Echinacea - Possible side effects?

[Sportster]

. . .

 

[watersprite]

Yeah, same effect on me. I cannot take any of that over the counter medication without uncomfortable and scary heart palpitations.
Licorice - not the candy, but the root - also immediately sets my heart into a palpitation.
Actually, many herb tea combinations affect me much more significantly than a mug of coffee or tea.

Sportser if you have magnesium on hand, it is good at settling the heart rate down. We always keep on hand a bottle of cal-mag-vitamin D capsules.

 

[Suzanne]

Our immune system is the key to warding off any nasty diseases.

I laughing say that the "aussie flu" zipped passed me. I woke with a sore throat, which soon disappeared with honey and lemon ( homemade); a cough came along and I did lose my sense of smell and taste and had to have a hankie on my at all times; but that actually appeared after a week from the sore throat and I felt the beginnings of soreness and then, it all faded.

To know if the immune system works. You should get a bit ill and then it goes as quickly as it arrives. That keeps your immune system, in effect "rust free" lol

Eating onions and garlic and things as though, is great for the immune system. The IS fights off even the worst bad cells that develope into nasty illnesses.

 

[Judge]

I am now fully convinced it was the Airborne that caused the problems. I have not taken any at all today and I didn't experience any heart palpitations. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep, as I believe it was also behind my recent insomnia. The effect was like having drank a pot of coffee.

Reminds me of going through drug therapy looking for something for my social anxiety. A drug called "Tofranil" made me sick and agitated and with plenty of irregular heartbeats.

Yeah, you never know what may upset your own metabolism in such a way. Stay safe...

 

[the_tortoise]

I have never experienced any side effects from echinacea.

Astragalus is another herb that is used for boosting immune function. I've not had side effects from astragalus either but I think the main ones people experience are GI related (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea). A few precautionary things to note about it are that it can worsen fevers and should not be taken with lithium (can lead to lithium toxicity) or immunosuppressant medications.

 

[the_tortoise]

My system is screwy, as it's hit and miss on what I can and cannot take. When the doctor prescribes something I try to get them to to give me something I'm familiar with, but every so often they'll give something "new that no one has problems with." Take Cipro for instance. I developed all sorts of complications including a weird tingling in my toes. I Googled it and sure enough, I was experiencing some severe side-effects . . . UGH!!!

I didn't take any of the Airborne yesterday and had no palpitations at all. Also, I managed to get a good night's sleep (good for me), so there is no doubt whatsoever it was the Airborne. I looked up the other ingredients and everything points to the echinacea.

Glad you had a good sleep and no palpitations, were able to definitively identify echinacea as the problem.

 

[the_tortoise]

Thanks! I still find it surprising that it was that, as I always thought echinacea was suppose to be healthy and beneficial. I now think they should put some type of warning on some of that stuff regardless if it's herbal or not.

For some people it is healthy and beneficial (last time I got a nasty respiratory infection an echinacea-based tea was quite helpful to me) but I agree that there should be warning about side effects and medication interactions on herbal medicines.

I am always kind of horrified by how "natural/herbal" gets equated with "harmless" ..... belladonna, poison ivy are hemlock are all natural, and all poisonous. It amazes me that this association between "natural/herbal" and "harmless" came to be, given how synthetic medicines are such a new phenomena and how many synthetic medicines are actually based on traditional medicines, and given how many poisonous plants exist.

 

[the_tortoise]

I agree. Your mention of poison ivy brought back a memory. About nine years ago I had my first encounter with it. The place I was living at the time had some beautiful azaleas, but there was this odd plant growing in the middle of them. It looked unsightly, so thinking it was an ugly weed I hacked them down, scooped them up in my arms like a bundle, and threw them into the woods. The weeds were about three inches across.

The next day I noticed a weird rash on my arms. By the end of the day my arms, chest, and stomach were totally covered. Unbeknownst to me, the odd weed was poison ivy. To begin with, I never thought I could get poison ivy since I had been in it before but never had a problem. Next, I thought poison ivy grew like a vine on the ground like English ivy. Our Grounds Director told me about cutting poison ivy that was so big they had to use an axe.

It was horrible. I bought some Lanacane, Aveeno bath, and a few other things. I tried the Lanacane and almost went into anaphylactic shock. It was so bad that my lady-friend came close to taking me to the hospital. In order to work, I had to wrap my arms in gauze covered by an ace bandage and the sleeves off an old sweatshirt because I was oozing so bad. It took several weeks for it to go away and almost a year for the discoloration to clear up. It goes without saying, but I know quite well what poison ivy looks like and I eradicate it with strong chemicals when I see it in the yard. I believe in better living through chemistry.

Yikes!

I have never had an encounter with poison ivy, thankfully! (Never even seen it. I didn't know it could grow really big like that) I have had some extreme allergic reactions, though. Some of them a bit similar to what you experienced, in that they involved massive, painful swelling and horrible itchy rashes (and massive sterile pustules that left scars, in two cases), and took weeks to resolve. But never affecting such a large area of my body as your poison ivy reaction. I can very much appreciate why you'd want to eradicate the poison ivy with strong chemicals!

 

[the_tortoise]

Well, as my friend's wife said, "You don't do anything in moderation." What did me in was I hacked the stuff and then embraced it like I was carrying a big bundle of sticks. I didn't do it just once, but multiple times not realizing that I was coating everything on my arms and chest with urushiol. The stuff is so nasty that it can be breathed in if it's burned. Somewhere on a disk I have pictures of it. If I find it I'll post them. I sent them to my boss so he would know I wasn't pulling a fast one when I called off that day.

If you're interested, check out this site:

Identify the Plant

Thanks for the link