A questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate the use of health foods (HF) among outpatients with diabetes mellitus (DM) who were receiving medication at Hokkaido Health Sciences University Hospital.About 30% of patients who had used HF previously or were using them at the time of the investigation allowed some time between taking HF and their prescribed medicines.The proportion of patients who considered that HF enhanced the efficacy of drugs was 16.4% in the case of those who were using HF at the time of the survey,and about 40% for those them who had no experience of taking HF or stopped taking them.Half of patients using HF considered that they had little influence on drugs.These data suggest that the opinion of patients regarding the influence of HF on drugs was an indicator of their use.
Through further analysis of the concurrent use of prescribed medicines and HF,we discovered no particular tendency in the medicines prescribed to patients taking guava leaves polyphenol,which is known to suppress the absorption of sugar.Patients on metformin and/or sulfonylureas,the medicines most frequently prescribed to patients targeted by our survey,were the greatest users of Aojiru and Kurozu.In consideration of these findings,it is necessary to provide both outpatients and inpatients with information on HF and the possibility of reactions between them and drugs used to treat DM.
