Diet & Fitness

There have been sporadic reports of people developing liver or kidney problems after taking chaparral, particularly in capsules.¹³ Almost all of these cases involved either the use of capsules or excessive amounts of tea. Some of these cases were people with established liver disease prior to using the herb. Tea and tincture of chaparral have an extremely strong taste considered disagreeable by most people, which restricts the amount they can tolerate before feeling nauseous. Capsules bypass this protective mechanism and should therefore be avoided. Since human studies have shown that large amounts of chaparral tea and injections of NDGA in people with cancer do not cause liver or kidney problems,¹⁴ it is likely the cases of toxicity represented individual reactions.¹⁵