NBC NEWS – Katie Mohan started taking daily turmeric pills in March after seeing a doctor on Instagram tout its benefits for inflammation and joint pain relief.
A few weeks later, the 57-year-old started having stomach pain, nausea and fatigue.
“I just did not feel well generally,” she said. “I also noticed that despite drinking a lot of water every day, that my urine was darker.”
Mohan didn’t connect her symptoms to the herbal pills. Not until she saw an NBC News report in May on the growing rates of liver damage from herbal supplements.
“A light bulb went off in my head and I said, Oh, my gosh! I wonder if this is what’s wrong with me.”
She recognized her symptoms in the patient interviewed, Robert Grafton, who was also taking the same high dose of turmeric pills, 2,250 mg.
There are no clear guidelines in the United States about how much turmeric is safe to consume and turmeric pills are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
According to an evaluation by the World Health Organization, an acceptable daily dose is 0-3 mg per kilogram of body weight.
For a woman weighing 150 pounds, that would be about 200 mg of turmeric daily.
Mohan went to urgent care within a week of the NBC News report, where her blood work showed liver enzyme levels about 60 times the normal limit.
She was admitted to a local New Jersey hospital and then transferred to NYU Langone in New York City …
