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Posts about medicinal herbs hardly ever include the side effects or any negative reactions. It's always, "drink chamomile tea to relax and sleep" and not, "15-20% of people are allergic to ragweeds, which includes chamomile, so it might give you a scratchy throat."

-Drinking mint tea regularly can cause acid reflux and exacerbate other GI issues.

-St. John's Wort calms you, and is good for depression, but it can also dangerously lower your heart rate if you take beta blockers.

-Sure, fennel is great for "digestive issues," but don't schedule a date that night, you will be very gassy.

-All members of the Poplar family, which includes Willow, contain the same chemical as modern aspirin within their bark. Don't give it to your kid if they have the flu or chicken pox, it can cause a deadly reaction.

-Rosehip helps with painful menstruation, and is a great source of vitamin C. So great, in fact, that you can overdose and give yourself kidney stones if you take too much.

-Dear white people, taking turmeric every day will literally turn you orange.

Anand Philip

@Cat_LeFey i dont know how white people take turmeric, but we use it everyday, in literally every food we eat every meal, it doesnt turn us yellow. putting it on your face will tho. fairly certain it is not secreted in sweat. it is barely abosorbed anyway.

@anandphilipc @Cat_LeFey aside from difference in the quantities consumed culinarily vs (possibly overconsumed) in hopes of health benefits, some of us are so frighteningly pallid that daily amounts like yours might be visible after a while!

@anandphilipc @Cat_LeFey Oh it's definitely secreted in sweat. I don't normally eat turmeric every day, and after attending a 3-day wedding my armpits smelled distinctly of turmeric for almost a week. Our brains tend to filter out things we smell 24/7.

@saxbrightwell altough, the l curcuminoid that cause the color and the aromatics that cause the smell are entirely different things. the former are largely fat soluble, making it difficult to be secreted in sweat. the latter are usually water soluble. someone should make turmeric perfume. also there are no studies or case reports of this pigmentation that i can find. smell i get.

@anandphilipc @Cat_LeFey People who take it as a supplement tend to take more than anybody would cook with, often in dry format in capsules, and white people's skin just shows it more easily due to deficiency of other pigmentation. If you image search carotenemia you might get a little bit of a laugh (it's a harmless condition.)

I accidentally did it to myself by serial-munching carrots as a kid, but cooking with turmeric regularly as an adult have not reproduced that effect.

@cwicseolfor @Cat_LeFey im familiar with carotenimia, i did not know people take turmeric as a tablet. so i guess that answers my question. i am imagining a orange child :)

@cwicseolfor @anandphilipc @Cat_LeFey Going to start referring to “people with pigmentation deficiency” when I mean white people (like myself) now 😜

@Frantasaur @anandphilipc @Cat_LeFey It wasn't even a common trait in Europe until about three thousand years ago, so it really is quite a very recent mutation, a historical aberration for our species.

It *feels* like a deficiency for me: I've felt the sunburn set in anywhere I've gone. I've never been much north of the 42nd parallel and live near the 30th, though; maybe further toward the poles in a cloudy climate it's better? (At least in China they didn't laugh when I hid under an umbrella.)

@cwicseolfor @anandphilipc @Cat_LeFey Yeh, I read that it helps maximize production of vitamin D at higher latitudes (which explains why it spread through the gene pool), but the flip side of course is that sun everywhere else is unbearable without significant precautions.