By Christian George
Health experts have warned that heavy consumption of alcoholic-herbal mixture may lead to liver and kidney challenges.
While many use these alcoholic-tainted drinks for medicinal purposes, health professionals have called for greater regulation and awareness about the dangers of consuming them.
According to a report by Daily Post, these herbal drinks are somewhat a combination of fermenting herbs, roots, and other natural ingredients together with alcohol and one of the many concerns about alcoholic herbal drinks is their potential to contain toxic ingredients.
These drinks are often sold in unregulated markets and are not subject to the same safety standards as commercial alcoholic beverages.
Many people resort to taking a sachet as early as they wake up in the morning and continue to be taking it intermittently all through the day and are being intoxicated with it.
However, a recently conducted study by researchers from the University of Ibadan, Oyo-State, titled “Nigerian Psychoactive Alcoholic Herbal Mixture Impacts, Behavioural Performance and Caused Brain Biochemical and Histopathological Alterations in Mice” found that alcohol herbal mixture caused neurobehavioral and biochemical perturbations in mice.
The results showed an enhanced reduction in locomotor activity and impaired motor coordination in mice following acute and sub-acute administrations of an alcoholic herbal mixture combined with ethanol.
It also revealed that heavy consumption of these drinks can lead to behavioural perturbations such as anxiety, poor working memory, and brain biochemical changes, including increased oxidative stress biomarkers.
Some herbal drinks contain high levels of methanol – a toxic alcohol that can cause blindness and death, interact with medications, or exacerbate pre-existing health conditions.
The Director of Savehealth Pharmacy, based in Port-Harcourt, Giginna Mathias explained that standardisation implies the quantity or the amount of substance one needs to take that would give one a specific result.
He, however, noted that alcoholic herbal drinks do not have dosage, hence it is difficult to standardise the quantity to be taken, adding that alcohol is subject to abuse which poses a threat to health.
“Then, when you go further to add alcohol to it and call it an ‘alcoholic herbal formulation’ as we have in the market now, it poses a risk because alcohol is a substance of abuse and a substance that can build up a tolerance.
“And with the perception that it has the ability to treat a kind of particular ailment because a lot of people who take it have the perception that if they drink herbal formulation, that if they are sick with malaria, typhoid or any other thing that a herbal part of it will take care of whatever sickness they have.
“So they tend to take it more than it is supposed, which exposes them more to internal organ damage and kidney and liver dysfunction.
He said that these concoctions have neither been regulated by NAFDAC nor Pharmaceutical Council so one has no idea exactly what quantity is needed at a particular time.
He added that there is no reason someone will wake up under trado-medicine and start formulating alcoholic drinks, beverages or alcoholic herbal beverages they are selling in the market without standardisation of the process.
In a related development, an expert in Plant Physiology and Biotechnology at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Mr Hyacinth Obayi, stated that herbal remedies have not been segmented in terms of dosage.
He explained that herbal alcoholic drinks pose a risk to the liver and kidneys because the remedies have not been segmented in terms of dosage.
He said, ”Herbal remedy, for now, has not been segmented in terms of dosage. These people formulate alcoholic herbal drinks locally, if you ask them the dosage, they will tell you that you can take as much quantity as you want because it is a natural product, which is not correct.
”Every drug has its lethal dose at which the effect will now become negative instead of positive.
“So, the implication is that the herbalist, to say, may not have determined the lethal dosage at which it will become a problem to the human kidney, liver or other essential organs.”
