Herbalife Supplements and Liver Toxicity

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Herbalife supplements are considered to be a well-established cause of serious liver injury.

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Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Herbalife is a multi-billion-dollar, multi-level marketing supplement company that was forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle charges of deception and corrupt business practices. It also holds the distinction of being the dietary supplement most frequently implicated in injuring the livers of consumers.

Herbal does not mean innocuous. Cases of severe liver toxicity associated with Herbalife supplements started to be published in 2007 around the world. As the accompanying editorial summarized, there were 22 cases of liver damage following Herbalife intake in those first two reports, with two patients developing fulminant liver failure requiring liver transplantation. Only one survived. The editorial concluded that this clearly shifts the risk-benefit ratio against their use. Maybe it’s contamination with chemicals or heavy metals, maybe due to contamination with a liver toxic bacteria found in implicated products.

Additional reports continued to be published, followed by rebuttals written by Herbalife company representatives, questioning cause-and-effect. It’s no small task, given that people were taking up to seventeen different Herbalife products at one time.

So how strong is the evidence? A key factor to look for is re-challenge tests, or “positive re-exposure.” Did someone decide to take the product again after their initial liver injury resolved, and did the symptoms return on re-challenge? Based on stringent causality assessment methods like positive re-exposure tests, cause and effect is considered probable for at least a few Herbalife products. They are such a moving target though, with “hundreds of different products marketed globally in over 88 markets where in many cases the formula is unique to a country or region …”

Positive rechallenge cases continue to be published, confirming the toxic cause of liver damage from Herbalife products, perhaps by triggering an autoimmune reaction. This fatal case of a 24-year-old woman was attributed to Herbalife products, which were evidently found to contain heavy metals, traces of a psychotropic recreational agent, and pathogenic bacteria. This paper was subsequently taken down for “legal reasons” after legal threats by Herbalife.

LiverTox is a federal initiative between the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine to categorize the likelihood that substances can damage the liver, all the way up to the highest likelihood—Category A—meaning it is a well-known, well-described, and well-reported cause of liver damage. And that’s exactly how it characterized Herbalife supplements: A well-established cause of clinically apparent liver injury.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

Herbalife is a multi-billion-dollar, multi-level marketing supplement company that was forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle charges of deception and corrupt business practices. It also holds the distinction of being the dietary supplement most frequently implicated in injuring the livers of consumers.

Herbal does not mean innocuous. Cases of severe liver toxicity associated with Herbalife supplements started to be published in 2007 around the world. As the accompanying editorial summarized, there were 22 cases of liver damage following Herbalife intake in those first two reports, with two patients developing fulminant liver failure requiring liver transplantation. Only one survived. The editorial concluded that this clearly shifts the risk-benefit ratio against their use. Maybe it’s contamination with chemicals or heavy metals, maybe due to contamination with a liver toxic bacteria found in implicated products.

Additional reports continued to be published, followed by rebuttals written by Herbalife company representatives, questioning cause-and-effect. It’s no small task, given that people were taking up to seventeen different Herbalife products at one time.

So how strong is the evidence? A key factor to look for is re-challenge tests, or “positive re-exposure.” Did someone decide to take the product again after their initial liver injury resolved, and did the symptoms return on re-challenge? Based on stringent causality assessment methods like positive re-exposure tests, cause and effect is considered probable for at least a few Herbalife products. They are such a moving target though, with “hundreds of different products marketed globally in over 88 markets where in many cases the formula is unique to a country or region …”

Positive rechallenge cases continue to be published, confirming the toxic cause of liver damage from Herbalife products, perhaps by triggering an autoimmune reaction. This fatal case of a 24-year-old woman was attributed to Herbalife products, which were evidently found to contain heavy metals, traces of a psychotropic recreational agent, and pathogenic bacteria. This paper was subsequently taken down for “legal reasons” after legal threats by Herbalife.

LiverTox is a federal initiative between the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine to categorize the likelihood that substances can damage the liver, all the way up to the highest likelihood—Category A—meaning it is a well-known, well-described, and well-reported cause of liver damage. And that’s exactly how it characterized Herbalife supplements: A well-established cause of clinically apparent liver injury.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Doctor's Note

This video was scripted by our new Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Kristine Dennis. In the future, she may even start narrating some of her videos! 

For more on the sad state of supplement regulation, check out:

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