Are Chinese herbs dangerous?

are Chinese herbs dangerous you know every now and then I have a patient come in they just saw their primary care physician and they tell their doctor wow I've been doing these Chinese herbs for bloating for anxiety for my migraines and I'm so much better than I've ever felt and inevitably they get ched 90% of the time and it goes something like this are you crazy those herbs can cause liver failure they're not FDA approved they're not even regulated and then the patient comes back to me and we have this whole emotional intense conversation because now they're scared about what I might be giving them now in this video let's talk about the safety and the efficacy of herbs used in traditional Chinese medicine we'll talk about some of the arguments from this physician we'll talk about the reality of the safety and risk profile of these herbs and then I'll leave you with one final thought that I think should really put you at ease hey guys I'm Dr Alex hin board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master day so let's get in now the ultimate convers ation here is why would your physician be biased against something that repeatedly consistently safely gets people off their medication and fixes their health problems chronic and often very severe without even needing medication in the first place it's an interesting bias even in Los Angeles right California is very very open to East West medicine so you would think there would be more acceptance towards integrative medicine or if you want to call this alternative medicine you can call it that but nonetheless I have this conversation quite a lot with patients now the aspects of this bias that are very interesting is that you know you have one person who dies of an herb and it's front page news and yet you have a quarter of a million what are called iatrogenic deaths per year that is deaths from medical error from prescriptions from hospital acquired infections from just general mistakes you'd be shocked at the number of deaths from acetaminophen known as Tylenol every single year in the US yes from liver failure so if you're worried about herbs causing liver failure you should be it's an important concern and it's a really important scientific and safety discussion but if you want to know the brutal facts you should be scared of pharmaceuticals and seeing your doctor a h hundredfold more than taking an herb so let's talk about the idea of our herbs dangerous because this discussion goes back to all the way to our medical ancestors 5,000 10,000 20,000 years ago if you imagine back in the day these hunter gatherers before there were civilizations and probably a bunch of it was fatal trial and error we're trying to figure out what herbs and plants could we eat and what herbs and plants could we use as medicine now the rest in my opinion was trial and error the old school scientific method Johnny ate that mushroom and Johnny died now Jill ate that mushroom and she was laughing and seeing the gods so clearly these ancient people had tried many different kinds of mushrooms plants animal parts learned that some were toxic and will kill you and learn that some are healing and can heal you and in between you have basically food food props even going back to the BC era there are ancient books like we have a book called shendong Bing the Divine Farmers Materia Meda and this book even breaks down in the BC era what they call upper middle and lower level medicinals now these upper level medicinals one of the main functions of them putting them in that category was that they don't have toxicity what that means is that it is overall a non-toxic plant so the higher level medicinals the upper level medicinals as they call them you can take them regularly daily with mostly no ill effects and then they have middle and lower level medicinals you can imagine a lower level medicinal is a very strong plant with very very potentially toxic alkaloids but that are life-saving when used properly for short periods of time and comparison with conventional medicine would be chemotherapy you don't ever want to touch chemotherapy ever in your life unless you have cancer so in General within traditional Chinese medicine we do not consider herbs safe sounds paradoxical cuz I use them every day and I often take them every day but in general you do not want to give the body a strong intervention unless it is absolutely required just like with Pharmaceuticals the dose makes the poison and the skill of the doctor makes it a poison or a medicine as well now one of the fundamental questions always is well what are my symptoms coming from in terms of what organ system or physiological pathway and what actual herbs specifically do I use to treat those symptoms well I've actually put together a free root cause quiz to answer that question exactly so it's the first link below this video you can also just go to Dr alex.com quiz and we've taken a lot of time to put together this 10-page handout that will get spit out after you score your symptoms and then we actually link you to a dozen or so videos on the liver pathologies or the liver organ itself according to TCM so I highly recommend checking out that quiz again it's free first link right below this video now let's talk about some medical irony as I called it let's take a plant that you would think is very toxic based on this statistic so there is an herb called mahang or aedra the famed herb as part of Mormon tea now mahwang is a life-saving herb used for severe respiratory illnesses like asthma now unfortunately aedra has been banned in the US for about 25 years and the history behind why it's been banned is very very interesting going back to the 1990s suddenly all these dietary supplements containing in fedra were coming out and after the death of a Baltimore Orioles pitcher and apparently about 117 deaths total not every year supplements containing the ephedrin alkaloids then became banned now on the illinois.gov website they have a bit of the history behind edra being banned they said that dietary supplements containing ephedra have been linked to 117 deaths Nationwide and 18,000 reports of other medical problems including Strokes heart attack seizure psychosis and incidents of heat stroke according to the US FDA now what you might Adit list was that these are supplements containing aedra this is not people using the plant this is not traditional Chinese medicine this is not traditional herbal medicine this is a pharmaceutical company a weight loss company using supplements that have added this to try to increase the effect on the weight loss here's what's crazy though there's another research paper here talking about Acetaminophen Toxicity you might know acetaminophen as Tylenol and the very first line here says acetamin toxicity is the second most common cause of liver transplantation worldwide and the most common cause of liver transplantation in the US it is responsible for 56,000 ER visits 2600 hospitalizations and 500 deaths per year in the US and that more than 60 million Americans consume it on a weekly basis so 117 deaths total not from the plant not from traditional Chinese medicine not from using it properly but from a weight loss company or a weight loss supplement and a pharmaceutical company producing this and yet you have 500 deaths every single year from Tylenol and suddenly one of the lifesaving plants of traditional Chinese medicine is banned in the United States the most disturbing part something called pseudo edrin that you may know as PSE Sudafed is chemically very similar to the ephedrin alkaloids right the actual ephedra plant and it's perfectly legal for pharmaceutical companies to make hundreds of millions of dollars selling psea fed for their cold medicine off of the traditional cold medicine used for 5 or 10,000 years in ancient China how's that now one final interesting research paper here there's a piece of research in the British medical journal from some years ago that was reposted in the Washington Post and in this paper the researchers say their analysis showed that medical errors quote unquote in hospitals and other Healthcare facilities are the third leading cause of death in the United States claiming 251,000 lives quarter of a million more than respiratory disease accidents stroke and Alzheimer's I share all these stats not because I want to war on conventional medicine or against some of my own colleagues who are MDS because together really we are the Dream Team there's so much we can do together if this were integrated now it never will be all I can do is my work in my little garden part of the world but why I do what I do is because it is important for people to know that there are lifesaving formulas from traditional medicines for chronic illnesses for acute illnesses and for everything in between even with modern medicine integrated Cancer Care that are life-saving and don't require you to be on pills for the rest of your life can prevent surgeries and are absolutely life-saving so keep that as a grain of salt here right are herbs safe inevitably view them no as not safe see someone who knows what they're talking about but know the facts about the relative risks of pharmaceuticals and conventional medicine versus herbs and herbal medicines be smart don't buy buy herbs off of the internet buy it from someone you know buy it from a licensed practitioner people in my profession have to be board licensed in the States they're in you have to be licensed to give these herbal medicines so bias and Medicine really not surprising at all but I wanted to shoot this video because very often maybe once a month I have this discussion with a patient and I think actually doing a video like this with the research behind it will be very very valuable so I hope that helps you guys now again don't forget I work with a limited number of new patients every month to my clinic in Los Angeles or virtually via Tel medine you can go to the info box below this video has info on my clinic our number to call or you can email us or just go to Dr Alex hind.com clinic and if you're really interested in traditional herbal medicines and how they heal and what they can heal make sure you check out this related video right here because it's going to answer some questions