Star Anise Safety: Japanese Star Anise Adulteration

The instruction, before the explanation: do not give star anise tea to a baby. Not for colic, not for wind, not for a cough, not diluted, not a spoonful. There is no benefit that offsets the risk, the risk is documented in the paediatric literature, and the babies it has hurt were given the tea by loving parents following a remedy their own families had used.

The reason is a second tree. Chinese star anise (Illicium verum) is the culinary and medicinal spice — the eight-pointed star in phở and five-spice powder. Japanese star anise (Illicium anisatum, shikimi in Japan) is a temple and funerary plant that has never been food anywhere. It contains anisatin, a potent non-competitive antagonist at the GABA-A receptor, and it causes vomiting, tremor and generalised seizures. The dried fruits of the two species look broadly alike. Adulteration of commercial star anise with I. anisatum is not a hypothetical — it has been repeatedly documented, has triggered a national consumer advisory in the United States and tightened import controls in Europe, and has put both adults and infants in hospital.

This page is the rigorous version: the toxicology, the specific outbreaks and case series with journals and years, the regulatory history, why visual identification fails on exactly the products where it matters most, the laboratory methods that do work, the neuroactive compounds present in the genuine spice, and a practical protocol for buying and using star anise safely.

Table of Contents

1. Two Trees, One Shape
2. Anisatin: the Toxicology
3. The 2001 Dutch Seizure Outbreak
4. The Infant Case Series
5. The Regulatory Response: FDA, Europe and Import Control
6. Why “Star Anise Tea for a Baby's Colic” Is the Specific Danger
7. Visual Identification, and Where It Fails
8. The Laboratory Methods That Actually Work
9. Veranisatins: the Genuine Spice Is Not Inert
10. Estragole and Long-Term Use
11. Other Cautions and Interactions
12. A Practical Buying and Use Protocol
13. If Someone Has Been Poisoned
14. Key Research Papers
15. Connections

Two Trees, One Shape

Both species belong to the genus Illicium, family Schisandraceae — an ancient, early-diverging lineage of flowering plants. They are genuine relatives, which is precisely why their fruits are similar, and it is a useful corrective to the assumption that closely related plants are similarly safe.

Illicium verum Hook.f. — Chinese star anise. Cultivated almost entirely in southern China (Guangxi above all, with Yunnan, Guangdong and Fujian) and northern Vietnam (Lạng Sơn and neighbouring provinces). Harvested green and unripe, sun-dried to a hard rust-brown star. Food and medicine for centuries. Chinese bā jiǎo (八角, “eight horns”), Vietnamese đại hồi, Hindi chakra phool, Malay bunga lawang.

Illicium anisatum L. — Japanese star anise, shikimi (樒). Native to Japan, Korea and parts of southern China. In Japan it is a ritual plant: grown at temples and cemeteries, its branches placed on graves, its wood and bark burned as incense. It has never been culinary anywhere, and Japanese sources have described it as poisonous for a very long time — this is not a lately-discovered hazard but a piece of knowledge that failed to travel with the plant material.

Why adulteration happens. Straightforward commercial mechanics rather than malice, mostly. I. anisatum grows in some of the same regions and is cheaper or freely available where I. verum must be bought. Bulk dried spice is repacked many times between plantation and shelf. Broken carpels and dust from the bottom of sacks are the material most likely to become cheap ground spice or bagged tea — and that is exactly the material in which no buyer downstream can see what they have. Deliberate substitution to cut costs also occurs. The result is that contamination can enter a supply chain at any of a dozen points and be invisible at every subsequent one.

Anisatin: the Toxicology

The compound. Anisatin is a highly oxygenated sesquiterpene dilactone and the principal toxin of Illicium anisatum. Related compounds — neoanisatin and pseudoanisatin among them — occur alongside it.

The mechanism. Kudo, Oka and Yamada reported in Neuroscience Letters in 1981 that anisatin is a potent non-competitive antagonist at the GABA-A receptor. Understanding why that is so serious takes one paragraph of neuroscience.

GABA is the brain's principal inhibitory neurotransmitter. When GABA binds the GABA-A receptor, a chloride channel opens, chloride flows into the neuron, the cell becomes harder to fire, and excitation is damped. This is the brain's brake pedal, and it is under continuous use — not an emergency system but the mechanism that keeps ordinary cortical activity from running away with itself. Benzodiazepines and many anaesthetics work by enhancing it.

