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I've taken all of these herbs for many years with absolutely no side effects except good ones. For example, I have a small patch of comphrey in one of my three gardens from which we regularly take leaves and use for such things as tea (very healing to ulcers or inner inflamation of any kind), as poltices for infections et al. Comphrey coats internal sores with a healing film.
So, you use comfrey and all those other items because you believe they have active chemical compounds which produce a theraputic effect, right?
That means you take them as
drugs. They are not food.
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I know the FDA took comphrey off the market, but so far as I have found there have been no deaths or serious problems with comphrey.
source
The use of comfrey in dietary supplements is a serious concern to FDA. These plants contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids, substances which are firmly established to be hepatotoxins in animals. Reports in the scientific literature clearly associate oral exposure of comfrey and pyrrolizidine alkaloids with the occurrence of veno-occlusive disease (VOD) in animals. Moreover, outbreaks of hepatic VOD have been reported in other countries over the years and the toxicity of these substances in humans is generally accepted. The use of products containing comfrey has also been implicated in serious adverse incidents over the years in the United States and elsewhere. However, while information is generally lacking to establish a cause-effect relationship between comfrey ingestion and observed adverse effects humans, the adverse effects that have been seen are entirely consistent with the known effects of comfrey ingestion that have been described in the scientific literature. The pyrrolizidine alkaloids that are present in comfrey, in addition to being potent hepatotoxins, have also been shown to be toxic to other tissues as well. There is also evidence that implicates these substances as carcinogens. Taken together, the clear evidence of an association between oral exposure to pyrrolizidine alkaloids and serious adverse health effects and the lack of any valid scientific data that would enable the agency to determine whether there is an exposure, if any, that would present no harm to consumers, indicates that this substance should not be used as an ingredient in dietary supplements.
I did a google search on the term "pyrrolizidine alkaloids" and the second link was the following report from a man who is the director of a natural medicine center in Oregon.
source
An excerpt of the report:
Case 1 (11): A 49-year-old woman in the U.S. was admitted to a hospital with progressive swelling of the abdomen and extremities over the preceding four months. Veno-occlusive disease was eventually diagnosed, allegedly
caused by chronic exposure to PAs consumed in a comfrey powder, estimated at a minimum of 85 mg of PAs per day over the previous six-month period. She was a heavy consumer of herbs, vitamins and natural food supplements, and she drank three cups of chamomile tea per week and for the six months before admission had consumed one quart a day of a herbal tea known as Mu-16. In addition, for the 4 months before admission, she had taken two capsules of "comfey-pepsin pills" with each meal. The authors conclude "To our knowledge, this is the first report of veno-occlusive disease in any human after the use of a preparation claiming to be made from comfrey."
Case 2 (12): A 13-year-old boy in England was admitted to a hospital with symptoms that were found to be caused by veno-occlusive disease. He had been suffering from Crohn's disease for three years and had been treated with prednisolone and sulphasalazine, which removed symptoms.
At his parents' request, the drugs were discontinued and he was treated with acupuncture and comfrey root prescribed by a naturopath. Exact quantities and frequency are unknown. When admitted to the hospital he was taking prednisolone and sulphasalazine. The authors concluded that "the only possible causal factor in this patient was comfrey."
Case 3 (13): A 47-year-old white non-alcoholic woman in the U.S. began to feel unwell in 1978 with vague abdominal pain, fatigue and allergies.
A homeopathic doctor recommended comfrey tea. She consumed as many as ten cups per day in addition to taking comfrey pills by the handful, which continued for more than one year. Four years later, serum aminotransferase levels were twice the upper limit of the normal range, and four years after that she had further signs of liver disease.
Case 4 (14): A 23-year-old man in New Zealand presented with veno-occlusive disease and severe portal hypertension and subsequently
died from liver failure. He had eaten comfrey leaves for some time before his illness. The man presented with a three-month history of initial influenza-like symptoms followed by continued malaise and night sweats. Three weeks before admission he noticed peripheral edema and abdominal distension. For four years prior to this illness he had been living in a commune and had eaten a predominantly vegetarian diet. He had a striking binge-type eating pattern whereby he would eat large quantities of a particular food for days and weeks on end. In the one to two weeks before the onset of symptoms he ate four to five steamed young comfrey leaves as a vegetable every day. The authors suggest that the patient's protein deficient diet could have played a contributory role; they attributed comfrey as a possible cause due to the temporal sequence of events. In a separate review of potential risk to consuming comfrey published in the Australian Medical Journal (15), the author declined to consider this case in his report because "there is some controversy surrounding this case."
I guess you haven't looked very hard at the problems with comfrey, buz.
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For flu, fever, pain or whatever, we use herbal food along with other beneficial foods to (1)prevent these ailments in the first place and (2) as remedies for ailments. For example, green salads are nothing but a combination of herbals.
No, salad greens are nutritive foods. They contain mainly vitamins, minerals, fiber, water and calories. Some contain other substances known to have preventative effects.
Herbal drugs, by contrast, are not ingested for their nutritive values, only for the chemicals they contain that are intended to be theraputic.
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This eve on our marinated Italian vegie salad at the supper table was herbals like radish, cilantro (leafy) cucumber, cabbage, summer squash, onion, pepper, carrot et al. We sprinkle alfalfa sprouts sprouted in the kitchen on salads often as well as parsley. These are all herbals, not drugs.
They are all foods, not drugs.
Comfrey, for example, is not a food. It is a drug.
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Prescription drugs are mandated prescribed for the sole reason that they are not safe to use as are the herbals available in grocery stores and health store.
Why do you keep insisting that herbals are safe, buz? They have not been tested in any sort of controlled manner, so you have no idea if they are safe for long (or short) term use, to combine with any other chemicals, or if they even work at all.
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They are powerful concentrated chemicals and compounds often derived from herbal plants or a chemical/plant combination et al.
Another way to describe them is
carefully formulated to be pure, extensively tested to discover their benefits and side effects, and regulated by law to be consistent within and between brands.
Tell me buz, what makes you believe that herbal drugs have no or fewer side effects, interactions with food or with other drugs, problems with long-term use compared to synthetic drugs, or that purity and dosages and potentcy among and between brands are consistent?
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All I can say is that from my own experience and from numerous testimonials from others who've went the alternative route, it's my friends, relatives and acquantances who are on the prescriptions who are the sick, the infirmed and the overall unhealthy folks compared to the herbal and alternative health folks who are the healthy ones.
Oh, and confirmation bias isn't affecting you.
No, of course not.
You highly biased, miniscule, sample of anecdotal evidence means absolutely nothing, buz.
I have real, carefully conducted scientific experiments to back up my side of the argument, buz, and all you have is the say so of some of your friends and relatives.
Why don't you come right out and admit that you believe what you do about herbal drugs on faith, religiously, and that you don't care about evidence that contradicts your religious faith?
That's why you won't even attempt to answer my very specific, yet entirely valid and fundamental questions.
What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that herbal drugs have no or fewer side effects than prescription drugs?
What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that herbal drugs do not have interactions with foods or with other drugs?
What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that herbal drugs do do not have problems with long-term use compared to synthetic drugs?
What evidence leads you to conclude that anybody knows the appropriate dosage of any herbal drug?
What verifiable evidence leads you to conclude that purity and dosages and potentcy among and between brands of herbal drugsare consistent?
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."- Richard Feynman
"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders
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