August 28, 2022

"Death of Rep. Tom McClintock’s Wife Tied to White Mulberry Leaf."

The NYT reports.
The coroner found that Ms. McClintock’s death had been accidental, caused by dehydration from stomach inflammation after she consumed the herb.... A “partially intact” white mulberry leaf was found in Ms. McClintock’s stomach.... 
White mulberry leaf, often sold as an extract or powder in capsules, is regularly promoted by supplement companies as a dietary aid that can curb cravings and lower blood sugar....

In the United States, the [dietary supplement] industry is worth an estimated $35 billion, and there are about 50,000 to 80,000 of these products.... Companies do not need to notify the F.D.A. about new products or secure approval for their sale....

On the same page there's a link to this 2019 article, "Choose Foods, Not Supplements/Dietary supplements do not help you live longer, and in large quantities may be harmful."

42 comments:

cassandra lite said...

Sorry, but I selfishly hope this doesn't shorten his time in Congress. Tom is the only sane congressman from my formerly golden but now benighted state.

Tom T. said...

Just so we're clear, the implication is that she wasn't taking a supplement, but rather went out and procured actual leaves?

typingtalker said...

More background and detail here ...

Congressman’s Wife Died After Taking Herbal Remedy Marketed for Diabetes and Weight Loss

(Kaiser Health News)

Michael K said...

Apparently, she died of dehydration after vomiting and diarrhea from the supplement. That is how people die of cholera, a terrible death.

gilbar said...

sounds like 'suicide' to me. How did she piss off the Clintons?

Lurker21 said...

"The Case of the White Mulberry Leaf" sounds like a Sherlock Holmes story.

Would you find a "partially intact" leaf in a capsule?

Achilles said...

Lowering blood sugar is easy. Replace Sugar with Erythritol for the most part.

You can also get rid of the carbs in general.

The people pushing Vegetable diets are killing more people than the supplement industry. Soon the truth is going to come out about Statins. They have killed a lot of people and shortened life spans.

Of course the point of the Regime Propaganda Media is to increase the power of government regulators so this story will be boilerplate.

Ice Nine said...

There are trillions of chubby little silkworms that could have told the late Ms. McClintock that it wouldn't work.

gspencer said...

"Herbs? Hey, man, they're like so natural. Go on, just try them; you'll feel better."

[takes another toke]

madAsHell said...

I avoid mushrooms for the same reason.

Darkisland said...

But white mulberry leaf is "natural" and "organic"

I thought natural and organic is always good for you.

You mean it is not?

John LGBTQ+ Henry

James K said...

Sad story, but cause and effect is not established. We don't know what other health issues (obesity? diabetes?) that might have prompted her to use this supplement. There's stronger evidence that the Democrats stole the 2020 election than for her dying from mulberry leaves.

Darkisland said...

A vegetarian diet can be a healthy diet. Ask my granddaughter (full volleyball scholarship engineering school) or grandson (member of AAU/USVBA national champion volleyball team) both straight A's since 1st grade.

Son and daughter-in-law both very healthy too

It is not always a healthy diet and takes some work. But it can be.

John LGBTQ+ Henry

Michael K said...



Blogger cassandra lite said...

Sorry, but I selfishly hope this doesn't shorten his time in Congress. Tom is the only sane congressman from my formerly golden but now benighted state.


Yes, he should have been governor back when the state was still sane. Bill Simon Jr, with none of his father's wisdom, spent enough to win the GOP primary and gave us Gray Davis instead.

JPS said...

John Henry, 11:10:

"I thought natural and organic is always good for you.

Once I was asked what I did. I said I was an inorganic chemist. The nice woman looked at me and said, "So that's the bad kind, right?"

"Excuse me?"

"Well, organic is good for you, so inorganic –"

"Ah."

I keep telling people, botulinum toxin is all natural, 100% organic.

But I digress. I'm sorry for Mrs. McClintock, and for those who loved her.

Original Mike said...

"So that's the bad kind, right?"

That's pretty funny.

RMc said...

Considering McClintock is a Republican, I'm shocked the headline didn't read, "GOP pol slays wife, sez Trump made him do it"...

Biff said...

