A 57-year-old woman spent six days in the hospital for severe liver damage after taking daily megadoses of the popular herbal supplement, turmeric, which she had seen touted on social media, according to NBC News.
The woman, Katie Mohan, told the outlet that she had seen a doctor on Instagram suggesting it was useful against inflammation and joint pain. So, she began taking turmeric capsules at a dose of 2,250 mg per day. 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.
The Instagram Doctor didn’t bother to read the Wikipedia article on tumeric. I did yesterday because my mom has been taking it and heard about this.
It’s not an anti-inflammatory and is a mild allergen. Some folks have immune systems that don’t like it in other words. And liver failure is what happens to those folks when they take to many tumeric supplements.
This is why I want AI available to everyone. I want for people like this to ask AI if it’s safe and for AI to tell her no. There’s not enough doctors to go around, so we need something to fill the gap and provide common sense advice.
who the hell can we trust to make a babysitter life coach AI for vulnerable people
Honestly, the government. I was speaking to a GP and they were saying so much of their time is lost doing basic commonsense consultancy with patients. If we can free them up for more important things like chasing up care that patients need and providing support, it’s a win for everyone.
Is it probable? Likely not. But it’s definitely something we should aspire towards. Everyone deserves the best possible care and figuring out how to do that with dwindling resources is imperative.
By government, you mean RFK?
You think that a woman who took 10x the recommended dose of something would listen to an AI instead of a label designed explicitly for this supplement?
Or are you saying that we should encourage folks to get advice from an AI and respect it as they would a medical professional?
Also, what do you mean, “available to everyone?”?? Its baked into google???
Also… Gemini seems to recommend 2000 mg at the top end of the range… Idk man, that’s real close to what she was taking daily. Seems bad!
Gemini probably sucks for this but I don’t think AI is a great idea for this anyway.
I’m not talking about a general commercial AI, I’m talking about a vetted, specifically trained AI that would be able to escalate queries to tele-operators.
Again, we don’t have the doctors to go around, we need to figure how to fill the gap in medical care. Especially with aging populations. We can turn up our nose at AI, but it can save lives, even if it’s just freeing up doctors to work on more urgent tasks.
We still have pamphlets and texts vetted by professionals.
Ai is not needed when people can just consult health care providers websites. In fact I doubt people will trust AI over their “own research”.
The problem is quacks trying to sell snake oil.
Sir this is Lemmy. I’m gonna need you to start hate-antromorphizing AI and refuse to even engage with it.
You’re right, my bad! 😅
Can’t wait for the chubbyemu video to explain the science of what happens here
He’s probably in the emergency room now, writing down all that is happening. “Hyperturmeremia - hyper- for high, turmer for turmeric, and -emia for presence in blood.”
Stop following Dr Oz, he’s a quack!
she had seen a doctor on Instagram suggesting it
Yeah.
In my bathroom cabinet I have 6250mg tumeric gummies, which I take in the morning with my multivitamin for inflammation. I bought this well known brand (Jamieson) from a reputable source.
Am I not supposed to be able to trust that a basic suppliment from Shoppers is safe? This isn’t “magic sleep improvement concoction” or some underground fad wellness brand selling mushroom infusions… This is a large and old company that makes half the shit in my cabinet…
You should read the article in full, and keep an eye on the listed symptoms. Your dose does sound pretty high, but it also sounds like some people conditionally react to turmeric worse than others do.
I’ve read elsewhere that turmeric also reduces the absorption of some minerals. So I have it with my tea, as opposed to in my food.
NO, you cannot, because they are NOT regulated in any way. ‘Supplements’ are not FDA approved. They are not tested to ensure safety. They basically do whatever they want until someone else proves it’s unsafe.
As a random internet person who knows not much about anything, you should definitely take them.
Commenters making blanket statements about quackery, and the dangers of the unregulated supplement industry - okay, yes, those are issues. But in this context, c’mon, Pubmed is right there. Turmeric is effective for exactly the things this social media doctor claimed it is, and a little more at that. I take half a teaspoon of the powder in my morning tea, and along with other lifestyle interventions I made a handful of years ago, the fairly significant chronic joint pain I used to experience has been a thing of the past.
This is an overdose story, nothing more.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30970601/
“The current study aimed to provide a comprehensive bibliometric overview of the literature on curcumin, complementing the previous reviews and meta-analyses on its potential health benefits. (…) The literature mainly focused on curcumin’s effects against cancer, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Cancer types most frequently investigated were breast, colon, colorectal, pancreatic, and prostate cancers.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32075287/
“The use of curcumin reduces the subjective perception of the intensity of muscle pain; reduces muscle damage through the decrease of creatine kinase (CK); increases muscle performance; has an anti-inflammatory effect by modulating the pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-8; and may have a slight antioxidant effect. In summary, the administration of curcumin at a dose between 150-1500 mg/day before and during exercise, and up until 72 h’ post-exercise, improved performance by reducing EIMD and modulating the inflammation caused by physical activity. In addition, humans appear to be able to tolerate high doses of curcumin without significant side-effects.”
