Liver failure from green tea extract

[firemonkey]

I see this all the time. In fact, this kind of thing is now the rule rather than the exception. Someone wants to stay healthy, or get more healthy, and generally take responsibility for their health, so they engage in a list of healthful lifestyles. Unfortunately, some or most of the stuff they are doing is either worthless or even counterproductive. It seems the more motivated they are to engage in healthy lifestyles, the more they fall victim to pseudoscience and nonsense.

Welcome to the “Wellness” industry, which is really an industry of lies, nonsense, pseudoscience, and exploitation. If you are lucky, you will come away from your encounter with the Orwellian-named wellness industry with the only harm being financial. If you are unlucky, your health will be harmed as well.

Jim McCants is now the latest poster child for being a victim of snake oil. At 50 he decided to get more healthy, so that he would avoid his father’s fate, who died at 59 of a heart attack. As part of his regimen, he started taking green tea extract. Why? Because it was marketed with all the usual claims built up by the snake oil industry – it’s “natural”, it has anti-oxidants, it helps detox – all utter nonsense.

But it’s a good story, and Jim bought it. Why not – the vast majority of the public buys it, because it has been endlessly marketed to them. Gurus like Dr. Oz support this pseudoscience with apparent authority. Doctors, scientists, and academics pay far too little attention to it, and so the claims largely go unchallenged. The regulatory bodies have also been rendered largely powerless against these cons, partly by design. The supplement industry, through their generously compensated representatives like Orin Hatch, have gutted the FDA’s ability to protect the public from snake oil.

So we can’t blame McCants for not being an independent expert, for naively thinking that regulations would protect him. He took the green tea extract, and as a result his liver failed. He almost died, but was saved by a fortuitous liver transplant.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/liver-failure-from-green-tea-extract/

[Sezbot241]

Yes, it is this wellness industry that makes my blood boil as a nurse. I remember when i was doing my nursing experience as a student in the Oncology department, i was prepping a man there for palliative chemotherapy. Palliative, because on initial consultation, he didn’t believe that the chemotherapy would work that well for him, and he instead sought after homeopathy (he had been promised by snake oil peddlers that this would work far more effectively against his cancer than chemotherapy). After all, it’s natural. Well, surprise surprise, it didn’t work. By the time he came back for proper treatment, the cancer had spread and was too advanced to treat. So he only got palliative chemotherapy to give him more time. I remember how he asked me if his chemotherapy would cure him…poor man was still in a state of denial. He just wanted to do the right thing for himself. In my opinion, anyone peddling snake oil that causes direct harm to others should face criminal charges. This man died because of the wellness industry…and they make billions every year exploiting and lying to people.