Okay, don’t be alarmed by the headline. I just used a little marketing gimmick to get you to read something that may save your life. But yes, the headline is true… in certain situations. The article in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine references the potential for herbal remedy contamination contributing to morbidity, even mortality during medical tourism. When foreigners travel across national borders, searching for cures to their ill health, they practice medical tourism. Traveling to another nation and partaking of herbal remedies places one at risk for unknown exposures to adulterants. These additions to the basic herbals sometimes augment herbal effects, but as the article emphasizes, they can also have less desirable consequences.
Don’t get me wrong. I do believe that medical tourism can be beneficial in many cases. I have advised patient to travel for natural cancer therapies and we have many patients travel from across the country to receive functional medical care from our office in Tennessee. I just encourage patients here or abroad to consider the purity and quality of any therapy which enters their body. Buying a harmful herbal remedy may occur stateside nearly as easy as overseas. Spending a little extra on trusted companies and finding a trustworthy guide will produce more desirable results with less risk of becoming a negative statistic.
At Sanctuary, we consider not only the effectiveness and safety of a given therapy before recommending it to patients, but steer our patients towards quality brands which are the most likely to result in successful therapy as well as avoid harmful adulterants. By offering these quality brands at wholesale, our patients can receive the best products at the best prices. This stands as another way we aim to help patients live healthier more abundant lives.
Rachael Farrington, Ian Musgrave, Christine Nash, Roger W. Byard. Potential forensic issues in overseas travellers exposed to local herbal products. Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 2018; 60: 1 DOI: 10.1016/j.jflm.2018.08.003
University of Adelaide. “Deaths due to tainted herbal medicine under-recorded.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 25 October 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181025103344.htm>.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
