Let's Be Cautious When Self-Medicating With Herbs

Although herbs are said to be harmless, some can be potentially dangerous, especially to people taking medication. Apart from possible dangers emanating from interactions with prescription medicine, there is also another danger of people who often take poisonous plants, mistakenly, thinking it is a herbal plant. Elsewhere in this edition, we report of a 58-year-old man in Palapye who recently died after consuming a plant he and his colleagues had mistaken for edible medicinal root.

The man is not the only human to have succumbed to self-administered herbs. The Internet is yet another vehicle, which promotes different herbs, as alternative medicine to traditional medicine. Nowadays most households have ‘remedies’ such as Activated Charcoal, Cod Liver Oil, Molasses, just to mention but a few, all thanks to the flow of information on the Internet on the benefits of such supplements.