Natural and herbal remedies are fast becoming a staple part of of lifestyles and medicine cabinets of many in the UK, with many high street pharmacists offering their own ranges to compete with specialised retailers of these supplements. There’s a certain appeal to natural remedies because they’re, well, natural, and in the minds of many that implies “something gentle and safe, compared to the harshness of ‘actual medicine’ for their symptoms” according to Gwen Evans, a degree qualified pharmacist based out of London.
Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it is inherently safe: in the same way you know not to eat every mushroom you find on the ground, or every berry you see on a bush, the same caution should be applied when taking vitamins and herbal supplements, even if they declare themselves as natural and purport a whole host of health benefits. Gwen explains that, while there’s a fair knowledge base among medical professionals about how herbal preparations can have adverse effects on the body, “for side effects and interactions caused by herbal supplements, the resources for these are rarely used and are often only ever consulted in severe emergency situations...things like St John’s Wort (used as a sort of herbal anti-depressant) are becoming more understood as more people experience high-dose side effects or drug interactions such as serotonin shock characterised by heart palpitations and nausea, but there's a huge grey area as to whether other herbal preparations, extracts and supplements could be causing the exact same extent of damage”.
The dangers of certain traditional supplements have been known for years: take old fashioned cod liver oil, for example. It’s seen as one of those things that your granny always had in her medicine cabinet and forced you to take when you were growing up, and has no real negative images around it despite the disgusting fishy aftertaste that might have put you off it for life. It’s still one of the most popular supplements today for most health retailers, with a multi-million pound market in the UK alone. Cod liver oil is especially high in Vitamin A, something that is useful for things such as healthy vision and unborn babies’ development. The issue here is just how much is present in the oil. While the vitamin is important for fetal development, too much can cause severe birth defects, leading to the NHS advising pregnant women to never take any supplements containing the animal-based form of vitamin A, retinol. They even recommend avoiding any foodstuffs that are high in the vitamin. With tried-and-tested and seemingly innocuous supplements running the risk of causing severe problems, it poses an important question given the boom in natural remedies: just what are certain supplements doing to our bodies?
The notable concern here is the huge desire over the last 10 years that has developed for weight loss products. We’re constantly bombarded by adverts every summer telling us to get ‘beach-body ready’ and telling us to take a miracle tablet that will immediately make all the fat leave our body: carb-blockers, appetite-suppressants, ‘thermogenics’, fat metabolisers and so on, there’s a seemingly endless selection on sale, with most only coming with a brief description of what they’re supposed to be doing to your body. One particular herb, Garcinia Cambogia, which is a melon-like fruit that grows in South America, is often used alongside green tea in tablets to aid weight loss by effectively forcing your metabolism to run in overdrive. While this in itself isn’t particularly great for your thyroid, supplementary use of the fruit has proven to have some seriously dangerous effects on the liver: The National Centre for Biotechnology Information in America has so far recorded over a dozen severe cases of liver damage from the supplement, ranging from cirrhosis (that you’d expect from an alcoholic’s liver), to acute liver damage that resulted in an emergency transplant needed, and in one case even death.
It doesn’t stop there, either. Even the seemingly harmless green tea, with health benefits and antioxidant properties than go on and on, has caused serious damage to the livers of those taking concentrated extract in supplementary form. At least 80 cases of liver damage have been caused by it, with one man in Texas explaining to the BBC that, after taking the capsules for three months, he needed an emergency liver transplant due to acute liver failure. “It was shocking because I'd only heard about the benefits," he remembers. "I'd not heard about any problems”. This is the crux of the problem: these herbal remedies are boasted to help all aspects of our health, but the fast advancing market for different concentrated forms causes a whole range of effects that are hard to discern, with the medical field struggling to keep up.
Doctors are struggling to keep up with the progression of these supplements, too. Dr Sally Watterson, an emergency medicine (A&E) registrar says “It’s fairly common for folk to come into the hospital with problems from these herbs and whatnot....tachycardia (fast, erratic heart-rate), nausea, vomiting...people think they might have caught something and it’s one of these tablets. I wouldn’t even have had to ask a few years ago”.
As the market grows, it’s doubtless that more risks and horror stories will come with it. While vitamins and herbal supplements can be great for you, they can also be dangerous, and don’t discount modern medicine due to issues with ‘Big Pharma’. If you’re looking to take something that’s sold over-the-counter, remember to do your research, or even ask your doctor if it’s safe: it might be them that has to save your life afterwards
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