#psa: activated charcoal

[exhausted-archivist]

I saw this reblog and had to do a little research, because medical misinformation concerns. I'm certainly not immune to it, and I wanted to correct myself as needed.

What I found is that this post did make the important distinction between oral and non-oral meds. A distinction I should have made, I knew it was only oral but didn't think to specify that, which I clearly mucked up that. Apologies.

Another thing is that while the linked post in the previous reblog has very good points, and well laid out - the addition to it is the crucial point of the need for caution. Their links and the multiple sources in my research - which the science and history of its use to be really interesting - all carry the very real factor that charcoal, especially activated charcoal is concern with oral medication.

An aspect that the linked post points out, and really a whole other can of worms to consider is: you might not know what type of charcoal you're getting.

As it's labeled as a health product most times there might not be as much regulation over it - especially in the US - for anything labeled a supplement. This means you don't know what grade you're getting and there for you can't be sure that it is just regular charcoal or activated charcoal.

Like with all medical things, it's important to do your own research first and for most. But in regards to the concern with activated charcoal, yes there is some misinformation about it and the concern with it might actually be lower than with others.

But here are the TLDR facts I found:

Overall it is not likely to impact your if you're consuming activated charcoal for a limited time - prolonged use has concerns of side effects like constipation and dehydration but can also impact how your body processes medication.

It only effects oral medication and medication that processes in your intestinal track.

Like the linked post above says, if you do eat these aesthetic foods, you should make sure you aren't taking it within a certain time period after your oral medication. (minimum of 1 hour for non-time released medication)

The type of meds you're taking impact the window of when it will decrease their efficacy - time release vs immediate.

The oral medication you are taking might be affected by it. It depends on your meds.

Always discuss things with your doctor or pharmacist. Every medication is different.

And to elaborate on the comment on the window of difference in time for when it is deemed reasonably safe to ingest activated charcoal after meds:

Non-time releases is recommended a minimum of 1-2 hours but recommends 4 hours for the least amount of interference.

Time release recommends 6 hours minimum in some sources, others say the 4 hour minimum.

Sources and research points to start at:

NIH - Activated Charcoal

NIH - Activated Charcoal for Acute Poisoning

British Pharmaceutical Society - Activated Charcoal for Acute Overdose: A reappraisal

Medline Plus - Activated Charcoal

The 79 known medications that Activated Charcoal interacts with

Known interactions on RX list

Good RX - Activated Charcoal

When it comes down to it, you need to make informed medical decisions with your own research and your medical provider or pharmacist.

On a note of substitutes if you want to still make the recipe these are things I've seen in the tags and was digging for myself to adapt the recipe:

Gel food dye

Black sesame

Dark cocoa powder

Blackberries

So PSA about the Dragon Age Official Cookbook

They have a recipe for lichen bread that uses activated charcoal.

If you are on any medication you should not consume anything with activated charcoal.

I was hoping there was a disclaimer on the recipe but there wasn’t, and given that this is also spooky season it’s more relevant.

Use food dye if you want to achieve the dark black look. But please be safe and make sure the recipes are safe for you.

[marshmallowwitharubberband]

It's that time of the year again, the time for the PSA that spooky foods tinted black with activated charcoal WILL RENDER MEDICATIONS USELESS. All of them.

Which should be obvious considering activated charcoal is regularly used to treat poisoning for that very same reason: it absorbs the poison and flushes it out of the body. Charcoal can't tell which substance is which, because it's not sentient, so consuming it will do the same to any foreign substance in you, including medication.

There was a time, –before avocado, hialuronic acid, and micellar everything– where activated charcoal was THE detox fad and every beauty product under the sun contained it for its cleansing and chemical-absorbing properties.

The whole shtick of activated charcoal is to absorb shit and flush it out.

So yeah, not great for people on any kind of medication.

[bpdnchill]

Because Spooky Season is close at hand I have a gentle reminder that Activated Charcoal is NOT your friend if you are on ANY medication. It will mess the efficiency of EVERYTHING up, be it Birth Control, antibiotics, psych meds, you name it.

In some cases, it can even turn your lifesaving medication into a useless sugar pill.

So if some cool holiday goodie has Activated Charcoal as an ingredient and you are on ANY medication, it may be best to pass.

[yellow-dress-basil]

QUICK PSA FOR THE DISABLED COMMUNITY

If you take any daily medication, do not eat grapefruit or activated charcoal unless you know for a fact they won’t affect your medication.

Both Grapefruit and Activated Charcoal will cancel out medication.

‘Where would you ever eat activated charcoal?’ You may be asking

Well

Halloween eve is here y’all and if you want a black cocktail or cupcake, it was probably made black with activated charcoal! So please double check before consuming!!

[moderndaycassandra]

PSA for HRT

So, its September, which means its Spooky Season and many places are starting to sell food that's been colored black. This a reminder and caution to all my trans friends out there who take oral pills for HRT.

!!CHECK WHAT MAKES THE FOOD BLACK!!

