Image copyright SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY 
 
 Doctors have issued a warning about the potential harms of undertaking a radical new year detox. 
 
 They highlight the case of a woman they treated last year who became critically ill after taking herbal remedies and drinking too much water. 
 
 The 47-year-old needed intensive care at Milton Keynes hospital. 
 
 She recovered with treatment, but her story is a reminder of the dangers of drastic detoxing, the medics say. 
 
 While it may be tempting to cleanse yourself of the excesses of Christmas, the concept is not necessarily healthy and is not backed by medical science, they report in the British Medical Journal Case Reports. 
 
 The woman they treated had taken a cocktail of herbs and alternative remedies including: 
 
 milk thistle 
 
 molkosan 
 
 I-theanine 
 
 glutamine 
 
 vitamin B compound 
 
 vervain 
 
 valerian root 
 
 Her partner said she had also been drinking lots of water, green tea and sage tea over the few days before she became ill. 
 
 Shortly before being admitted to hospital, the woman collapsed and had a seizure. 
 
 Medical tests revealed she had dangerously low levels of salt (sodium) in her body. 
 
 Researching the herbal remedies used by the patient, her doctors discovered the case of a man with a history of anxiety who had had seizures due to a low sodium level. 
 
 His symptoms developed after consuming a large amount of a herbal remedy that contained: 
 
 valerian root 
 
 lemon balm 
 
 passion flower 
 
 hops 
 
 chamomile 
 
 "The complementary medicine market is very popular in the UK and the concept of the new-year 'detox' with all-natural products is appealing to those less concerned with evidence-based medicine and more with complementary medicine," say the medics in their write-up. 
 
 "Excessive water intake as a way of 'purifying and cleansing' the body is also a popular regime with the belief that harmful waste products can thus be washed from the body." 
 
 However, they warn that "despite marketing suggesting otherwise, all-natural products are not without side-effects". 
 
 The British Dietetic Association says the whole idea of detoxing is nonsense. 
 
 "There are no pills or specific drinks, patches or lotions that can do a magic job," a representative said 
 
 "The body has numerous organs, such as the skin, gut, liver and kidney, that continually 'detoxify' the body from head to toe. 
 
 "Being well-hydrated is a sensible strategy, but drinking too much water can be as dangerous as not drinking enough. 
 
 "It sounds predictable, but for the vast majority of people, a sensible diet and regular physical activity really are the only ways to properly maintain and maximise your health." ||||| SAMANTHA Anderson had a busy weekend ahead, making jewellery in the workshop at her Brisbane home while her husband looked after their three kids. 
 
 She had taken her breakfast, peanut butter on toast, to eat in the studio, but for some strange reason, she couldn’t get a single bite down. 
 
 “I went to swallow and I couldn’t,” she told news.com.au. “It didn’t happen. I choked. 
 
 “I was confused, and ended up having to cough it out. I tried a few more times. That gulp just didn’t happen.” 
 
 Sam was shaken, but brushed off what had happened — until she couldn’t eat again at lunchtime, and dinner. By the end of the day, she was starving. 
 
 “I told myself, ‘don’t think about it, you’re only going to make it worse,’” said the 40-year-old. “I didn’t want to let myself get fearful for the next mouthful.” 
 
 But Sam’s frightening problem wasn’t going anywhere. 
 
 The doctor told her she was stressed and needed valium. When that didn’t work, he prescribed anti-depressants a few weeks later. None of it felt right to the businesswoman and mother of three, who loved her job and home life, and didn’t feel worried about them. 
 
 She bargained with the doctor “to buy herself time”, trying hypnosis and counselling and taking a step back from her work responsibilities. 
 
 One day, she arrived at the doctors with such low blood pressure that she was put straight in an ambulance and taken to hospital. 
 
 Specialists tested her for motor-neuron disease as well as mental health disorders. Finally, after four months, they diagnosed dysphagia — a rare condition in which patients lose the ability to swallow. 
 
 ‘I’D WAKE UP CHOKING ON MY OWN SALIVA’ 
 
 Sam’s life had become a living nightmare. She learnt to eat foods with a soft texture, like custard or yoghurt, and push them to the back of her throat while she waited for her swallowing mechanism to kick in. Half the time it would take too long, and she would cough up her food. 
 
 “I’d get three-quarters of the way through a tub of yoghurt and would have choked 20 times. My hand would be shaking so much I couldn’t keep going, I’d have to try again in a few hours.” 
 
 She stopped seeing friends, and wore loose clothing to hide the fact her weight had plummeted from 60 to 45 kilos, but her children could see something was very wrong. She often woke up in the night to find them standing over her tears, begging her not to die. 
 
