A Canadian woman who spent weeks in and out of the emergency room was found to be suffering from lead poisoning caused by toxic herbal remedies.
The 39-year-old Ontario native took supplements based on Ayurvedic medicine, an ancient field of holistic healing focused on restoring balance to the body and mind.
However, health authorities have found that some drugs contain lead, arsenic and mercury, which damage the nervous system, increase the risk of several types of cancer and put expectant mothers and their babies at risk.
The unnamed woman underwent a spate of diagnostic tests to determine the cause of her six-week bout of severe abdominal pain, constipation, nausea and vomiting.
Health Canada, the country’s health agency, identified the clinic the patient attended as Kerela Ayurvedic & Natural Herbal Consultation Clinic in Ontario
Dietary supplements that the patient was taking were intended to treat her infertility, but actually caused her blood lead levels to rise 11 times above the maximum safe level
Doctors eventually determined that her blood lead level was 55 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dl), about 11 times higher than the level considered the safest level.
She had been taking the supplements for more than a year to treat her infertility, a fact she later revealed to her doctors, delaying an accurate diagnosis.
Lead is sometimes used in traditional Ayurvedic infertility supplements as it is associated with a traditional concept relating to the use of substances that promote overall health and vitality.
The details of the Ontario patient’s case did not make it explicit whether lead and other metals were added accidentally during some part of the manufacturing process or whether they were added intentionally, although the Ayurvedic concepts supporting its use suggest that it was intentional encore acted.
Depending on the level of lead exposure, the toxic heavy metal can cause a variety of health effects, such as behavioral changes, anemia, seizures and infertility, which are often misdiagnosed as other diseases.
In addition to infertility, the patient had a history of thyroid dysfunction that resulted in her thyroid not releasing enough hormones important for maintaining metabolism, energy production, and overall growth.
When she visited the hospital a third time, she was admitted so doctors could check if the patient was suffering from gastrointestinal bleeding and anemia – a condition that causes too few red blood cells.
Diagnostic tests revealed her blood cells were smaller and paler than usual, and dotted with dark blue and purple granules, suggesting a condition known as basophilic stippling.
Mineral and hormone levels in her body were normal, as were tests of her urine, blood, intestines and ovaries, although her bones stored large amounts of iron.
Her pain improved after blood transfusions, which likely led to doctors diagnosing her as having anemia.
Two weeks after leaving the hospital, her abdominal pain improved, but she was still tired, had trouble breathing, had a headache and ringing in her ears, which forced doctors to reconsider her original diagnosis.
They tested her urine again, this time for signs of porphyrias, a group of rare genetic disorders that affect the body’s ability to produce haem, an important part of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood.
They found that she had elevated levels of two substances that are precursors to porphyria, suggesting her body’s ability to produce heme was inadequate.
It was only at a follow-up appointment a full month after her hospitalization that the patient admitted that she had been taking Ayurvedic supplements to conceive for about a year and only stopped taking them after the third time she had left the hospital.
After stopping, she noticed an improvement in her stomach pain, but then resumed taking the medication, only to find that the symptoms returned.
The physicians behind the case study said, “When the diagnosis of lead toxicity was made, the physicians contacted Public Health Ontario, a provincial public health agency that provides scientific and technical support to the Ontario government and health care system.”
Public Health Ontario tested 17 different types of pills and two patient-supplied samples of incense. Of these, 11 of the pills contained lead levels far higher than a test could detect. One pill contained 129,000 μg/g of lead, about 26,000 times the maximum recommended by the Canadian health authorities and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, four other pills contained levels ranging from 7,900 to 33,000 μg/g of mercury, a toxic substance that can have harmful effects on the nervous system and organs.
Although it is not clear whether the dietary supplements the woman was taking were illegal, Canadian health and safety regulations require an extensive pre-market approvals process that tests for harmful substances such as lead, arsenic and mercury, suggesting that these dietary supplements may be under stayed on the radar
A 5,000-year-old healing tradition based in India, Ayurveda aims to balance the body and mind using herbal remedies and holistic, often spiritually-based methods
Doctors said: “A joint investigation by the Ayurveda clinic confirmed the doctor’s non-compliance with prescriptions for natural remedies and led to the confiscation of hundreds of pills.”
“Health Canada independently tested 15 types of pills seized from the doctor’s clinic and found high levels of arsenic, mercury or lead in 14 of the samples.” Three pills also contained prescription drugs including diclofenac, dexamethasone, progesterone , norgestrel and cetirizine.
The agency urged physicians treating patients with similar symptoms and similar blood test results to consider lead poisoning as a possible cause, although the fact that lead poisoning is relatively uncommon means that patients often need to see different healthcare professionals until one occurs Diagnosis can be made.
The dietary supplements that the woman was taking were private label, which means they were only available at the clinic. However, many of these products have been found to contain higher than acceptable levels of lead, mercury and arsenic, often because the heavy metals are believed to have some healing properties in Ayurvedic tradition.
In fact, an estimated 20 percent of Ayurvedic pills sold online by manufacturers in the US and India contained all three of these heavy metals.
Although it is not clear whether the pills sold at the Kerela Ayurvedic & Natural Herbal Consultation Clinic in Ontario were illegal, Canadian health authorities typically have a rigorous pre-market approval process that first requires that dietary supplements carry a specific designation of homeopathic Reserve funds, and then do a thorough evaluation of the product’s safety, quality, and effectiveness.
The process for bringing dietary supplements to market is much less stringent in the United States, where the Food and Drug Administration does not conduct premarket testing. This means that the agency won’t take action until, for example, a problematic product is removed from the shelves if a problem such as lead poisoning arises.
Lean regulatory policies in the US have helped the dietary supplement industry to grow in value to a staggering $37.2 billion, although some estimates put the value closer to $55 billion.
And many respected authorities have disputed its usefulness. dr Tim Spector, a British epidemiologist and genetics expert at King’s College London, believes that dietary supplements “totally overwhelm” those who buy them, when we should be passing them off as real food.
He said last year, “These supplements will be distributed by the same companies…they will be the new giant food companies of the future.”
“Their budgets are huge. It’s not these little artisans who make a superb organic food supplement in the back of a Somerset shed.
“They are all made in huge factories in China and you have no control.” [over] what it is – and 99 percent of it has been proven not to work at all.”