JPS quoted someone: "Well, organic is good for you, so inorganic –"

Related to that, a friend of mine made headlines ten years ago when she was one of the authors of an academic paper that reviewed a bunch of studies looking into the supposed health benefits of organic foods. When she began the review, she assumed she would find obvious benefits, but she and her colleagues basically found no important differences between organic and non-organic foods. I know her well enough to say that she was genuinely surprised and more than a little uncomfortable with the result.

A lay article about the study is at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2012/09/little-evidence-of-health-benefits-from-organic-foods-study-finds.html.

Rabel said...

Unless the gastroenteritis which dehydrated her preceded the ingestion of the mulberry leaf which she used to help with the abdominal discomfort she was feeling.

She had complained the day before of a stomach ache. I think it's a leap to blame the leaf.

Gastro has multiple possible causes.

Josephbleau said...

Since plants are “green” a white mulberry leaf must have been bleached. What murderous orange man ordered us to drink bleach? So Trump should obviously be indicted for murder in this case. So stay away from the toxic white leaves and only accept leaves of color.

Original Mike said...

"A vegetarian diet can be a healthy diet."

Not for those of us who must limit our carbohydrate intake.

Michael K said...

My wife sat down next to me a half hour ago and mentioned this story. We seem to have some sort of ESP. We always are interested in the same things even if we don't discuss them. When we first met 40 years ago, she asked me what I knew about the Yucca Moth. She was astonished that I knew all about it.

Darkisland said...

 JPS said...

I keep telling people, botulinum toxin is all natural, 100% organic.

The does makes the poison. Botulinum in small doses is a commonly used medicine "Botox"

Plain old water, in large enough quantities will poison and kill you.

John LGBTQ+ Henry

effinayright said...

Biff said...
JPS quoted someone: "Well, organic is good for you, so inorganic –"

Related to that, a friend of mine made headlines ten years ago when she was one of the authors of an academic paper that reviewed a bunch of studies looking into the supposed health benefits of organic foods. When she began the review, she assumed she would find obvious benefits, but she and her colleagues basically found no important differences between organic and non-organic foods. I know her well enough to say that she was genuinely surprised and more than a little uncomfortable with the result.

A lay article about the study is at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2012/09/little-evidence-of-health-benefits-from-organic-foods-study-finds.html.
*********************

Ten years or so ago, Consumer Reports came to the same conclusion.

But under its current woke regime, that information is no longer operative.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Cal GOPe missed an opportunity when Tom ran for Governor during the Gray Davis recall. Also real mulberries are delicious nutritious and cool until the birds get into them. Purple poop!

Achilles said...

Darkisland said...

A vegetarian diet can be a healthy diet. Ask my granddaughter (full volleyball scholarship engineering school) or grandson (member of AAU/USVBA national champion volleyball team) both straight A's since 1st grade.

Son and daughter-in-law both very healthy too

It is not always a healthy diet and takes some work. But it can be.


It can be kinda healthy.

But even if you build a vegetable based diet that contains all of the macros and micros that you need you have to eat 10 times as much food to get it.

Nutrient density on vegetables is very low. You have to eat very much like a cow or an elephant to get enough nutrients.

If you like to eat a lot of food vegetable is the way to go.

But my gut bloating completely disappeared when I gave up vegetables completely. We just don't have the GI to digest them well.

Howard said...

Yeah Achilles that's a great point because all of the latest research that points to the importance of gut health indicates that all of the positive Flora that lives inside of our body and counts for the majority of the DNA in each human being thrives on having a large variety of fruits and vegetables. Frankly I enjoy the fact that I am a highly evolved omnivore. Not a vegan vegetarian fruitarian ketonaholic or carnivore, rather all those things combined.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Michael K said...
Apparently, she died of dehydration after vomiting and diarrhea from the supplement. That is how people die of cholera, a terrible death.

WTF?

You go to the ER, they give you an IV, and dehydration stops being a problem.

How the hell did she die of that?

n.n said...

A leaf, perhaps a medical treatment through a viral vector that has been tied to excess adverse events and all-causes death, especially in young men, and sexual dysfunction in young women. Perhaps a vaccine that causes inflammation, even pathogenicity, a toxic protein, a messenger that is integrated. I know, it was laced with Fentanyl that forced a progressive condition, which was subsequently attributed to a nettle in proximity.

Ice Nine said...

