've spent much of my life reading about diabetes, talking with doctors, following medical research and writing about health. For more than a decade, I worked as a health journalist and editor covering everything from diabetes technology and medications to the complicated ways our bodies respond to treatments.
I know more about insulin than I ever really wanted to know. I've written about drug safety, FDA recalls and the fine print that comes with prescription medications.
Yet here I was, learning something about one of my own daily prescriptions from a Netflix drama.
Naturally, I looked it up.
Turns out there's some legitimate science behind that passing TV reference.
Grapefruit contains compounds that can interfere with an enzyme in the small intestine that helps break down certain medications. Atorvastatin, commonly known by the brand name Lipitor, is one of them.
When that enzyme is blocked, more of the medication can enter your bloodstream. Depending on the drug, dosage and amount of grapefruit consumed, that can increase the risk of side effects, including muscle problems.
It's not quite as simple as saying one grapefruit will send you to the emergency room. The FDA warns about interactions involving certain statins, while atorvastatin's prescribing information specifically cautions against consuming large quantities of grapefruit juice. The details matter, as they usually do in medicine.
But the interaction is real. It's something worth discussing with your doctor or pharmacist if grapefruit happens to be part of your regular diet.
For me, the bigger surprise wasn't the science itself. It was realizing how easily something like this could escape my attention after so many years of managing a chronic condition.
I've always believed that living with diabetes is an ongoing education. Just when you think you've figured something out, there's another lesson waiting around the corner. Usually involving blood sugars, insurance companies or some piece of technology that decides to misbehave at the worst possible moment.
This time, it was a piece of citrus fruit. Delivered courtesy of Bradley Whitford.
I suppose there's something fitting about that. After all these years of reporting on health and trying to help people make sense of medical information, I found myself on the receiving end of an unexpected lesson.
Not from a medical journal. Not from an endocrinologist. Not even from the pharmacist who hands over my prescriptions. From a TV show.
This isn’t the first time fictional shows have educated us about medicine, or even diabetes and diabetes-adjacent topics.
Just some examples that come to mind are insulin pump cyberhacking that appeared in SVU and The Blacklist many moons ago, or the insulin affordability crisis that got mentions in medical dramas like New Amsterdam and The Resident in recent years.
Add The Diplomat to the long list of shows with useful medical info that we can learn something new from.
Of course, thanks to Josh Lyman. Well, sort of. He has a different name and role in this show, but he’s still Josh.
I still wouldn't recommend getting your medical advice from a fictional political thriller. But I will give credit where it's due.
Thanks for looking out, Bradley. Maybe this will help teach me to pay a little more attention to those prescription inserts next time.