Anisatin blocks the channel non-competitively — it does not compete with GABA for the binding site but jams the pore, so raising GABA levels does not overcome it. Functionally this is the same class of action as picrotoxin, the classic convulsant used to model seizures in the laboratory. Remove inhibition across a network of neurons and excitation spreads unopposed. That is a seizure.

The clinical picture. Onset is typically within a few hours of ingestion. Reported features include:

• Nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain — usually the earliest signs
• Agitation, restlessness, tremor
• Nystagmus and abnormal eye movements
• Abnormal muscle tone — hypertonia or hypotonia; in infants, jitteriness
• Generalised tonic-clonic seizures
• In severe paediatric cases, apnoea and unresponsiveness

Treatment is supportive: airway management, benzodiazepines for seizures, fluids, observation. Recovery is the rule with prompt care, and in the published outbreaks all patients recovered. Anisatin is potent enough that anisatin-induced convulsive seizure is used as a standard laboratory seizure model — Wei, Ge, Guo and colleagues published a metabolomic study of exactly that model in Molecular BioSystems in 2014, and a companion study examined the effect of diazepam on it. A compound whose reliability as a convulsant makes it a research tool is not a compound to gamble on in a teacup.

The 2001 Dutch Seizure Outbreak

The clearest demonstration that this is a supply-chain problem rather than a folk-medicine problem, because the victims were adults drinking a commercially sold product.

A herbal tea on the Dutch market caused an outbreak of illness reported by Johanns, van der Kolk, van Gemert, Sijben, Peters and de Vries in Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde in 2002 under the title “An epidemic of epileptic seizures after consumption of herbal tea.” The reported pattern:

• 63 people reported malaise, nausea and vomiting, typically two to four hours after drinking the tea.
• 22 required hospital admission.
• 16 of those were admitted with generalised tonic-clonic seizures.
• NMR analysis of the product confirmed the presence of anisatin.
• The product was withdrawn from the market. All patients recovered with supportive care.

Three lessons stand out. These were adults, not babies — the toxin does not require an infant to cause harm, it just requires less of a dose to do so in one. The product was commercially sold in a well-regulated European market. And it took an analytical laboratory to identify the cause; no one could see it, taste it, or reason it out from the packaging.

The Infant Case Series

Miami, published in Pediatrics in 2004. Ize-Ludlow, Ragone, Bruck, Bernstein, Duchowny and Peña described seven infants presenting with adverse neurological reactions after being given star anise tea at home — a widespread folk remedy for colic in Hispanic and Asian communities. Reported features included jitteriness, abnormal eye movements, abnormal muscle tone, vomiting and seizures. The investigators found evidence that Chinese star anise on the US market had been contaminated with Japanese star anise, called for stricter import regulation and testing, and concluded plainly that star anise tea should no longer be given to infants. This paper is the reason the age restriction exists in monographs worldwide.

France, Archives de Pédiatrie, 2003. Minodier, Pommier, Moulène and colleagues reported star anise poisoning in infants, in French with an English abstract.

Switzerland, Archives de Pédiatrie, 2011. Perret, Tabin, Marcoz and colleagues published a case under the title “Apparent life-threatening event in infants: think about star anise intoxication!” — a baby found unresponsive, with star anise identified as the cause. The exclamation mark in a paediatric journal title is a deliberate signal to colleagues: this is a diagnosis that gets missed, and it gets missed because nobody asks about the tea.

Why infants are so much more vulnerable. Four independent factors compound each other:

1. Body mass. A dose that is trivial for a 70 kg adult is, per kilogram, more than fifteen times larger in a 4.5 kg newborn. A remedy is prepared at adult strength and then given by the spoonful, so the concentration is unchanged and only the volume is reduced — usually not by anything like enough.
2. Immature metabolism. Neonatal hepatic enzyme systems are not fully developed; clearance of xenobiotics is slower and less predictable.
3. Blood-brain barrier. Less mature in early infancy, so a centrally acting toxin reaches its target more readily.
4. Seizure threshold. The immature brain is inherently more prone to seizure activity than an adult brain.

And the exposure pattern makes it worse: a colic remedy is not given once. It is given repeatedly, in the evening, for days or weeks, to the baby whose crying is worst.