>Greg The Class Traitor said...
WTF?
You go to the ER, they give you an IV, and dehydration stops being a problem.<

It stops being a problem if you get to the ER soon enough. It stops being a problem if you haven't gone into renal failure because of it. It stops being a problem if you don't suffer cerebral edema from the rehydration.

walter said...

Quite the broad brush conclusion. If it was a leaf, that's more akin to a food with no "dosage" range.
I can definitely feel the difference in my knees when I slack on the ant-inflammatory supplements I take. There is a push to hinder availability of OTC supps.
I can't possibly imagine who would be behind that..

Achilles said...

Ice Nine said...

>Greg The Class Traitor said...
WTF?
You go to the ER, they give you an IV, and dehydration stops being a problem.<

It stops being a problem if you get to the ER soon enough. It stops being a problem if you haven't gone into renal failure because of it. It stops being a problem if you don't suffer cerebral edema from the rehydration.

You are so far down the dehydration road at that point you will have digested that leaf.

It takes days without water to get there.

There is something very fishy about this story. They are making this out to be some sort of acute poisoning incident, but you don't die of dehydration acutely.

As with every health related article in the publications that Ann reads I am assuming that it is complete bullshit and the journalist writing the article is a liar.

Achilles said...

walter said...

I can't possibly imagine who would be behind that..

It is becoming obvious to everyone that our health care system run by the giant pharmaceutical and insurance companies who own the regulators and build the "standards of care" is not interested in our health.

wildswan said...

There was soft leaf thistle in my garden, planted by a previous tenant who used it in some herbal supplement way. The person who told me what it was said: "Did you ever wonder how they found out how any of these herbs work? How do you find out that soft leaf thistle which hurts your hands can be drunk and put into your stomach safely if you work on it? Or how do you find out that the inside bark of the willow is a pain killer, the basis for aspirin?" I wonder myself. I wouldn't try any of it. When they brought the tomato to Europe from South America where it was developed, it was considered poisonous and no one would eat it for long time. That would be me. And yet if they were all like me there would still be no pizza.

Freeman Hunt said...

"I think it's a leap to blame the leaf."

Agreed.

I also have a pet peeve about "supplements" being addressed as some monolithic thing. That's like saying something about "food" being good or bad in general.

phantommut said...

This is a friend-of-a-friend story from the late 80's so take it with a lot of salt, but apparently in Oregon a white water rafting party decided to make sassafras tea to have with their evening dinner, only the roots they found (sassafras tea is made from the roots) was from a hemlock bush. They were found dead in their sleeping bags.

Richard Aubrey said...

"free range" means we have no idea whatsoever what this critter's been eating.

BudBrown said...

Back in the day probably all the Einsteins Newtons and Archimedess spent their time
thinking about food.

Christopher B said...

Achilles said...
Ice Nine said...

>Greg The Class Traitor said...
WTF?
You go to the ER, they give you an IV, and dehydration stops being a problem.<

It stops being a problem if you get to the ER soon enough. It stops being a problem if you haven't gone into renal failure because of it. It stops being a problem if you don't suffer cerebral edema from the rehydration.

You are so far down the dehydration road at that point you will have digested that leaf.

It takes days without water to get there.


Days yes but not many. Google says three, give or take, but I would suppose with vomiting and diarrhea it could happen quickly. Emptying your bowels and stomach frequently would make it difficult to obtain fluids other than IV, and she might have not connected any of her symptoms to dehydration until too late.

I still agree with the general thrust of comments that the headline at least appears to be written to suggest another science-denier Republican deliberately avoided seeking medical help while injesting a quack cure, and that the real story is probably more complicated.

JHapp said...

She succumbed to the pressure to look thin and trim for all those public appearances.

Bill R said...

Columbo: "I was just wondering Congressman McClintock... The mulberry leaf. How did the mulberry leaf find it's way into a laxative capsule?"

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Christopher B said...
Days yes but not many. Google says three, give or take, but I would suppose with vomiting and diarrhea it could happen quickly. Emptying your bowels and stomach frequently would make it difficult to obtain fluids other than IV, and she might have not connected any of her symptoms to dehydration until too late.

I'd love a way to ask a wide pool of people "how many of you are unaware that vomiting and diarrhea cause dehydration, which can kill you"?

Because after 6+ hours of vomiting and diarrhea with no water ingested, I'm taking that person to the ER