Another food/INR question

[William]

With all the stuff I've been reading about food/vitamin K/coumadin it all seems to point to things that can lower your INR. Does anybody know of any foods that cause it to increase? I have read some mixed reports too, I think soy or alcohol can cause it to go either way. Cheers, Will

 

[Guest]

Alcohol can go either way depending on whether it is binge drinking or chronic daily use.

Soy seems to only make it go down. The plant evidently stores the fat soluble vitamin K in its beans.

I can't think of any foods that cause the INR to go up. It is lack of food, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea etc that cause it to go up.

 

[GregB]

INR variation

INR variation

Al
I am puzzled by your note that vomiting etc can cause INR to go up.
I was of the view that vomiting caused the expulsion of the drug before it had a chance to do it"s thing, which I thought would cause INR to go down.

Personally I see a pattern of increased INR over the Christmas holiday period. It has gone up to 4.6 and 4.2 over the past two Christmas breaks. Clearly the disruption to diet and exercise etc has some impact.

GB

 

[Guest]

I should have said that vomiting can cause it to go either way. If you vomit the warfarin, it will go down. More commonly what happens is that some of the warfarin gets absorbed and then food etc gets expelled there is nothing to oppose the warfarin and the INR goes up. I was in the middle of watching an elderly woman in the hospital who had several days of severe vomiting. Her INR was steady before admission on 3 mg per day. In the hospital she had an elevated INR after having only 1 mg on three days during the previous week and nothing on four days. That is pretty extreme but it seems to have influenced my thinking. BTW she is now recovering and as of today has had 3 mg on each of the past 3 days and her INR keeps dropping, today it was down to 1.3.