The Regulatory Response: FDA, Europe and Import Control

United States. Following the paediatric cluster, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a consumer advisory in 2003 warning against the consumption of star anise teas, with particular emphasis on infants, and noting that Chinese star anise had been found adulterated with Japanese star anise. The agency's subsequent posture has centred on import scrutiny: consignments of star anise are subject to examination for adulteration with I. anisatum, and the burden falls on importers to demonstrate the identity of their material. In US regulatory terms, Illicium verum is a permitted food spice; Illicium anisatum has no food use and its presence renders a shipment adulterated.

Europe. After the Dutch outbreak, European authorities tightened import controls and testing requirements on star anise consignments, and the adulteration issue is reflected in the pharmacopoeial standards for the herbal drug — the European Pharmacopoeia monograph for star anise includes tests capable of detecting I. anisatum. The European Medicines Agency's herbal committee monograph for star anise fruit, alongside its traditional-use indications for cough and mild spasmodic gastrointestinal complaints, carries explicit age restrictions excluding young children.

What neither did. Neither authority banned the culinary spice, and neither needed to. The hazard is concentrated in a specific product format and a specific use pattern — strong infusions of unverifiable material, especially given to infants — not in a star simmering in a pot of broth. That proportionality is worth respecting in both directions: the warning is narrow, and within its narrow scope it is absolute.

Why “Star Anise Tea for a Baby's Colic” Is the Specific Danger

Every risk factor on this page converges on one practice. Laying them out together shows why this deserves to be named explicitly rather than folded into a general caution.

• It uses the wrong product format. Tea is an infusion — deliberately extracting water-soluble compounds, anisatin among them, into a liquid that is drunk neat. Cooking puts a star in a large volume of broth that is shared and from which the star is removed. An infusion concentrates; a stockpot dilutes.
• It uses the least verifiable material. Colic remedies are typically prepared from loose bulk spice, a market bag, ground powder or a pre-bagged “tea” — precisely the formats in which adulteration is invisible. Bagged tea was the format in the Dutch outbreak.
• It targets the most vulnerable possible recipient. For all four reasons in the previous section.
• It is repeated. Nightly, for as long as the colic lasts.
• It has cultural authority behind it. This is the hardest part. The remedy comes from a grandmother, and it has “always worked.” Colic resolves on its own by three to four months in essentially every case, so every remedy tried during it appears to work eventually. That is not a reason to trust it.
• There is nothing on the benefit side. No trial has ever shown star anise reduces infant crying. The trade is documented neurological risk against an unmeasured benefit for a self-limiting condition.
• The symptoms it causes look like the problem it is given for. A jittery, vomiting, distressed baby may be assumed to have worse colic — prompting more tea. Only a seizure breaks the loop.

The instruction, without hedging: never give star anise tea, infusion, extract or essential oil to an infant, and do not give medicinal star anise infusions to young children. For what the evidence does support for a crying baby — including the herbal combinations that have actually been trialled — see the digestive health page.

Visual Identification, and Where It Fails

Intact whole stars can often be distinguished with care. The differences are real but they are differences of degree, they overlap, and they require a good specimen.

Illicium verum — the edible spice:

• Usually 8 carpels (occasionally 6 to 9)
• Plump and relatively smooth, with blunt or gently curved tips
• Roughly 2.5 to 3.5 cm across
• A strong, sweet licorice-anise smell — the most useful single test on a good specimen

Illicium anisatum — the toxic look-alike:

• Often more numerous carpels, commonly 10 to 13
• Thinner and more shrivelled, with sharper, more strongly upcurved points
• Smaller, roughly 2 to 2.5 cm
• Weakly aromatic, and what smell there is tends toward green, clove-like or cardboardy rather than sweetly anise

Now the part that matters more than the list. Visual identification is useless in exactly the situations where the risk is highest:

• Ground star anise — no morphology survives grinding. Nothing can be judged.
• Pre-bagged “star anise tea” — cut and sifted material inside an opaque bag. This is the format implicated in the documented poisonings.
• Broken carpels and dust — the cheapest material and the most likely to be adulterated, and the least identifiable.
• Five-spice powder and blends — nothing visible, and the star anise fraction is unverifiable.
• Partial contamination — and this is the killer objection. A sack containing 95 percent genuine and 5 percent adulterant looks entirely genuine to anyone inspecting a handful. You cannot sample your way to confidence by eye.

