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completelycorrect-spnquotes · 2 years

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Intro Guide to Common Sense for Herbalism, or "Why You Shouldn't Listen to TikTok Videos Telling You How to Cause Abortions with Herbs"

This was not a topic I'd planned to write about yet, but with the recent developments in the US, there has apparently been an increase in interest in natural abortifacients, that is, things that induce miscarriage/abortion. It seems timely, therefore, to make a post about some important safety topics in herbalism and how they apply here. I am not going to go too much into depth about abortifacient herbs and their hazards; that will be for those herbs' individual entries. The hazards that I will discuss here should not be taken as a full list of these herbs' dangers, but rather as examples. I do not simply want to say why such-and-such herb is dangerous but rather to explain some extremely necessary skills about interpreting evidence that can and should be applied not only to abortion but to any use of any remedy for any purpose. The TL;DR is at the bottom, but I spent the time writing this all out for a reason, and that reason is so people don't kill themselves, so read it if you've got the time.

First, stop fucking reblogging that shit. Jfc, it's like herding cats. There is no safe and reliable herbal alternative to medical abortion. I'm sorry. There just isn't. There are certainly herbs that have this property, where the risk is great enough that their use is contraindicated for pregnant people, but it is not reliable, and the doses required for this to happen are usually large enough to cause poisonings. I don't care if that Tumblr or TikTok person seems earnest. They may very well be. But good intentions mean jack shit. Do not reblog these things "just in case." Do not promote them and claim that you have no responsibility. This is how misinformation spreads, by people who don't know what they're talking about being either too arrogant, too naïve, or too afraid of looking bad to risk not spreading it "in case it's true and helps someone." If you want to help people, donate to mutual aid funds and spread information about support networks and so on. I'm sorry that's not as sexy or psychologically empowering as believing you've found an ancient and accessible way to take matters into your own hands, but these are practical ways you may actually end up helping someone.

There are actually quite a lot of points here that can be expanded upon, so let's take them in order:

1. NATURAL DOES NOT MEAN SAFE. NATURAL DOES NOT MEAN SAFE. NATURAL DOES NOT MEAN SAFE. Do not think that just because something is not refined in a laboratory that it is free of adverse effects, including death. I don't really give a shit if I come across as a jerk here as long as it gets my point across: a lot of people in the natural medicine world are fucking idiots without an ounce of common sense in them. Don't be one of them. How do you think herbs work? Magic? It is not magic. It is chemicals. Soooo many of you are labouring under the extremely false and stupid impression that "chemicals" refers to "things synthesised in labs" and that anything made this way is "unnatural" and therefore "bad for you." This is all completely and inexcusably wrong wrong wrong WRONG shut the FUCK up. Everything is chemicals. Natural compounds are still chemicals.

I have heard people claim that natural remedies don't have side effects, can't be addictive, are gentle, are more effective, and are less dangerous. Every SINGLE one of these points is incorrect. Where do you think heroin, cocaine, strychnine, nicotine, caffeine, and ricin come from? Plants. The reality is that many of our pharmaceuticals are derived from compounds originally isolated from plants, and you know what? They're better for having been refined in a lab somewhere, where the impurities and other potentially-dangerous compounds can be removed, where dosages can be measured and standardised, where molecules can be altered to make them more effective at lower doses, pills can be designed to release the medication in a controlled fashion and with fewer side effects, and having undergone rigorous safety testing. Herbal remedies can be wonderful things, but they are not inherently better than commercial pharmaceuticals just because they fit some crunchy vibe better, ok. Yeah, a decoction of willow will help your headache through mechanisms similar to that of aspirin, but with the aspirin, you know what you're getting every time and at what strength, and the tablets are designed in a way that reduces the risk of adverse effects like GI bleeding. If something has an active compound, it can have adverse effects. This applies to commercial pharmaceuticals and herbal remedies equally.

