# Pharmacological question:  Side effects of nettle tea? Catnip marshmallow and fennel tea?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pharmacological-question-side-effects-of-nettle-tea-catnip-marshmallow-and-fennel-tea/845529>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 29, 2019, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pharmacological-question-side-effects-of-nettle-tea-catnip-marshmallow-and-fennel-tea/845529 "2019-12-29T00:33:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pharmacological-question-side-effects-of-nettle-tea-catnip-marshmallow-and-fennel-tea/845529/6 "2019-12-29T07:34:15Z")

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Some medicinal herbs can be dangerous. I discovered one bad combination myself, as I reported here 6 years ago:

> [@Danger, narrowly averted](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/danger-narrowly-averted/668753/7):
>
> I had an interesting close call about 2 weeks ago I almost started a thread about. My wife made me star gooseberry tea for a headache; a little later I took an isordil sublingual; later still I stood up. … Whoooo! Low blood pressure(??) I thought I was a goner. I lay down, wife asked if I wanted more star gooseberry tea _which I hadn’t connected to the sensation_. I said “Yes … wait, I’ll drink some water first.”
> 
> While drinking the water I recalled that the symptoms were similar to (but worse than) the time I had isordil a few days after a small dose of sildenafil. Using Google, I found some ambiguous comments about remedies in the same Phyllanthus genus as star gooseberry being dangerous for heart patients. (I thought about starting an IMHO thread: “I’ve learned something about Phyllanthus – is it well known?”)
> 
> Had I gone ahead and drunk some more star gooseberry tea, it might have been MUCH worse than a double dose of sedative.

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