This is why the practical guidance on this page is about sourcing and use pattern rather than about inspection. Inspection is a useful last filter on whole stars. It is not a control.

The Laboratory Methods That Actually Work

The problem the eye cannot solve, analytical chemistry can. This section matters for anyone evaluating a supplier's quality claims — “visually inspected” is not a specification.

• Microscopy and gas chromatography. Joshi, Srinivas and Khan published a method in the Journal of AOAC International in 2005 for rapid identification of Illicium verum and its adulterant Illicium anisatum using fluorescent microscopy together with gas chromatography — a practical combination for a spice-testing laboratory.
• TLC plus HPLC-MS/MS. Lederer, Schulzki, Gross and Steffen described a combination of thin-layer chromatography and HPLC-MS/MS methods for rational quality control of Chinese star anise in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2006. TLC serves as a cheap screen; tandem mass spectrometry gives specific, sensitive detection of anisatin itself — which is what you actually want to measure.
• Anisatin as the direct marker. Detecting the toxin rather than inferring the species is the strongest approach, and it works on ground material where morphology fails.
• NMR. Used to confirm anisatin in the Dutch outbreak product.
• DNA barcoding. Sequencing standard marker regions distinguishes Illicium species and works on powdered material, subject to the usual caveats about DNA degradation in processed and heat-treated samples. This is the current direction of travel for herbal authentication generally.
• Volatile profiling. The two species differ in essential-oil composition, and headspace GC-MS fingerprinting can separate them.

What to ask a supplier. Whether they test for anisatin specifically, by what method, on what sampling basis (every lot, or periodically), and whether they will provide a certificate of analysis. A serious spice or herbal supplier can answer all four. “Sourced from trusted growers” answers none of them.

Veranisatins: the Genuine Spice Is Not Inert

A detail most sources omit, and it strengthens the infant warning independently of adulteration.

Nakamura, Okuyama and Yamazaki reported in Chemical & Pharmaceutical Bulletin in 1996 on neurotropic components from star anise — from Illicium verum itself, the edible species — describing sesquiterpene lactones named veranisatins which are neurotoxic in mice at high doses, producing convulsions and other central effects. They belong to the same broad chemical family as anisatin, but are far less potent and present in far smaller quantities.

What this does and does not mean. It does not mean culinary star anise is dangerous. One to three stars simmered in a large pot of food, removed before serving and shared among several people is an exposure with centuries of safe use behind it, and nothing in the veranisatin literature challenges that. What it does mean is that even perfectly genuine, unadulterated Chinese star anise is not a completely inert plant when brewed as a strong infusion and given repeatedly to a very small body. If adulteration were somehow eliminated tomorrow, the case against infant star anise tea would still stand on this alone.

It is also a good illustration of a general principle: the sharp line between “edible spice” and “toxic relative” is a line about dose and about species-level chemistry, not a line between a safe kind of molecule and a dangerous kind.

Estragole and Long-Term Use

A different and much slower risk, worth stating because it is the reason not to make star anise infusions a daily habit even for a healthy adult.

Star anise contains estragole (methyl chavicol) as a minor constituent of its essential oil — the same compound found in basil, tarragon and fennel. At high doses estragole is a rodent liver carcinogen, acting through metabolic activation to a reactive intermediate that forms DNA adducts. European food-safety assessments have examined it and recommended limiting exposure from concentrated sources.

Proportionality. Culinary use of the whole spice is not considered a meaningful risk, and nobody should stop cooking with star anise, basil or tarragon. The concern attaches to concentrated sources: essential oils taken internally, and strong herbal infusions consumed daily over long periods. Two practical conclusions: do not take star anise essential oil internally, and do not drink strong star anise infusions every day for months.

