It goes beyond even that, one concern over here is about the interactions of "herbal remedies" and medically prescribed and tested actual drugs. We've no way of knowing how all the chemicals you are taking will alter, interfere, or even cause a harmful reaction.
Recently started an auto-immune suppression treatment and as part of that a practitioner nurse comes out to you (because you self-inject) to take you through absolutely everything and one of the areas she spent time going over was stressing about not taking any kind of supplements unless it was cleared by your consultant or pharmacist. Me being interested asked is that really a major problem and she said yes - especially with the likes of so-called "traditional Chinese medicine", she had some nasty tales about elderly folk being given stuff by their family - obviously not to harm them but that is what it did.
Yes, that part of it causes me a lot of concern.
I've personally known a couple of people that were damn near killed by the alternative stuff that they were taking, and in both cases, were actively lying to their Doctor about it.
i.e. The Doctor was saying: "Are you taking anything else?" and they were saying: "No, no supplements, no herbals, no nothing. "
In the first case, this stopped because the husband was in the room, and he said: "Well that's a lie." and immediately went home and retrieved a box of stuff that was being taken daily. Something like 30 different supplements and remedies, 7 of which contained 'valerian' and in her case, she was allergic to 'valerian'.
In the second case, the sufferer was so ill, she was hospitalised and therefore separated from all the poison that she was taking. She tried to get her partner to sneak the supplements in and that is how the treating physician found out. (I don't have the details but there was an interaction between a supplement and a blood pressure medication IIRC.)
These two cases make me wonder if there was a psychological addiction to popping pills, or worse, if those products may contain addictive substances.
In my father's case, he was also taking high doses of many supplements, some of which are known cancer risks, but was also taking a lot of paracetamol. He died of cancer of everything, but it is most likely that the cancer started in his liver. (Long term of overuse of paracetamol is my guessed cause, well above recommendations)
Similar to the first two above, he also actively lied to his GP and caused his wife a lot of frustration doing so.
Hence my concern with supplements, self medication and fake medical industries.
