Herbal, dietary supplements cause one-fifth of liver injuries | Hacker News Reader

Herbal, dietary supplements cause one-fifth of liver injuries

medicalxpress.com

25 pointswalterbell17 comments

Can anyone with access to the article see how much the 20% reduces to when you ignore anabolic steroids? Those aren't really herbal supplements, as most people think of them.

What AAS are even considered herbal supplements? Even testosterone is schedule III.

About one-third of the injuries were due to anabolic steroids.

Hard to take an article seriously when they conflate "anabolic steroids" with "supplements" in such a casual fashion. Like, really, it's incredibly poor word choice.

How do I know? Because I've taken plenty of legal-at-the-time testosterone precursors, aka prohormones. If that's what the article is trying to talk about, they did a terrible job. Anabolic steroids are illegal in the US for recreational purposes, err, without a prescription.

Without more details this "information" is worthless. Are people taking too much on purpose, out of ignorance; are they taking the recommended dosage and getting liver damage; what percentage of damage is caused by what supplements, etc.

this comment sums up what is wrong with the unregulated supplement industry... "recommended dosage" of what? You can sweep the dust off your floor put it in a pill and sell it as an "immunity booster".

Here is what my comment is based on. (I should have included this with my comment... I deserved the downvotes for not)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-it-comes-to-s...

How did this get past all the safety testing? Oh wait.. thats right.. It says "supplements" which means its not regulated so that testing is required. Enjoy the liver injuries!

Maybe we should promote homeopathy more, because at the very least that's only distilled water that doesn't do anything. Would be pretty funny to see a government supply of free homeopathic medicines. I imagine the placebo effect would have a very real impact in reducing medical expenses nation-wide.

> Maybe we should promote homeopathy more, because at the very least that's only distilled water that doesn't do anything.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/fda-homeopathic-teeth...

> FDA: Homeopathic teething gels may have killed 10 babies, sickened 400

> Makers have been warned before about varying amounts of deadly nightshade in gels.

This was supposed to be homeopathic (the label says so), but contained dangerous levels of ingredient, even after the manufacturers were warned.

To get the placebo effect to work you just need sugar pills .So tic tacs would work in this case.

Yeah but then you have issues with diabetics or children/infants who could choke on the tic tac (which has a lot more sugar than the label leads you to believe).

While as a joke I like your comment... I think what you suggest is a terrible idea. How about we just use whatever the best proven medicine is for whatever the issue is and leave ritual voodoo witch doctor stuff in history where it belongs.

I cynically thought that homeopathy was just distilled water, but then there is this: http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/uc...

> Maybe we should promote homeopathy more, because at the very least that's only distilled water that doesn't do anything.

If there was actual quality control, that would be the case. Actual "homoeopathic" products, OTOH, are, in fact, often not what the purported process would produce, and have been known to be dangerous.

Maybe we should not promote nonsense at all?

I dated a woman from France for three months and was surprised to find that the French government healthcare system reimbursed for homeopathic prescriptions. See [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25921648

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