Overview
- Lois Kinder, 44, had been taking two ashwagandha gummies daily for about a year after discovering the product on TikTok and promoting it to followers.
- In July she developed nausea, vomiting and jaundice-like symptoms, was found unconscious at home and was transferred to the specialist liver unit in Birmingham for urgent care.
- Clinicians placed her on the super-urgent transplant list and a donor liver was accepted before surgery, when a blood clot in the lung caused three cardiac arrests and prolonged oxygen deprivation to her brain.
- She woke from an induced coma in August but remains in critical care with substantial, likely long-term brain injury, very limited speech and movement, and her family is fundraising for specialist care and home adaptations.
- Treating doctors plan to publish the case as a medical report and say it underscores rare but serious liver harms linked to ashwagandha, gaps in premarket safety data for supplements, and the risks of rapid social-media driven uptake.