6 ms·
Woman takes 10x dose of turmeric, gets hospitalized for liver damage
- burnt-resistor 1y agoIn the Next on chubbyemu department of lack of moderation...
- jmcgough 1y agoPresenting to the emergency department
- burnt-resistor 1y agoAnd that intro music and video clips of someone holding their stomach. Btw, he has a second channel on YT: @HemeReview
- milliams 1y agoMohan vowed: "I’ll never put another supplement in my body again." Maybe just don't do such large doses?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago> Maybe just don't do such large doses? Yeah. Isn't there a thing called water poisoning? Where your body sheds lots of things that it needs if you drink too much water? I'd wager a guess that if you drink >20 liters of water daily you'll be in some trouble...
- literalAardvark 1y agoIirc kidney rate is 0.8-1L per hour, so at 20L/day the person would be fairly likely to hit hyponatremia rather quickly. Weasel words included because they're necessary... Health is complicated
- rendall 1y agoI came here to say this. Of course she is understandably emotional after coming so close to a terrible death.
- hkt 1y agoThe dose makes the poison
- speeder 1y agoSo 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 10000mg.
- Thorrez 1y agoAre 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 1y ago[deleted]
- speeder 1y agoThe pills in the bottle look exactly the ones in the article, they are quite big.
- Thorrez 1y agoHow can we know the dimensions of the pills in the article's picture? I've seen a bunch of pills that look basically like those, and the most they have held is around 1000mg. Here are some pills that look just like the ones in the article's picture: https://www.amazon.com/NatureWise-Curcumin-Curcuminoids-BioPerine-Absorption/dp/B01BMDAVB6/ https://www.amazon.com/NatureWise-Curcumin-Curcuminoids-BioP... They are 2250 + 500 = 2750mg in a serving size of 3 pills. So each pill is slightly less than 1000mg.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoSecondarily, 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.
- unnamed76ri 1y agoPeople will pay all kinds of money for supplements which have been denatured from their source (and therefore not as likely to be effective) instead of just eating fruits and vegetables.
- xigoi 1y agoSome of us are allergic to many fruits.
- markdown 1y ago> she began taking turmeric capsules at a dose of 2,250 mg per day. That's a teaspoon. The average South-east asian eats close to that much in a day for their entire lives.
- morsch 1y agoI think that's 2.2g curcumin. Powdered turmeric, the spice, contains approximately 3% curcumin by weight. So one teaspoon turmeric sounds like it's pretty close to the RDA.
- esperent 1y agoThe article very clearly states that she was taking turmeric supplement, not curcumin.
- magicalhippo 1y agoI just searched for tumeric black pepper extract and this[1] was the first product hits I got. It's called "Turmeric Curcumin with Black Pepper, 2250mg", and the bottle predominantly says "Turmeric" in a large font with the rest in a very small font. The description states: Each serving of Qunol Turmeric capsules' formulation contains 2250mg of curcumin with 95% curcuminoids. Other turmeric formulations may only contain 5% curcuminoids. [1]: https://www.qunol.com/products/turmeric-2250 https://www.qunol.com/products/turmeric-2250
- esperent 1y agoThere's probably hundreds of brands of turmeric and black pepper though, it's a common supplement combination.
- magicalhippo 1y agoThe point was that there are capsules out there marketed as turmeic supplement which are almost pure curcumin, so it's not unlikely the article referred to them as turmeic capsules while they were technically curcumin capsules.
- collyw 1y ago[flagged]
- elric 1y agoYes. And much more so. There are entire organizations dedicated to tracking side effects of medications. The leaflet with every medication contains a list of known adverse effects and their frequency (at least in the EU).
- energy123 1y agoThere are many more cases than just this one woman though. I can find dozens of case reports.
- VMG 1y agono, they get a lot more
- elric 1y agoTurmeric is notorious for having lead added to it to brighten its colour.
- energy123 1y agoThat's a manageable risk if you buy from the small handful of reputable companies that do heavy metal testing like Life Extension or Natural Factors, who publish their COAs and have brand equity to protect. The less manageable risk is the liver issue. The HLA-B*35:01 gene significantly increases the probability of it happening, and this gene can be screened for in theory. Periodic liver testing might be another way to manage the risk, to catch it before it's symptomatic.
- HellsMaddy 1y agoUnless you buy on Amazon, in which case products from reputable brands are co-mingled with third-party FBA sellers' inventory, which may include counterfeits.
- perihelions 1y agoIf 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-herbs-and-spices-might-contain-arsenic-cadmium-and-lead-a6246621494/ https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-herb... ("Your Herbs and Spices Might Contain Arsenic, Cadmium, and Lead")
- IAmBroom 1y agoAvoid... curry? That doesn't make sense in any context. Are you a bot?
- perihelions 1y ago> "That doesn't make sense in any context." It's exceptionally sensible in the context where hundreds of millions of children worldwide are clinically lead-poisoned, and contaminated turmeric is one of the leading causes of that. https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/09/23/nx-s1-5011028/detectives-mystery-lead-poisoning-new-york-bangladesh https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2024/09/23/nx-s1... > "Are you a bot?" Kindly read the forum rules.
- esperent 1y ago> According to the World Health Organization, an acceptable daily dose is up to 3 mg per kilogram of weight per day—for a 150-pound (68 kg) adult, that would be about 204 mg per day. Mohan was taking more than 10 times that amount I think it's extremely likely that the majority of people in India and surrounding countries - so, hundreds of millions of people - far exceeds the WHO recommendation every day, and frequently eat as much as this woman did, in foods that also contain black pepper. I googled to make sure, and the top five or so links all said that Indians eat an average of 2-2.5g of turmeric per day. So perhaps the issue was something else? For example: - contamination - taking it on an empty stomach rather than with food - genetics - liver damage from something else entirely
- piva00 1y agoThe 3mg per kg per day is of curcumin not turmeric itself. Looking up the content of curcumin in turmeric powder it seems to average around ~1-2% so 2-2.5g of turmeric per day would be 25-50mg of curcumin.
- ReptileMan 1y agoExcept the article didn't mention she was taking curcumin but turmeric. Sloppy journalism could also be a culprit.
- perihelions 1y agoYou're conflating turmeric with the bioactive chemical component in turmeric, curcumin: the toxicology figures refer to the latter. (To be fair, the Ars Technica article fails the reader by failing to use precise language, inviting dangerous misunderstandings).
- esperent 1y agoI carefully read the article before commenting to check in case it was actually curcumin. They clearly call it turmeric supplements, not curcumin, throughout the article. The main source given is this NBC article, which also clearly calls it turmeric supplements, not curcumin: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/liver-damage-turmeric-supplement-woman-hospitalized-rcna217578 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/liver-damage-turm... So why do you think it's actually curcumin?
- redwood 1y agoOdd that the article doesn't mentioned that Turmeric is notorious for having lead added
- Bender 1y agoI believe you are referring to Ayurvedic Medications mostly in India but the practice has spread to other regions. People that use Ayurvedic supplements have been doing so for thousands of years out of beliefs that heavy metals heal the body. Never use supplements someone made and distributed in zip-lock bags. I personally will stick with supplements made by the same laboratories that make prescription drugs and get tested for heavy metals which are most of the popular supplements found on Amazon. The tests are labelled on the bottles.