5 Scariest Things I Saw Working at a Health Food Store

I worked in health food stores for two years. In many ways, it was good job. As someone who to this day adores healthy food and green living, my employee discount was by far the biggest perk. I was also good at what I did. I'm knowledgeable about alternative medicine (the good and the bad) and customers quickly learned that they could trust me to give them real, accurate, and safe information about the products we carried, even when that advice included, "I don't think you should buy this product," or, "You should talk to your doctor before taking this with your medication."

But in those two years, I saw some disturbing examples of people using "natural" remedies when they urgently needed professional medical attention. Our purpose at Back From Nature is to discuss and share the ways that blind adherence to "natural" living can be dangerous. Here are some examples of what I've seen firsthand.

The Man Who Burned His Nose Off

In Fall of 2007, I met an older man who my coworkers identified as a long-term regular. He was very fond of alternative medicine and had been using it to treat conditions himself for many years, and prided himself on not seeing or trusting doctors. When I met him, he had an open, cater-like wound on his nose, surrounded by patches of black.. He explained that he was using topical tinctures of bloodroot to treat what he believed was melanoma. He had read that bloodroot destroys cancer cells. Well, that's true, but what he either did not know or did not want to accept, was that it also destroys healthy tissue, as well. What he was doing wasn't much different than slowly scraping the cancer off himself and taking the rest of his nose, too.

Over time, the sore grew bigger, then vanished under a large bandage across his face. The last time I saw him, he told me that he had decided to see a doctor because his nose was "just about gone." He said that he probably should have seen a doctor a lot sooner. The expression on his wrinkled face, with the white bandage right across the center of it, was one of utter defeat and disappointment.

If Juice Could Kill

I live in North America and have the luxury of having never actually seen someone in-person who was in a state of absolute starvation-- except one. I was genuinely shocked when I saw her walk into the store. Her face was sunken; her eyes bulging and her cheekbones and collarbone jutting out like stones. She was a skeleton covered in flesh-toned shrinkwrap. I thought to myself that she was going to ask me to help her find alternative treatments for hyperthyroidism or cancer, but she didn't. She asked me for help finding blueberry juice.

As I took her to the other side of the store, trying not to stare impolitely, she casually told me about how she had been on a juice fast for six months and felt great and highly recommended it. "I've lost so much weight," she said. When I commented as politely as I could that it might be time to end her juice fast because they can sometimes spiral into eating disorders, she shook her head and said, "My doctor tried to convince me I have an eating disorder last time I went. So I stopped going-- you know how doctors are. They try to turn it into a disease when people start taking control of their own health."

The Government

"What do you have for dextox?" he asked, looking over his shoulder. He was in his late twenties, with wild eyes that looked sleep-deprived. I talked to him about some of our "cleansing" products-- the good ones, which were really just fiber and probiotics, and the bad ones, which contained dangerous laxatives and unstudied herbs. He explained that he needed a full-body cleanse to eliminate all the poison he had been forced to take in the previous week.

What poison?

"Well," he said, leaning close to give me the details, "I saw evidence that the government is killing injured veterans to avoid paying for their medical care. I've seen it with my own eyes. I tried to come forward, and of course no one listened to me, so the government paid a doctor to tell me I was schizophrenic. Then they gave me pill bottles that had poison in them and I would't take them so they put me in a mental hospital. Now I need to detox, because I had to take them for a few days so they would let me go."

Letting MRSA Breathe... All Over the Store

The customer was a younger guy with a boil on his hand the size of a golf ball. It was a throbbing, livid red, and parts of his hand were oozing pus. I could barely stomach the sight of it even before he said what it was.

"It's MRSA," he said, "And I need tea tree oil, white willow, garlic capsules, Himalayan sea salt, and echinacea."

I stifled a gag while I showed him the products he needed, cringing in horrror as he picked up products in the store with his diseased hand. As I accepted his money at the cash register, I told him to make sure he took whatever his doctor prescribed in addition to using the home remedies, and to think about keeping the wound covered.

He said (much to my relief) that he was taking his prescription drugs, too-- but that he wasn't going to cover the wound because it needed to breathe.

I have never in my life used as much Lysol as I did after he left.

A $219 Heart Attack

I never liked selling Hydroxycut Lean, although it was our best-selling weight loss product at one point, and although it was one of the few products I got a commission for selling. It was a combination of herbs, many of them un-researched or under-researched, and included hydroxycitric acid (which is associated with liver damage) and extremely high doses of caffeine, which can cause heart palpitations and anxiety.

I was alarmed when a middle-aged man came to the register with Hydroxycut Lean with synepherine and asked me if they were safe to take together. I told him, "Absolutely not," and explained that synepherine is a powerful stimulant nearly identical to ephedrine. He asked, "So if I have high blood pressure, I shouldn't take them together?"

"If you have high blood pressure, you shouldn't take them at all," I said, worrying that I was overstepping my bounds. I glanced at my boss, who was nodding in agreement. Still, the customer went through with the purchase. I was worried for him, but thought nothing of it until he came back to the store a few months later.

"You probably don't remember me," he said sheepishly, "But I was in the area and thought I'd come by. I was in here a while back getting some weight poss products. I had a heart attack a week later. You told me they weren't safe to take together and I took them anyway."

"Oh no!" I said, "I'm so glad that you're okay. Just so I know how to get the next person to listen to me, can you tell me why you went through with buying them when I told you I didn't think it was safe?"

"I guess I thought that because it was natural, that meant it was safe," he admitted with a regretful shrug.

That's really what almost everything that's dangerous about "natural" living boils down to: the assumption that what is natural is always preferable and safe. It's an assumption that can and does kill. There is nothing wrong with health food stores and there is nothing wrong with cautiously used complementary medicine and doctor-approved home remedies, but there is something very wrong with the culture that feeds health food stores and the attitudes of the people who use them in lieu of evidence-based medicine.

Be careful. Buy your vitamins and your organic food, but don't pay for them with your sanity, your health, or your life.