People often assume that dietary supplements are safe because they are natural. That doesn’t always hold true of herbs for weight loss, however.
Green Tea Extract in Weight Loss Products:
Green tea has a reputation for health benefits. While that may hold for people who drink green tea, there is concern that products containing green tea extract may cause liver damage.
Researchers recently reported in the journal Drug Safety that six women who had taken green tea extract in a product containing herbs for weight loss developed drug-induced liver injury. Three were hospitalized and one required a liver transplant.
The authors caution that some herbal weight loss products containing green tea extract can be harmful to the liver.
Drug Safety, online, May 17, 2016
Other Risks with Herbs for Weight Loss:
There have been other products with different herbs for weight loss that resulted in harm to the users. One notorious case was a product containing a plant called Aristolochia (Drug Safety, Jan., 2015). This product that was promoted for easy weight loss resulted in serious kidney damage.
Another plant that was once promoted for weight loss is Ephedrine. Extracts of this plant are still found (often in combination with caffeine and p-synephrine) in weight loss products in other countries (Food Additives & Contaminants, Part A, Chemistry, Analysis, Control, Exposure & Risk Assessment, online Nov. 18, 2015). The FDA banned ephedrine in such products in the US. However, people can still purchase them online, and they can trigger dangerous heart rhythm disturbances (Case Reports in Medicine, online March 14, 2013).