Not so sure about the above line though, lol.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36898635/
“Curcumin supplementation significantly reduces anthropometric indices, and bioavailability-enhanced formulas are preferred. Augmenting curcumin supplement with lifestyle modification should be an option for weight reduction.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35979355/
“Curcumin and Curcuma longa Extract had good clinical efficacy in the treatment of Psoriasis, UC and RA, so Curcumin and Curcuma longa Extract could be used in the treatment of the above diseases in the future. The results of Meta-analysis showed that Curcumin and Curcuma longa Extract did not show efficacy in the treatment of oral lichen planus, while Takayasu arteritis, SLE, MS, AS, BD and CD did not report sufficient clinical data for meta-analysis. Therefore, large-sample, multi-center clinical trials are still needed for revision or validation.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36804260/
“We observed that turmeric/curcumin supplementation significantly reduces levels of inflammatory markers (…) Also, turmeric/curcumin supplementation significantly improved anti-oxidant activity (…) It seems that turmeric/curcumin supplementation might be used as a viable intervention for improving inflammatory/oxidative status of individuals.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37325651/
“Curcumin is beneficial for rheumatoid arthritis treatment. Inflammation levels and clinical symptoms in patients with rheumatoid arthritis can be improved by curcumin supplementation. Large sample randomized controlled trials on the effects of curcumin on patients with rheumatoid arthritis are needed in the future.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34012421/
“The results showed that curcumin’s anti-diabetic activity might be due to its capacity to suppress oxidative stress and inflammatory process. Also, it significantly reduces fasting blood glucose, glycated hemoglobin, and body mass index. Nanocurcumin is also associated with a significant reduction in triglycerides, VLDL-c, total cholesterol, LDL-c, HDL-c, serum C reactive protein, and plasma malonaldehyde. Therefore, it can be considered in the therapeutic approach of patients with DM.”
This is what happens when people can’t get the healthcare that they need, and when Congress regulates supplements.
i dont think thats the only reason, some people believe in pseudoscience more readily than actual medicine. supplements have always been unregulated for decades.
People wouldn’t believe in pseudoscience so much if they could just go to the hospital without hesitation or worry about the costs.
In Germany this isn’t true. The pseudoscience is thriving and in part supplemented by public health care. Homeopathy was a part of the anti-science campaign of the nazis and is still practised.
To add another layer to that, even if you believe in pseudoscience you should also have the basic understanding that absolutely anything and everything can be harmful if you exceed the appropriate dose. I can’t understand why most people don’t understand this
But you are still using “logic” there, while she was using “trust”, in the perceived authority source of a combination of “doctor” + “government” (they wouldn’t allow selling of something that could be dangerous).
People can die of drinking too much water, I see your point but I die on my hill
Please don’t dismiss supplement users as pseudoscience fanatics.
You have no idea what it’s like to live with a chronic illness, with no cure, and no treatment to eliminate the pain and suffering.
People like you harbor misconceptions about modern medicine as an infallible cure-all that isn’t riddled with systemic neglect for women, PoC, the uninsured, and chronically ill people.
I take 8 supplements and 7 prescription medications a day. It fucking sucks to have to down 15 pills at night and another 7 in the morning. The only reason why I do is because those supplements are one of very few things that give a modicum of relief to the unending nightmare of pain.
And please don’t start with the ‘well ahktually studies shows that it doesn’t work and it’s just placebo.’ Please don’t decide for us how our own body feels. You cannot disprove our own symptoms to us, not especially when modern medicine has neglected chronic and autoimmune conditions for so long. Because these conditions primarily affect women, and women have not been treated as reliable witnesses to their own bodies, many chronic illnesses haven’t even been accepted as ‘real’ conditions until the last few decades.
So please stop with the psuedoscience accusations. Doctors and researchers have no fucks to give about chronically ill patients, and we are left to trial and error every over the counter supplement we can do we don’t kill ourselves from going insane with untreated pain and suffering.
Thank you, I wish more people would get this. Access to healthcare is privilege, and full of it’s own problems. Also, everyone crying pseudoscience in this thread is just flat out wrong in this case - turmeric is one of the most heavily studied supplements these days, and has been shown to be an effective anti-inflammatory and beneficial for autoimmune diseases, which is exactly what was claimed by the Instagram doctor referenced in the article.
I left a comment elsewhere in this post, full of studies on the subject.
Pseudoscience is correct, as they are replicating the look of something scientific without the substance.
Feel free to try whatever you think helps you. Don’t complain when people correctly point out that there is no evidence to suggest it will, or that it’s even safe for you.
Are you sure about that? You should really do some fact-checking before boldly claiming something is pseudoscience.
Damn you really felt called out, huh?
If you’re not disabled or chronically ill, please sit down and listen to people who are. Lack of ‘medical evidence’ does not constitute a lack of medical effectiveness. The same way that a lack of diagnosis due to medical neglect does not constitute a lack of symptoms.
THC and CBD has always been used by chronically ill people, who were dismissed as drug addicts for using ‘medically unsubstantiated’ herbs to treat their pain. Just because research on marijuana is finally being conducted in recent times and it is being validated as a form of treatment, it doesn’t mean that it only suddenly became effective. It always has been. The only thing that has changed is public perception of it.
It’s easy for able bodied people to point at chronically ill people and claim that everything they do is a hoax or just placebo when they know nothing about how chronic illness works. Listen to them, and treat them as reliable witnesses to their own body.
A medical paper doesn’t dictate the reality of how supplement affects each patient individually. Every person’s biochemistry is unique. It’s especially problematic when modern medicine is rife with systemic bias against certain groups of people. Ask doctors over the age of 60 and ask doctors who recently graduated if they think fibromyalgia is a real disease. It’s disgusting how older doctors don’t even think it’s a real condition and that patients are just ‘faking it’.
No, in this case it’s literally just an overdose of something that is otherwise very beneficial. Even if we had better access to healthcare, things like systemic inflammation have a lot to do with lifestyle, and that’s not something doctors can give people.