2. It's not a conspiracy. Does the pharmaceutical industry do shady things? Yes, unfortunately. They are an industry out to make money, and sometimes, that leads to unethical moves. But you know what else is a HUGE industry? The natural foods and supplements industry. They are out to make money just as much as Pfizer and Genentech and Roche are. You know what the difference is? Pfizer and Genentech and Roche are subject to strict regulations to prove that their product works and has an acceptable risk-benefit ratio. Supplements and herbs and fad diet books and essential oils are not regulated as drugs and can therefore make a lot of ignorant and often-intentionally misleading claims, and the safeguards for regulation are either weak or nonexistent. If you think for a hot second that these fitness Instagram influencers and celebrity doctor sellouts and diet book authors are not just as skeezy, you are wrong, and I hope you are not one day dead wrong. Unfortunately, herbs fall into this category, and draw a lot of dishonest and gullible people.

Sometimes I see this framed as a revolutionary act of protest, in ways like "the Man doesn't want you to know this information, because they want to keep you pregnant and docile! Our ancestors knew the powers of these herbs!" ok stop. Your ancestors didn't know shit. Your ancestors didn't have secret mystical knowledge. Your ancestors didn't have empirical science and statistical analysis and advanced technology for testing drug purity and identifying compounds. People used a lot of herbs for a lot of things for a lot of human history. Sometimes, these herbs worked. Sometimes, they thought shit like "yeah, bloodroot has blood-red sap, so therefore it's good for blood disorders, because God put a signature of His Glorious Perfect World on everything" and then used a plant that not only did not cure them but also was very dangerous. In a time when pregnancy and childbirth was often itself very dangerous, and when people did not have access to effective contraception and were not considered to have rights over their own bodily autonomy, methods for preventing and ending unwanted pregnancies were very common. Most did not work. Some may have worked sometimes. You know why we don't prescribe rue and pennyroyal? Because they can kill you. But hey, I guess you won't have to deal with a pregnancy when you're fucking dead, so sure, way to stick it to the Man. Tragically, use of these "traditional" remedies, passed down "off the record" from female relatives to female relatives, continued long after medical abortion became possible and relatively safe, and for the same reasons there is an increased interest in them now -- not everyone has access to safe abortions, for many reasons, including criminalisation, abuse, and lack of information or resources -- and a lot of these people died. It is an understandably desperate situation for many people, but recommending these solutions is ethically the same as making a cutesy witch TikTok video telling people to just perform coat hanger abortions on themselves in the bathroom. At least that people generally recognise is dangerous. These restrictions are hideous violations of basic human rights to bodily autonomy, but do not get yourself killed over them.

But many of these natural medicine people are THRILLED to encourage the belief that it is all some big money-making, power-grabbing conspiracy to keep people "dependent on poison instead of the natural bounty of the Earth" blah blah blah they are either intentionally deceiving you or incredibly stupid. This leads into point #3.

3. Always assume people are stupid. Cynical, sure. But it's your life and health on the line. Are you willing to gamble your life that some random person who sells crystals on their Etsy shop has sufficient medical and biochemical knowledge to recommend anything? There is no standard accrediting body for herbalists, first of all, so even if someone claims to be a "certified" herbalist, that doesn't mean they are right. The claims I mentioned above, about herbs not having adverse effects? I saw those made by professional herbalists on social media, people who even teach courses on herbalism. They are wrong. And it does not take hours of research to know they are wrong, it just takes two seconds of using your goddamn brain to ask if this makes any fucking sense to know that it doesn't. People do not think. Do not risk your life by being too generous in your opinion of strangers' scientific expertise. Corroborate every claim, and not just on blogs -- if you spend any significant amount of time surfing herbalism blogs and have your eyes reasonably open, you will soon notice that a lot of the time, different bloggers will use identical or nearly-identical wording to describe herbs. This is because most of them are all copying and pasting from each other and no one ever cites their sources, so the same things get passed around from a single source, often historical/outdated and/or anecdotal, only it looks like 10 different people are all corroborating the claim. Look for actual studies when you can find them, and be extra sceptical when you can't find them. I will in the future make an entire post(s) about how to know if a scientific research article is good quality evidence, but that will take far too much time to do here, so for the time being, I will just say that you need to be careful about where you get information and where they got their information. Just because a lot of people say it doesn't mean it's true.

