Digitalis and a catlick

[ailbhe]

I'm tired of citing this every time someone says "And the best thing is, it's totally natural, so you know it's safe!" I see it a lot in pregnancy and breastfeeding communities, which I find particularly worrying.

So what else can I cite? What other noxious medicinal toxins are Totally Natural and well-known enough that most people will have heard of them?

*sigh*

In brighter news, today Linnea and I watched Charcoal (black cat) washing her face. It was visibly educational of Linnea. She made a few remarks about soap and showers and Charcoal washing her hair, and wiped the bolognese sauce off her own face with a muslin, but with catlike movements, and copying Charcoal in that she did the chin first, then the forehead, then the cheeks, etc.

Speaking of washing hair, I have no idea what to do with mine. Now that I'm swimming once or twice a week in a chlorinated pool, the not-washing it method doesn't work so well. It feels like it's full of glue again. I've tried washing it with whatever bottle of shampoo we have in the house and that doesn't help much either. I'm going to try washing up liquid soon, in case it's excess of grease that's the problem, but I have a weird feeling it's the scales on the hairs standing up that's the problem. Too much cider vinegar will make it sticky. Should I try plain white vinegar?

Comments

[uitlander]

What other noxious medicinal toxins are Totally Natural and well-known enough that most people will have heard of them?


I'd be tempted to extend the analogy and point out that plutonium, uranium, etc. are also 'totally natural'. But then I have a mother who insist none of her food has 'chemicals' in it, and I gave up long ago trying to explain why she should stop saying that.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Opium and cocaine are pretty natural. Chewing coca leaves is about as basic as analgesia gets. Hemlock, yew, clematis, ivy, laburnum... lots of lovely deadly things in the average park or garden.

[pauamma]

Nicotine. :-)

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Lead? Mercury? Uranium?

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Arsenic and mercury are natural. Belladonna. Um. Skullcap. Uh. Poison ivy? Peyote? Muscarine?

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Tobacco.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Cyanide.

[uitlander]

I'll raise you a 'hemlock'.

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Asps are pretty darn natural, too. :-)

[uitlander]

We're thinking along the same lines. I was tossing up between cobras and rattlesnakes.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's where I was going, as there is a button I've seen which reads, "Drink up, Socrates! It's all-natural!"

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Who on earth is recommending digitalis as safe for ANYTHING? It's been known forEVER that it's deadly.

[the-warwick.livejournal.com]

Digitalis is used for heart problems.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, yes, but in the tiniest quantities. Not the sort of thing I'd expect to see bandied about as "safe and natural."

Mercury used to be (is?) medicinal, and skullcap still is, for some purposes.

Although on second reading I wonder if Ailbhe didn't mean people were recommending digitalis, but was only using the plant as an example of something that was natural but not safe.

[webhill.livejournal.com]

Cedar is "all natural" and yet the fumes outgassed from chipped cedar can cause all kinds of liver disease in some small rodents. Curare is all natural. It's extracted from the plant strychnos toxifera. In fact there are a lot of alkaloids that are very dangerous that are just simple plant extracts, like digitoxin and digitalis as you know. Not to mention the mycotoxins, like aflatoxin, which kills people who eat moldy corn... but is ALL NATURAL!! OH, OH - and tetrodotoxin, from the pufferfish! PUFFERFISH FOR EVERYONE! FUGU IS ALL NATURAL AND THEREFORE TOTALLY SAFE!!! :)

Maybe the crunchy granola vegetarian types are familiar with phytohaemagluttinin poisoning? AKA red kidney bean disease. I had it once. NEVER AGAIN!!! bleah. I use canned beans now and cook the hell out of them anyway :)

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

I usually reach for curare in these sorts of situations as well.

[da-pol.livejournal.com]

So what else can I cite? What other noxious medicinal toxins are Totally Natural and well-known enough that most people will have heard of them?

Digitalis from Foxgloves

Ricin from Castor Beans

Vitamin D (Very easy to overdose on)

Peanuts are toxic to around 3% of the population

Curare is a plant extract.

Opium/Heroin/Codeine/Morphine are all poppy extracts

Most plants can produce something lethal.

Also, you've got things like St John's Wort and 5HTR which between them are 100% natural and will kill you in interesting and fun ways (Serotonin poisoning - St John's Wort is an SSRI, 5HTR is a Serotonin precursor)

[gmh.livejournal.com]

Belladonna?

Amanita phalloides, also known as the Death Cap toadstool?

Any animal-produced toxin like rattlesnake venom is 100% natural.

So are things like Botulinus toxin - produced by a bacteria (Clostridium Botulinum - the lethal dose is tiny (yet it's also the toxin used to paralyse muscles in the 'Botox' treatment).