Other Cautions and Interactions

• Epilepsy and seizure history — avoid infusions entirely. The realistic contamination hazard is a GABA-A antagonist. Anyone with a lowered seizure threshold has an extra and sufficient reason to leave star anise tea alone. The same applies to anyone taking anticonvulsants.
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding. Culinary amounts in food are considered acceptable. Avoid medicinal infusions and essential oil. The reasons are the adulteration risk, the estragole content and the complete absence of safety data. Star anise tea is used in some cultures to promote milk supply; there is no good evidence that it does, and an infant can be exposed through breast milk — which means the infant warning on this page reaches further than the nursery cup.
• Sedatives and CNS depressants. Theoretical additive effects with the sedative activity reported for star anise extracts in animal studies. Relevant to concentrated products, not to cooking.
• Cytochrome P450. Anethole and estragole are metabolised by, and can influence, CYP enzymes; concentrated extracts could in principle alter the clearance of other medicines. Not a realistic concern at culinary intake.
• Hormone-sensitive conditions. Anethole has been described as weakly oestrogenic in laboratory systems. The relevance to culinary intake is almost certainly nil, but anyone taking gram-level doses of concentrated product should know the finding exists.
• Allergy. Rare. People with known allergy to anise or fennel may react to star anise despite the plants being botanically unrelated, because they share compounds.
• Children generally. Star anise in family food is fine. Medicinal infusions are not, and the European monograph's age restriction says so formally.
• The claim to distrust. Any product marketing star anise, star anise tea or shikimic acid as a flu treatment or preventive is making a claim that is unsupported and chemically incoherent — and “natural flu remedy” marketing is a common route to a child being given the tea. See the antiviral page.

A Practical Buying and Use Protocol

1. Buy whole stars. Never ground. Grinding destroys the only evidence you can assess yourself, and ground spice is made from the cheapest and most adulteration-prone material. Grind your own if you need powder.
2. Buy from an established seller. A supermarket, a well-known spice merchant, or a long-standing Asian grocer. Avoid loose unlabelled material, unknown-origin market bags and street vendors.
3. Avoid pre-bagged “star anise tea” entirely. This is the format in the documented poisoning outbreaks and the format in which nothing can be verified.
4. Inspect and smell what arrives. Eight plump smooth carpels, blunt tips, 2.5–3.5 cm, strong sweet licorice smell. If it smells weak, green, clove-like or of cardboard, or if the stars are small with many thin sharply upcurved points, do not use it — return it if you can.
5. Cook with it; do not brew strong medicinal infusions. One to three whole stars in a large pot, removed before serving. This is the exposure pattern with centuries of safety behind it.
6. If you drink it at all, keep it weak and occasional. One star, a few minutes, adults only, a few days at a time.
7. No essential oil internally, ever.
8. No infusions for infants, ever. No medicinal infusions for young children.
9. Store whole stars airtight, dark and dry. They keep their aroma for a year or two, far longer than ground spice — a genuine advantage of the safer format.
10. If you are buying commercially or in bulk, ask for anisatin testing and a certificate of analysis. See the laboratory section above for what a real answer looks like.

If Someone Has Been Poisoned

Seek emergency medical care if, after consuming star anise tea or any herbal infusion, a person develops:

• A seizure of any kind
• Unusual drowsiness, unresponsiveness, or difficulty rousing — in a baby, this is an emergency on its own
• Repeated vomiting with agitation, tremor or jitteriness
• Abnormal eye movements, or abnormal stiffness or floppiness
• Any apnoea or breathing pause in an infant

The single most useful thing you can do is tell the treating team exactly what was consumed, and bring the packaging or the remaining material with you. Star anise intoxication is a diagnosis that is easily missed — a seizing infant is investigated for infection, metabolic disease and epilepsy, and a herbal tea does not appear on that list unless someone mentions it. It is also easily made the moment someone does. The Swiss case report's exclamation mark exists for this reason.

In the United States, Poison Control can be reached at 1-800-222-1222; other countries have equivalent national poisons services, and the National Capital Poison Center maintains guidance online. Do not induce vomiting. Do not wait to see whether it settles if a seizure has occurred or a baby is not rousable.

Key Research Papers

Every citation is given as a PubMed topic search, with title, journal and year stated in the prose. A search link cannot resolve to the wrong paper the way a mistyped numeric identifier can — which matters especially on a page whose factual claims are load-bearing for a child's safety.