There are, of course, plenty of knowledgeable people and legitimate claims out there. There are people who do their due diligence. My goal with this blog is primarily to be an example of what it looks like to do due diligence. Even so, knowledgeable people can be fallible, and I can be fallible, too, and if you simply take my word for claims I make about an herb's use, then I have failed my goal. This is why I try to always find scientific studies to back up claims I make, even if they are fairly benign and well-known, and also to demonstrate how to assess the strength of the evidence a study presents (and these studies can still be wrong; we are constantly learning and re-evaluating scientific knowledge all the time). Some people are knowledgeable and many remedies are effective and fairly safe, but you must have a very high standard of evidence for anything you are putting into or onto your body, and your default assumption, for your own safety, must be that they are wrong until proven otherwise.

4. Being safe means being practical as well as sceptical. It also means taking personal responsibility for what you do, because you (or the person you are making the remedy for) are ultimately the one who will be hurt even if you were lied to or led to incorrect conclusions regardless of intention. Get out of the Tumblr ideology that is obsessed with what "should" be and get your head into the real world and what "is." Just because you mean well when you spread misinformation doesn't mean it can't cause harm, and just because someone seems to have meant well when they told you to use certain herbs doesn't mean you won't be the one to face the consequences if they're wrong. Medical herbalism does not operate on what is sexy, satisfying, idealistic, or morally pleasing. Your safety must always come first.

5. The dose is the poison. This is the cardinal rule of toxicology. Just because something is in a tea or apparently-weaker form does not mean you might not still be getting a toxic dose, because it depends on the specific herb, form of preparation, whether it is fresh or dried plant material, anything it is mixed with, including commercial prescription and non-prescription medications, co-existing health conditions, age/size/sex, frequency of use etc. You have to know the specific doses for every separate herb you use, and you should not ever trust any source that claims, for instance, that all herbal teas should be made in the ratio of 1tbsp to 1 cup, steeped 15 minutes, and drunk 3x/day. Relevantly, the dose to get the desired effect may be a toxic dose. This is especially true if the effect is one usually considered a bad effect, like causing miscarriage/abortion. An herb may have been noted, for instance, to cause seizures, and so this enters common herbal knowledge as "an herb that causes seizures," and this effect is listed everywhere, and it is soon forgotten that it causes seizures in an overdose, or in people with certain comorbid conditions. I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to induce a seizure in themselves, so most of the time, it is just a warning "to be on the safe side," and that is not a bad thing. But when you have an herb that is known for something like causing miscarriage, you have to keep in mind that it may only have this property at doses higher than you would if you were taking it as a tea for some other purpose, and that this information may refer to exceptional circumstances. This means that herbs like this will not be reliable if you are trying to do this on purpose, because either your dose will be too small, or your dose will be so large that the toxic effects of even generally-safe herbs become a problem. Remember that there are many, many chemical compounds in a plant, not just the one with the effect you want, and even the one with the effect you want may have additional downsides.

In other cases, the toxic dose may be fairly low, lower than you might expect. This is especially true for essential oils, which must be diluted before use, are pretty much exclusively for topical use (though this can still carry risks, because chemicals do get absorbed through your skin, and highly-toxic chemicals may be risky even at small topical doses), and are also very often adulterated. Like I said earlier, there's very little regulation in these industries. However, it can be true for fresh and dried herbs and supplements as well. I will use the herb pennyroyal as an example here. Pennyroyal, a member of the mint family, is one of the most well-known abortifacient herbs. But just because it is well-known and a relative of edible mints does not make it safe. In fact, pennyroyal is one of those herbs that is no longer recommended for use for any purpose at any dose. Now, some of these case reports are a bit older than I would normally use for controlled studies, but the information is still valid, and if you like, you can certainly look for other case reports, but one of the reasons is that people are just more aware of the risks than they were in the 70s and 80s. Here is a selection of various case reports involving multiple kinds of victims. See end for sources.

