List of herbs with known adverse effects

Safety[edit]

The Thornapple Datura stramonium has been used for asthma, because it contains the alkaloid atropine, but it is also a powerful and potentially fatal hallucinogen.^[105]

Further information: List of herbs with known adverse effects

Plant medicines can cause adverse effects and even death, whether by side-effects of their active substances, by adulteration or contamination, by overdose, or by inappropriate prescription. Many such effects are known, while others remain to be explored scientifically. There is no reason to presume that because a product comes from nature it must be safe: the existence of powerful natural poisons like atropine and nicotine shows this to be untrue. Further, the high standards applied to conventional medicines do not always apply to plant medicines, and dose can vary widely depending on the growth conditions of plants: older plants may be much more toxic than young ones, for instance.^{[106][107][108][109][110][111]}

Pharmacologically active plant extracts can interact with conventional drugs, both because they may provide an increased dose of similar compounds, and because some phytochemicals interfere with the body's systems that metabolise drugs in the liver including the cytochrome P450 system, making the drugs last longer in the body and have a more powerful cumulative effect.^[112] Plant medicines can be dangerous during pregnancy.^[113] Since plants may contain many different substances, plant extracts may have complex effects on the human body.^[5]

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