As per the Wikipedia entry - "It is possibly the most acutely toxic substance known, with a lethal dose of about 200-300 pg/kg, meaning that somewhat over a hundred grams could kill every human on earth (for perspective, the rat poison Strychnine, often described as highly toxic, has an LD50 of 1 mg/kg, or 1 billion pg/kg). It is also remarkably easy to come by: Clostridium spores are found in soil practically all over the earth."

In fact, a lot of the really nasty toxins are 100% natural; because they generally attack human life processes by interfering with them; which does require a certain compatability with 'natural' processes.

[barakta]

Chemical free and natural are words which make me close whatever is claiming to be as such. I have no time for it, and people don't like it when I start dissecting the chemistry behind their so called chemical free and natural products.

[haggis.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest botulism but someone beat me to it.

Water. Drunk in sufficient quantities, it is fatal.

The green bits of potatoes.

Salt.

[kiya]

Willow bark = aspirin = causes Reyes syndrome in small children, which a pregnancy community should be aware of.

(I heard of a case once where someone wasn't giving her kid aspirin because she knew it caused Reyes syndrome. She gave him willowbark tea instead, because it was "natural".)

[genie22.livejournal.com]

That's why medics are reluctant to give Aspirin to under 12's.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

The "all-natural" argument pisses me off. I usually say "Arsenic" and leave it at that.

[(Anonymous)]

You can get a specific shampoo for removing chlorine from the hair from Boots. Alternatively if you would prefer to keep to the non washing method then I would suggest wearing a swim cap. OK not attractive but would do the job

[clare-s.livejournal.com]

sorry that was me

[heraldis.livejournal.com]

rue and pennyroyal are natural herbs, natural abortifactants!
In fact, so is raspeberry leaf, which is why it's not supposed to be taken until after 32 weeks...

[ailbhe]

That's why I changed doctors last pregnancy - my GP said I could drink any herbal teas I liked, and I listed a few, including raspberry leaf. My midwife wasn't impressed with him.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

Strychnine, opium, cannabis and cyanide are all natural, pure herbal products.

[flybabydizzy.livejournal.com]

rhubarb leaves are not good to eat. I believe some people tried it during the war, and were most ill

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Other natural things:
Tooth decay
Strokes
Dying in childbirth
Being eaten by tigers

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Life itself is natural. And it will kill us, every single one.

Oddly, I find this a comforting thought.

[ailbhe]

It is my experience that "oh but it's all natural" people don't really believe people died in childbirth. They also tend not to believe that infants died of starvation because their mothers couldn't feed them. Their proof is that we're all here now, so it must have been fine before modern medicine.

I like the "being eaten by tigers" thing. I like that a lot.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

I had an edifying conversation with a group of friends a while back that started with the question, "so, if you'd been born 100 years ago, how would you have died?"

The assumption being that hardly anyone in the group would have made it to adulthood (I wouldn't have).

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

Sharks are Completely Natural. Would they want one in their birthing pool?

[pauamma]

Better than letting that yucky, messy placenta decay, innit?

[submarine-bells.livejournal.com]

You could always offer to make them a rhubarb pie - using the leaves - and a cup of oleander tea. They're totally natural too. :-)

chlorine and shampoo

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

http://yarchive.net/chem/shampoo.html

[rowan-leigh.livejournal.com]

A couple of nutmegs can kill you.

[pauamma]

So can a couple gallons seawater.

[vatine]

Curare? Strychnine? Both have medical usage (though I can't for the life of me recall what strychnine is usde for; curare is occasionaly used as an anaesthetic agent).

[bookwitch.livejournal.com]

I wish more people realized that natural can kill you! Jeez. ARSENIC is "natural" for heaven's sake. You have to be careful with "natural" remedies just like you would any medicine.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Arsenic is the "natural but not safe" substance I usually use as an example. There's also hemlock, belladonna and the fact that cassava is deadly poisonous raw. Oh, so are red kidney beans.

Breastfeeding..

[genie22.livejournal.com]

....isn't always the best thing. You could transmit HIV, Herpes, Hepatitis - all manner of nasty things to a child.

Re: Breastfeeding..

[ailbhe]

Only if you *have* them. And there's very little hard evidence either way on breastfeeding a baby who already has HIV, or who was exposed to it in the womb. Where on earth did this come from, anyway?

Re: Breastfeeding..

[genie22.livejournal.com]

I did mean it for people who carried these infections, not everyone else ;)

I got the facts from 'Obstetrics and Gynaecology', 2nd edition by Laurence Impey - they weren't plucked from thin air.

I'm sure you can get more data from Cochrane/Medline/PubMed to support/refute the precise figures on infection transmission.

Re: Breastfeeding..

[ailbhe]

No, I mean where did you suddenly decide to say "breastfeeding isn't always a good idea"? Oh - are you citing viruses as natural toxins?

Re: Breastfeeding..

[genie22.livejournal.com]

Indeed :)