OUR past articles on the sources of food have generated a lot of feedback, comments, and long list of questions mostly about safety issues and only secondary, are their nutritive value. This is understandable considering the plethora of diet fads, on top of stores in malls claiming to be wellness centers complete with attractive pictures of their produce- vegetables as well as fruits.
Most of the questions centered on “natural and organic foods”. It is quite amusing as well as disturbing that some of our readers, probably in their excitement and eagerness to come very close to ideal health food, have gone beyond saying that indeed, herbal supplements meet this strict criterion.. So this article is set to clarify some issues and hopefully put things in their proper perspective.
The health status of humanity is a lot better because of medicines sourced from herbs, ok plants in general. Good old reliable aspirin- unless you have allergy- is sourced from the bark of cinchona tree or Chinese willow, life-saving digitalis for heart failure patient is from Digitalis lanata, a relative of our yellow bell plant and mind you, morphine which is still the most potent pain-reliever approved for clinical use is the result of different processes of extraction and further refinement from the poppy plant. And the list is long.
The use of medicines sourced from plants, especially herbs, e.g. yerba Buena, is the core of traditional medicine notably in the rural areas of Africa, Asia, Central and South America. In the Philippines, the practice has been widespread so much so that practitioners were called “arbularyo” in native parlance, which unfortunately carried a rather negative component especially to to urbanites but not with rural folks especially in far flung areas where the sight of health workers nurse, midwives, much less, doctors is like a miracle from heaven.
However, experts have warned that some herbal medicines and other home remedies or supplements are significant causes of hepatotoxicity or severe liver damage. Admittedly, they are not the most common cause of liver damage example some TB drugs, general anesthetic agents but their increasing popularity with the general population is quite alarming.
Prospective studies on the use of herbal medicine are few in the US and Europe but those that have been conducted specifically on patients with liver disease suggest that as many as one fifth to one third of them have been taking herbal remedies, which their own doctors are not aware of. It was shown that some herbal preparations can cause abnormalities in the hepatobiliary tract although the most common case is acute hepatitis.
Currently, there are very few studies on how frequently herbal preparations cause liver damage and eventually, liver disease although the recorded cases show a 2-18%. Many statisticians and epidemiologists insist the figures are just tip of the iceberg. The mechanism by which herbals cause liver disease is not yet fully understood, thus it is difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship.
As a rule, herbal supplements and even those which claim the name “herbal medicines” do not undergo the very strict and thorough evaluation, assessment compared to the comprehensive regulation of prescription medicines, sometimes called ethical pharmaceutical products. Of course, it is not a secret that the Internet has made it easy to make people avail of these supplements.
Thus, the take home message is for people to be more careful, more cautious in buying and using herbal supplements, despite the glowing testimonials of paid as well as the so-called satisfied customers who voluntarily publicly endorse them. The market is flooded with herbal supplements which try to outdo each other in proclaiming their sterling qualities and amazing therapeutic effects. For your sake, on the side of safety, have a good talk with your family doctor.