24yo woman dies after using pennyroyal oil for abortion, causing liver failure, kidney damage, haemolysis, gastritis, pleural effusions, brain swelling, and heart damage [1]

76yo woman dies of liver failure due to interactions of pennyroyal tea with medications including acetaminophen (paracetamol/Tylenol) [2]

Case reports of an 18yo who died after drinking pennyroyal oil to induce abortion and a 22yo who drank pennyroyal oil to induce abortion, who did not die and also did not abort [3]

Review of the compounds in pennyroyal oil that cause liver toxicity [4]

Tea containing pennyroyal causes liver failure and brain damage in 2 infants [5]

Dog dies after topical application of pennyroyal oil [6]

A related note here: you may often see herbs and essential oils claimed to have certain homeopathic uses and find that this information is at odds with other sources saying these same things are dangerous. This is an extremely common problem, and it is the result of intentional deception from snake-oil peddlers who want you to think that homeopathy and herbal/natural are synonyms. This is also why so many people think that natural remedies don't have any side effects, because they see homeopathic products marketed as "100% safe" and so on. That is because homeopathic products are nothing but expensive water and scams. The "principle" behind homeopathy is that diluting a substance to 1000x or more will bring out its "essence" (not the same as essential oils, which are a class of compound) or "vibrations" and make it more potent. If you look at the label of a homeopathic product, you will see numbers like 1000 or 10,000; this refers to how diluted it is (so, the higher the number, the more diluted it is). This is complete bullshit, and the only reason people continue to buy into it is because they don't know what it is. You can find homeopathic products in mainstream supermarkets and drugstores. It's a placebo effect, nothing more. You can waste your money on them if you like; they won't hurt you (unless they prevent you from getting actual help for a real problem), but only because there is no active ingredient. This is why they get away with saying they have no side effects. And this is a very, very good thing, because many homeopathic "treatments" use (or claim to use, anyway) extremely toxic things. Aconite, for instance -- also known as wolfsbane, monkshood, Queen of Poisons -- is "used" homeopathically to "treat" coughs. If these products actually contained any aconite whatsoever, I expect they would be quite effective, as it is difficult to cough when you are dead. Most people who simply google "aconite" will see right away that it is toxic. But other herbs you may look up and find descriptions of their homeopathic associations and assume that means you can drink them as a tea and get that effect. Not only is it a complete scam and always has been since its invention, it leads to some very dangerous misunderstandings. If you find contradictory information that you cannot reconcile, the best practice is to act as though the one that has the worse outcome is true. If one site says Plant X is safe and cures acne and another site says Plant X will cause intestinal bleeding, proceed as if the latter is the most correct information until you can satisfactorily disprove it.

I know this is a lot of information, and I have much more I could say about each of these points. I do not want to overwhelm with information, but I also feel that at minimum these points need to be brought up in any introduction on safe uses of herbs. The TL;DR is as follows:

There is no herbal option for safely and reliably inducing abortion

Do not take medical advice from random people on the internet (yes, even me! I do not know you or your medical history and even if I were a medical doctor it would be ethically and professionally irresponsible to make any recommendations to any specific person. Anyone who makes general recommendations to strangers is not a source you should be listening to)

Don't contribute to the spread of misinformation

USE COMMON SENSE

Sources:

Vallance, W. B. (1955). PENNYROYAL POISONING. The Lancet, 266(6895), 850–851. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(55)93484-x https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(55)93484-X

Fozard, J., & Hieger, M. (2019). Hepatic Failure From Pennyroyal Tea Interaction With Medications Metabolized by the Cytochrome P450 Enzymes. American Journal of Therapeutics, 1. doi:10.1097/mjt.0000000000001052 https://sci-hub.se/10.1097/MJT.0000000000001052

Sullivan, J. B. (1979). Pennyroyal Oil Poisoning and Hepatotoxicity. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 242(26), 2873. doi:10.1001/jama.1979.03300260043027 https://sci-hub.se/10.1001/jama.1979.03300260043027

Gordon, P., & Khojasteh, S. C. (2014). A decades-long investigation of acute metabolism-based hepatotoxicity by herbal constituents: a case study of pennyroyal oil. Drug Metabolism Reviews, 47(1), 12–20. doi:10.3109/03602532.2014.99003 https://sci-hub.se/10.3109/03602532.2014.990032

Bakerink JA, Gospe SM Jr, Dimand RJ, Eldridge MW. Multiple organ failure after ingestion of pennyroyal oil from herbal tea in two infants. Pediatrics. 1996 Nov;98(5):944-7. PMID: 8909490.

Sudekum M, Poppenga RH, Raju N, Braselton WE Jr. Pennyroyal oil toxicosis in a dog. J Am Vet Med Assoc. 1992 Mar 15;200(6):817-8. PMID: 1568929.

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