Dangers of Ayurveda diet supplements

IllegalArgument

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IllegalArgument
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Dec 29, 2003
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I can't find the article on npr.org, but Morning Edition had a great piece on the dangers of Ayurveda diet supplements.

So, doctors in the piece went around buying supplements and found the 1in5 had dangerous levels of heavy metals, mercury and lead for instance.

One poor patient had a lead level of 98, normal is under 2, because he had been taking supplements for 6 years for arthridus.

Anyone else hear the piece, linkage would be great.

Makes me happy to hear some good investgative reporting on this topic.
 
Here is the abstract
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/292/23/2868

My view is that the sCAM crowd who are also antivax should have their attention drawn to this. Debate rages about thiomersal/thimerosal in vaccines, but perhaps we need to show that herbal remedies, and these are not just confined to ayurvedics but also traditional chinese medicines, can have huge levels of contaminating heavy metals.

Masses of talk about neurodevelopmental delay and autism from thiomersal -
WHAT ABOUT ALL THE HERBALS THEN ?!

Another aspect to this is the push in the UK for alternative medicines - the UK government is pushing for this at the moment and they would be as well to note that not only are they promoting inneffective remedies, but toxic ones too.

Perhaps we could create a test case of someone suing the suppliers/distributers/UK gov for becoming contaminated with this stuff
 
Deetee said:
Masses of talk about neurodevelopmental delay and autism from thiomersal -
WHAT ABOUT ALL THE HERBALS THEN ?!
Click to expand...
Excellent point, Deetee.

And how come they're all so alarmed about tiny quantities of mercury, but they're happy to let people pump massive quantities of EDTA into their veins, for pity's sake?

That figure in the first post can't be right, surely, the patient would be dead. Lack of units doesn't help, but I'd say anything over 2 µmol/l would be consistent with clinical signs in a mammal (though most unexposed individuals I see are closer to 0.5 µmol/l), and I've seen horrendous poisoning cases with levels of around 10 µmol/l. (Don't scrape off Edwardian paint while your cat is in the room. Come to that, don't scrape off Edwardian paint while you're in the room.) 98 just seems impossible to me.

Rolfe.
 
Ahh, I re-listened to the story, the value given was 89 w/o units.

Like I said at the start, it's nice to hear someone in the media questioning this stuff. First story I have heard in awhile.
 
Aryuveda can be bad for you? Someone shove this in Kumar's face the next time he starts with his absolutes and least adversities.
 
IllegalArgument said:
Ahh, I re-listened to the story, the value given was 89 w/o units.

Like I said at the start, it's nice to hear someone in the media questioning this stuff. First story I have heard in awhile.
Click to expand...
Well, it's just that the "normal is under 2" bit sounded right for the SI µmol/l unit, as that's a commonly quoted upper reference limit in these units. And taken as a multiple of that, even 89 seems well past dead to me. I wonder if they forgot a decimal?

Rolfe.
 
Donks said:
Aryuveda can be bad for you? Someone shove this in Kumar's face the next time he starts with his absolutes and least adversities.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the only problem is that it isn't Ayurveda (hell, how do you spell that?) that Kumar is talking about. His obsession is a form of homoeopathy called tissue salt remedies, and there's very little of anything in these.

Rolfe.
 
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