- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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.
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.