Herbal teas are heavily marketed for his or her advertised umpteen advantages. A case study of a girl who needed to be hospitalized for five days following herbal tea consumption is a warning of the hazards that the sort of tea poses.

The unnamed 45-year-old woman went to the ER with “severe” abdominal pain and ended up being hospitalized as a consequence of acute liver damage. The doctors who treated her published her case study within the Cureus Journal of Medical Science on January 11.

The girl visited the ER after experiencing intense abdominal pain for at some point. Blood tests revealed that her liver was damaged. The doctors ruled out all possible causes of liver injury. On probing the patient, they got here to know that the girl had began drinking herbal tea to “improve immunity” three days before the onset of gastric pain, BusinessInsider reported.

The girl was hospitalized for five days and stopped drinking herbal tea during her stay. After just three days of tea cessation, not only did her symptoms disappear however the blood tests showed that her liver function had improved. Following discharge, the doctors forbid her to drink the tea again.

The girl’s liver blood tests got here up normal after three months.

In keeping with the report, the tea contained 23 ingredients, including reishi mushroom, aloe vera, and Siberian ginseng, all three of which have been related to liver damage previously.

Oral types of aloe vera have been related to 12 cases of liver toxicity since 2005, as per the National Library of Medicine. Nonetheless, in these cases, the symptoms went away on stopping the complement and nobody died.

Meanwhile, the consumption of reishi mushrooms has led to liver damage in two people, in line with research. Lastly, Siberian ginseng has been related to acute liver injury, the report said.

“It’s estimated that roughly one-third of Americans take herbal supplements. Attributable to their categorization as supplements, they are usually not as closely regulated as traditional pharmaceuticals despite the heavy marketing of varied purported health claims. Because of this, formal studies examining the efficacy and negative effects of varied supplements are limited by unreliability of ingredient labeling, dosing, and possible contamination,” doctors wrote within the report.

The doctors consider that this case study will help others in the sector to accurately diagnose and treat patients with similar medical histories.

“This case shows the worth of further inquiry into complement use once common causes of acute liver injury are ruled out. On this case, the patient was using an herbal tea with known hepatotoxic ingredients and had definitive improvement after cessation of use. It’s imperative for clinicians to familiarize themselves with herbal supplements to raised inquire patients about their use and educate them on potential negative effects,” the doctors concluded.

In August 2022, Lori McClintock, the wife of U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif, reportedly died from consuming white mulberry leaf, a herbal complement that is often marketed for weight reduction. “I feel lots of individuals are pondering, ‘Oh, it is a plant.’ Or ‘Oh, it’s only a vitamin. Actually, that implies that it is not going to harm me,'” Debbie Petitpain, a registered dietician nutritionist and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics said. “But there’s at all times a risk for taking anything.”