 “It was very surreal, I felt like Alice in Wonderland, fallen down the rabbit-hole,” she said. “It felt like a dream. 
 
 “The whole day became a battle for survival. I thought, ‘I’m going to starve to death or choke to death, either way it’s coming for me.’ 
 
 “My life, my world had been devastated. I had nothing positive to say anymore. I was a hermit.” 
 
 Some friends told her she looked great, and that they wanted to be on her diet. Sam was horrified. “I was a 40-year-old mother weighing less than I did at 14.” 
 
 After nine months, doctors realised that a painful rash Sam had experienced in her left ear shortly before she lost the ability to swallow had been shingles. Left untreated, it had damaged four of her cranial nerves, triggering her dysphagia. 
 
 A dietitian put Sam on a liquid diet of 13 drinks a day, each high in calories, vitamins and minerals. “It would take me half an hour or 45 minutes to get one down. Sometimes it was like, as soon as you got the drink down, you’d look at the time and in half an hour you’ve got to do it again. I’d think ‘Why am I fighting through the day just to get up and do it again?’ 
 
 “I’d wake up at night choking on my own saliva.” 
 
 TOO DANGEROUS TO EAT ALONE 
 
 A year and a half after the problem began, it became clear Sam was suffering from malnutrition. Her hair was falling out, her skin was dry and her dry mouth had wreaked havoc on her teeth. She was anaemic and at as much risk of heart failure as a morbidly obese person. 
 
 Doctors inserted a feeding tube into her belly button for 18 months so she didn’t need to eat. They monitored her swallowing mechanism on film, and found it was as weak as that of a 90-year-old. 
 
 Having exhausted the help available in Australia, she and her husband looked online and found a specialist in the US, Professor Peter Belafsky, director of the University of California at Davis Voice and Swallowing Center. He has described the condition as “like being constantly waterboarded” as patients struggle to swallow their own saliva. 
 
 Four years on, Sam has learned to eat some foods that can be chewed with water until they become liquid, including mashed potato, cake and bread without grains. She can’t eat mincemeat or anything fibrous, and she cannot eat alone, because “it’s too dangerous.” 
 
 She works from her studio now, despite her previous love of interacting with customers, and her husband comes home every lunchtime to help her eat. Each meal is an exhausting ordeal of “non-stop chewing and swallowing and head positioning and throat clearing and keeping your airway clear and managing spillage and trying to keep a track of where the food in my mouth is,” Sam wrote in a heartfelt article on the Swallowing Disorder Foundation’s website. 
 
 The wife and mum says she’s realised who her real friends are. “People were using words like ‘phobia’ and ‘breakdown’,” she said. “I felt judged and betrayed by the people that should have known me better than that. 
 
 “There are definitely days when I don’t want to get out of bed ... But when I think about how far I have come, what I can manage to eat now compared to a year ago, two years ago, I am so happy.” 
 
 Sam has signed up for stem cell trials with Prof Balafsky next year. She hopes that may help her improve further, although she is unlikely to ever be able to swallow without thinking. 
 
 One thing is certain, she will never take for granted any simple thing her body can do. 
 
 emma.reynolds@news.com.au
– After a woman wound up in the hospital in the UK last year after ingesting a medley of herbs for a New Year's "detox," doctors are issuing a warning: There is such a thing as too much water, and people need to be careful with supplements, even if they are all-natural herbs. In this case, the 47-year-old woman said that aside from mood issues she was healthy when she upped her fluids and use of herbal remedies, including milk thistle, molkosan, l-theanine, glutamine, vitamin B compound, vervain, sage tea, green tea, and valerian root. Doctors in September reported in the British Medical Journal Case Reports that she suffered from acute severe "hyponatremia," which occurs when there is abnormally low sodium in one's blood. She had gone to the ER after suffering a seizure. Most cases of hyponatremia occur after someone consumes a ton of water—more than 2.5 gallons in a day—but this woman's fluid intake wasn't that high. Then, a possible clue: Doctors found a similar case of a man with the same condition who also hadn't hit that intake level but had ingested valerian root. The doctors note that two case studies are insufficient evidence, but suggest it's possible the root "altered this threshold [of fluid intake], allowing severe hyponatremia to develop at an earlier stage." The British Dietetic Association tells the BBC that the whole notion of detoxing is without merit, as many of our organs (even our skin) regularly detoxify the body. It may sound less sexy, but they add that for most people "a sensible diet and regular physical activity" is best. (Experts are also rolling their eyes at the souping trend.)