Serious Health Problems Caused by Health Foods: the Actual Situation Based on a Review of Domestic and International Databases

Abstract

Although health foods are widely used by the public, they can sometimes cause life-threatening health damage or leave serious after-effects. Health foods were originally intended to boost health in the absence of underlying illness, but in actual clinical settings, it is not uncommon for them to be taken by individuals with illnesses. As damage to health caused by such foods has sometimes been documented in the form of case reports, analysis of such cases in an organized database might be of help for understanding their characteristics. Analysis using the Shourei-kun search system as a domestic database on the website of local meetings of the Japanese Society of Internal Medicine and the Japan Endocrine Society has suggested that if health damage occurs in individuals with certain comorbidities, the outcome may be severe. Analysis using PubMed as an overseas database also revealed several cases with a fatal outcome. These findings suggest that individuals with illnesses need to be careful to avoid serious health damage resulting from the use of health foods.