Many artificially blackened foods are colored using Activated Charcoal, which you should avoid at all costs. From what I've read, it can bind with any pills you swallow and may render them useless. If you take injections, you should be fine. I am not a doctor, I'm just regurgitating information I've read on the internet.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

IMPORTANT PSA

As we approach spooky season and you start seeing food coloured black, remember that foods with activated charcoal can be very dangerous if you take medications, because it reduces or completely counteracts the absorption of prescription drugs into your system, this is why it's commonly used in the medical field to counteract orally ingested poisons.

[megamindfandombookclub]

Don't ingest activated charcoal if you're taking medications!!!

cant stop thinking abt this bit from a psa about activated charcoal flushing your medications from your system

[rivetgoth]

Goth FTM PSA: Y'all realize activated charcoal does not impact testosterone HRT unless you're taking Jatenzo or another form of oral administration (extremely rare, expensive, and only recently approved for usage) because activated charcoal works to flush out the digestive system specifically, right? It's not, like, magically zapping medication out of your body. Activated charcoal impacting hormones is something those on estrogen need to worry about significantly more because estrogen is very commonly taken as a pill, though even then there's plenty of caveats based in the timeline of when you take the pill versus when you consume the charcoal, and of course not everyone on estrogen takes it orally either. Oral testosterone is still in the early stages of even being approved for human use, I would wager concerns around activated charcoal and testosterone would not apply to a good 99% of trans men.

Every Halloween season I see those PSAs go around talking about activated charcoal and HRT with absolutely no actual medical explanation for what it's doing whatsoever and it is so fearmongery and uninformative. I see trans men assume it applies to them ALL the time. It is VERY good to be careful with activated charcoal, there is a lot of new age-y pseudoscience around its "health benefits" and it really can flush out medications, but it's not, like, Potion Of Detransition either. For many trans people drinking an iced coffee with a hint of charcoal to make it "spooky" is not going to have literally any negative effect whatsoever lol. Bottom line please do your own research and come to your own informed decisions, do not take medical "facts" on Tumblr as wholesale objective truth. It's very often overly simplified or jumping to genuinely unreasonable conclusions.

[bubblewonderabyss]

Activated charcoal PSA cookie but I made it weird

[my-little-toy-box]

Adding to the psa a lot of black dyed food clam to have charcoal in them. But don’t.

Activated charcoal sucks at dying food. The amount you need to change the color to the desired shade makes it taste awful.

so uh most people who clam to use charcoal are mostly using food dye. 🤷

Don’t ask me why. Idk.

[temporary-dysphoria]

🍁🥧🎃PSA🎃🥧🍁

So it's getting close to Halloween, Samhain, end of October whatever you wanna call it. Pumpkin spice, pumpkins in general, spooky aesthetics abound. 🍁🥧🎃

There's lots of spoooky food to fit everyone's aesthetic and thats great. I do however want to bring your attention to a certain ingredient that's been floating around a fair bit lately, because its very cool and makes your food black which is of course, perfect for completing your halloween treat table.

Activated Charcoal.

In the interest of the general public here is your yearly reminder from your resident paramedic that:

Activated Charcoal can potentially mess up your medications even in small amounts.

In the business(healthcare), we use activated charcoal to treat poisoning and drug overdose by oral ingestion.

Charcoal is an adsorbent*-which means it works by physically adsorbing drugs and toxic agents that it encounters in the GI tract onto its surface. Now, it can be a little touch and go with some toxins and heavier molecules, but it is very effective at adsorption of the following:

Aspirin

Barbiturates (a class of drug used for the treatment of epilepsy, including simple and complex focal seizures, and generalised seizures)

Tricyclic Antidepressants (these are an old antidepressant but they still see a lot of use - they normally end in something like -tyline [amitriptyline etc])

Digoxin (a drug used to treat various heart arrhythmias and heart failure)

Amphetamines (yes the illegal kind, but ALSO the legal kind which is a drug class prescribed commonly for the treatment of ADHD)

Morphine (and other Opioids - as well as Opioid-like drugs, such as methadone which is used to treat Opioid Dependence)

Phenothiazines (a class of anti-histamines)

Now this is not an exhaustive list because the way charcoal works is very non-specific (ie, it doesn't give a fuck what it adsorbs, it just does-providing the molecule fits). But what this means is that if you take a regular medication, by ingesting charcoal you MAY not actually get your full dose, if any (this is obviously troublesome for a host of reasons).

To be completely effective, we give the charcoal ASAP after the ingestion of the poison or toxin, because it can only adsorb the portion of the drug that hasn't already been absorbed by the GI tract.

We normally give patients 1gram activated charcoal per kilogram of body weight (roughly 1gram to every 2.2 pounds of body weight for my U.S compatriots), sometimes in water, sometimes in capsules.

What does this mean for your spectacularly spooky meals that you want to make or eat?

Well, I'll be honest. Its improbable that you'll manage to fit an entire dose of charcoal into one serving of whatever you're eating.

If you take your medications in the morning, and eat something containing activated charcoal later that day, or in the evening - its unlikely that you'll notice any effects whatsoever (caveat to that being slow release tablets - be careful with those).

