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Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

arstechnica.com

11–20 of 74 posts

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#11
post #6

So I live in the EU where such supplements are supposedly safe. Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous. And the dose that was dangerous to the woman was 2000mg. I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store. Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 100…

Are you talking about pills? Pills generally can only contain about 1000mg or a little more. Is the bottle suggesting you take 10 pills for a single dose?

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#12
post #6

So I live in the EU where such supplements are supposedly safe. Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous. And the dose that was dangerous to the woman was 2000mg. I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store. Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 100…

Secondarily, both contains oxalate in proportions of 1% of black pepper and 2% of turmeric by mass, which leads to the formation of kidney stones.

It's worse in the US because the FDA effectively "washes its hands" of anything deemed a "supplement". In general, the precautionary principle is difficult to find in America outside of FDA-approved procedures, medical devices, and medications. Food and supplements are desperately under-regulated.

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#14
post #6

So I live in the EU where such supplements are supposedly safe. Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous. And the dose that was dangerous to the woman was 2000mg. I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store. Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 100…

That's 10 grams?? Does that even fit in a pill?

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#15
post #6

So I live in the EU where such supplements are supposedly safe. Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous. And the dose that was dangerous to the woman was 2000mg. I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store. Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 100…

That's 10 grams?? Does that even fit in a pill?

For turmeric, it's probably an extraction which is equivalent to 10g of raw herb.

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#16
post #8

In the Next on chubbyemu department of lack of moderation...

Presenting to the emergency department

And that intro music and video clips of someone holding their stomach.

Btw, he has a second channel on YT: @HemeReview

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#18
post #11
post #6

So I live in the EU where such supplements are supposedly safe. Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous. And the dose that was dangerous to the woman was 2000mg. I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store. Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 100…

Are you talking about pills? Pills generally can only contain about 1000mg or a little more. Is the bottle suggesting you take 10 pills for a single dose?

[deleted]

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#19
If a synthetic food additive were that hazardous at that small a multiple of the amounts used in food, it'd have been banned. This (curcumin) is an exemplar of that pervasive magical thinking in modern society, the naturalistic fallacy: the prior that there's some inherent qualitative difference between the class of things occurring naturally and the technological/synthetic.

It's perfectly legal to dye food yellow with turmeric.

Many synthetic dyes are illegal for food, dyes which (unlike turmeric) have never been shown to have caused actual harm. But which (like turmeric) are known to be toxic at some dose not used in any food product, some 10x or 100x or whatever high multiple.

Curcumin is known to be pharmacologically active; has lots of (poorly understood) biochemical effects, hits lots of targets. It's never been demonstrated to be medically useful. The unjustified assumption—the magical thinking—is that, being a natural plant substance, maybe some of these random effects, randomly twiddling with the biochemistry of a human body without understanding what you're doing, might be beneficial—so people deliberately ingest it. That's accepted. It's the opposite with synthetic chemicals: if one's biochemically active in some poorly-understood way, you assume that mystery activity is toxic—not beneficial.

(Tangentially, you should probably avoid turmeric regardless of any of this, because the modern supply chain is contaminated with heavy metals, which cause poisonings[0]).

[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ("Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead")

Re: Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage

#20
post #6

So I live in the EU where such supplements are supposedly safe. Article said that supplements that mix pepper and turmeric are dangerous. And the dose that was dangerous to the woman was 2000mg. I looked on my table toward the bottle of turmeric my parents gifted me recently, saying they heard it was good and bought on a famous "health" store. Bottle is: turmeric + pepper "designed for max absorption" and dose is 100…

Why would supplements supposedly be safe in the EU? They are not regulated as far as I know? They can be sold anywhere. They often contain all kinds of inflated claims..
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