Code green: Seeing the side effects of alternative supplements

Dietary supplements and alternative medicine are increasingly popular. And physicians are seeing an increasing number of patients with adverse reactions to the pills, potions and teas.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. March 5, 2001.

The patient showed up in the emergency department with a racing heart, blood pressure shooting through the roof, a throbbing headache and a persistent erection. Timothy Erickson, MD, had seen other cases of priapism among patients with sickle cell anemia, spinal cord injuries or cancer, but this case was unique.

"He was totally healthy," said Dr. Erickson, director of the emergency medicine residency program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. However, after some questioning, the patient revealed that he had taken yohimbine, an herbal derived from yohimbine tree bark and marketed as a possible natural solution for male impotence.

"He had taken way too much because he thought that if one must be good, six must be better. That was an introduction for me in the early '90s that there was this stuff out there," said Dr. Erickson.

Since then, Dr. Erickson has been collecting cases of adverse reactions caused by herbals and other alternative medicines. He gave a presentation on the subject at last year's scientific assembly of the American College of Emergency Physicians.

The dietary supplement industry is rapidly growing, and Dr. Erickson and other physicians are seeing ever-increasing numbers of patients with adverse reactions because the herbal they took conflicted with a prescription medication or another herbal, or because the supplement was not what the package said.

Also, like the patient who took too much yohimbine, patients may overdose because they believe that more must be better and that "natural" automatically equals safe. [...]