Extreme cases show need for education on harms of folk medicines

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　　"My mother was hospitalized because she'd overdosed on pseudo-ginseng even though she'd already been in hospital a couple of times before because of food poisoning due to ingredients contained in folk remedies she took," Wang Lele, a Xi'an-based doctoral student told the Global Times.

　　Wang's mother, 60, suffers from high blood pressure, a common chronic disease in aged people. Influenced by the widespread idea that pharmaceutical medications have side effects, she persists in her belief that natural substances are more reliable.

　　"She'd take all this weird stuff she'd heard about to help her health, but even though she suffered because of it, it didn't stop her trying more folk remedies," said Wang.

　　There is a big belief in natural health remedies in China, particularly among seniors. But most of the remedies they try have no health benefits whatsoever, and some are harmful or even toxic.

　　In a recent extreme example, a woman surnamed Zeng, 51, was rushed to the emergency room by her husband on February 22 after she injected a concoction of 20 kinds of fruit directly into her bloodstream, according to Chinese news site thepaper.cn.

　　Zeng, a self-confessed health nut from Guiyang county in Chenzhou, Hunan Province, would try any folk remedy, as long as it claimed to be good for her health. She said that as eating fruit was good for you, she thought that infusing it directly into her body must be even better.

　　Zeng was in critical condition and at severe risk of organ failure and sepsis for five days. Most likely, she would have died if her husband had not intervened in the nick of time.