That being said, think about what you're putting in your body. And for the love of all thats good and holy, don't put charcoal in food that you're going to give away for trick or treat (because you might not know what medications the people who come to your door are on and that is a medico-legal issue that I HAVE NOT got time to unpack right now).

So you wanna eat your black cupcake with the cool black galacy icing?

After you ingest something containing activated charcoal:

Your poop may be discoloured (we check to see if stools are black to identify if the charcoal has passed through the GI tract)

You may feel nauseous or vomit

Aside from these two side effects there are very few serious adverse reactions or complications from single doses of activated charcoal.

This has been a hopefully helpful PSA on activated charcoal. Enjoy your spooky treats and be safe nerds.

*adsorb-to cause a substance to form or hold a very thin layer on the surface of another substance.

References (feel free to message if you want links, I posted this on my phone):

Australian Medicines Handbook [Activated Charcoal, Barbiturates, Psychostimulants, Phenothiazines, Tricyclic Antidepressants, Drugs for Opioid Dependence]

MIMS Online [Full PI for Activated Charcoal (Carbasorb X Oral Suspension)]

[enraged-amoebas]

just a heads up if you’re taking any sort of pills please don’t eat anything with activated charcoal in it no matter how cool it looks because activated charcoal will interfere with your medication and yes it goes for birth control pills too

[accessible-tumbling]

ID: a close-up of a bottle label. The liquid in the bottle is pitch black. The brand name is illegible due to a shiny spot.

Below this, though, it says: Black lemonade

activated charcoal

grapefruit

lemon

ginger

mineral water

and at the bottom: cold pressed juice

end ID.

An activate charcoal AND grapefruit smoothie called "what will your meds do ;)"

[leconcombrerit]

Okay so my dog is now 100% out of danger but, after a few conversations with people around me I noticed that some people still aren't aware so PSA :

CHOCOLATE IS HIGHLY TOXIC FOR DOGS

And very possibly lethal even with "small" doses.

If your dog eats milk chocolate, they might be fine, but still beware and check. If they ate dark chocolate / sweet dark chocolate / cocoa powder, seek veterinary care immediately. It could (and probably is if they ate even a bar of baking chocolate) a serious emergency.

Don't even wait for symptoms to appear, just call your vet clinic and tell them. They'll know what to do. Ideally bring the wrapper to have the theobromine concentration on hand, and an estimation of when your dog ate it. It will help them take appropriate measures.

If you're fast, they can make your dog throw it all up before anything was metabolized and the only consequence will be nausea. If not, it can get much more complicated. They can try symptomatic treatments to keep your dog alive the time it takes for chocolate to get out of their system and speed it up the best they can but it's not 100% guaranteed to work (activated charcoal, intravenous fluids, heart medications, anti-convulsants, and antacids are much worse than induced vomiting and also much more expensive, I hate that it's important but it is).

Symptoms can take 6 to 12 or even 18 hours to appear, so seriously, do not wait. I don't even know what would have happened to my baby if I hadn't known that beforehand (or yes actually, I do).

[zeldabutagrl]

PSA THIS IS AN IMPORTANT HEALTH ANNOUNCEMENT. If you are having some food or drink that is Halloween themed, please be aware that activated charcoal is often used to make food black.

Now, activated charcoal is generally safe to eat. HOWEVER. It also *absorbs medications* and is sometimes used in the ER to help prevent overdosing. That means if you are taking a prescription medication, eating too much activated charcoal can be very harmful! Please be safe.

[fuzzballsheltiepants]

Had a weird case today so I’m posting it here as a PSA:

IF YOUR DOG GETS INTO EDIBLES THAT CONTAIN CHOCOLATE, GET THEE TO AN EMERGENCY CLINIC ASAP.

Dog came in unable to walk, barely able to wake him up, but having severe muscle twitching and an elevated temperature.  He was dripping urine, which is a classic sign of pot toxicity, but pot dogs don’t generally have an elevated temp or the muscle twitching.  I was concerned about meningitis, and I talked to the owner about referring to a neurologist but first: “Is there any chance your dog got into pot?”

Here is where being honest with your vet will save your dog’s life.  “Yeah, I don’t think he did but we do have some in the house.  Let me check.”

Turns out, the daughter has a medical condition and a prescription for high-content THC, which she takes in the form of dark chocolate edibles.  She had known he had eaten it, but hadn’t thought it would be a big deal. 

So, chocolate when ingested in large amounts causes vomiting, diarrhea, and hyperactivity before it gets to the “seizures and death” stage.  However...pot suppresses the vomiting, diarrhea, and hyperactivity.  So, this dog is now in the “seizures and potential death” stage, but it’s suppressed by the pot to the point where the clients had no idea.  Had they not brought him in, had they thought he was just a stoned puppy and not worried about it, he very well could have died.  As it is, he’s at a 24 hour emergency clinic getting supportive care to keep him alive until this is all out of his system - likely a couple of days (and a couple thousand dollars).

If we get these cases right away, we can induce vomiting and give activated charcoal, and save a lot of hassle, a lot of money, and potentially your dog’s life.

Lock up your edibles.