Every year, thousands of Americans are being sent to the emergency room due to bad reactions to dietary supplements they are taking. The new study emerged stating that there are more than 23,000 visits to emergency rooms annually due to complications from taking dietary supplements such as herbal or complementary nutritional products, vitamins, and minerals, and about 2,154 of the visits resulted in hospitalization, according to scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who coauthored the study.
Dr. Andrew Geller, lead author of the study and medical officer in CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion told CBS news, that there are people who don't realize that dietary supplements can cause adverse effects, but each year thousands of people are treated in emergency departments because of unfortunate effects related to these supplements.
The research published in The New England Journal of Medicine, used surveillance data collected from 63 emergency departments across the United States between 2004 and 2013. The most common patients, who usually visit the ER involved young adults between ages 20-34 who'd taken weight loss or energy products. The most common symptoms were chest pain, palpitations, and elevated heart rate. In other cases, unsupervised children ingested supplements. "More than 20 percent of emergency room visits were young children getting into supplements meant for somebody else," Geller said.
Two years ago, a 15 year old Chris Herrera lost 56 pounds while taking a green tea extract promoted as a fat burner. His mom, Lourdes Gonzalez approved of his son taking it. "His pants size went down greatly. He probably decided to take more on his own without letting me know," she told CBS News. Then one day they noticed his eyes turned yellow and medical tests showed his liver was failing. Doctors claimed it was because of the green tea extract.
"Some dietary supplements may have benefits, but there are also risks that go with it." Said Geller.