1. Ize-Ludlow D, Ragone S, Bruck IS, Bernstein JN, Duchowny M, Peña BM. “Neurotoxicities in infants seen with the consumption of star anise tea.” Pediatrics, 2004. The Miami series of seven infants — the single most important paper on this page. Find on PubMed
2. Johanns ES, van der Kolk LE, van Gemert HM, Sijben AE, Peters PW, de Vries I. “An epidemic of epileptic seizures after consumption of herbal tea.” Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 2002. The Dutch outbreak: 63 ill, 22 admitted, 16 with generalised seizures, anisatin confirmed by NMR. In Dutch with an English abstract. Find on PubMed
3. Minodier P, Pommier P, Moulène E, et al. “Star anise poisoning in infants.” Archives de Pédiatrie, 2003. French paediatric cases. Find on PubMed
4. Perret C, Tabin R, Marcoz JP, et al. “Apparent life-threatening event in infants: think about star anise intoxication!” Archives de Pédiatrie, 2011. A baby found unresponsive, and a title written as a warning to clinicians. Find on PubMed
5. Kudo Y, Oka JI, Yamada K. “Anisatin, a potent GABA antagonist, isolated from Illicium anisatum.” Neuroscience Letters, 1981. The paper that established the mechanism. Find on PubMed
6. Wei DD, Ge D, Guo PP, et al. “A bird's eye view of anisatin-induced convulsive seizures in brain by a 1H NMR based metabolic approach.” Molecular BioSystems, 2014. Anisatin as a standard laboratory seizure model. Find on PubMed
7. Nakamura T, Okuyama E, Yamazaki M. “Neurotropic components from star anise (Illicium verum Hook. fil.).” Chemical & Pharmaceutical Bulletin, 1996. The veranisatins, in the edible species. Find on PubMed
8. Joshi VC, Srinivas PV, Khan IA. “Rapid and easy identification of Illicium verum Hook. f. and its adulterant Illicium anisatum Linn. by fluorescent microscopy and gas chromatography.” Journal of AOAC International, 2005. Find on PubMed
9. Lederer I, Schulzki G, Gross J, Steffen JP. “Combination of TLC and HPLC-MS/MS methods. Approach to a rational quality control of Chinese star anise.” Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2006. Find on PubMed
10. Wang GW, Hu WT, Huang BK, Qin LP. “Illicium verum: a review on its botany, traditional use, chemistry and pharmacology.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2011. Species-level context for both plants. Find on PubMed
11. DNA barcoding and molecular authentication of Illicium species and star anise products — the methods that work on powder. Find on PubMed
12. Risk assessment of estragole and methyl chavicol, including rodent hepatocarcinogenicity and exposure from herbal preparations. Find on PubMed
13. The wider case literature on star anise intoxication, which continues to accumulate in several languages. Find on PubMed
14. Picrotoxin and non-competitive GABA-A receptor antagonism — background on the mechanism anisatin shares. Find on PubMed

Connections

• All Herbs
• Star Anise (Illicium verum) — the main reference page, with the summary version of this warning.
• Star Anise for Digestive Health and Colic — what the evidence actually supports for a colicky baby, instead of star anise tea.
• Star Anise for Respiratory Health and Cough — the other route by which children get given the tea.
• Star Anise, Shikimic Acid and Antiviral Research — the “natural Tamiflu” myth that drives a lot of that giving.
• Epilepsy — the seizure biology anisatin exploits, and why anyone with a seizure history should avoid these infusions.
• Neurology — the wider neurological disease index.
• Pediatrics — infant symptoms, and when crying is not colic.
• Toxins — the site's index of environmental and dietary toxic exposures.
• Fennel and Fennel Benefits — the safer anethole relative with actual colic trial data.
• Chamomile Benefits — another plant in the trialled colic combinations.
• Licorice and Licorice Benefits — another popular herb with a genuine, dose-dependent toxicity ceiling.
• Clove — a warming aromatic with its own documented paediatric toxicity from concentrated oil.
• Schisandra — star anise's actual botanical relative in the Schisandraceae.

Disclaimer. This page is educational and is not medical advice, and nothing on it should delay emergency care. Never give star anise tea, infusion, extract or essential oil to an infant, and do not give medicinal star anise infusions to young children. Buy whole stars from reputable sellers, avoid ground star anise and pre-bagged star anise tea, and cook with the spice rather than brewing strong medicinal infusions of it. Avoid star anise infusions entirely if you have epilepsy or a seizure history or take anticonvulsants, and avoid concentrated infusions and essential oil in pregnancy and while breastfeeding. Star anise essential oil must not be taken internally. If anyone develops a seizure, unusual drowsiness, repeated vomiting with tremor, or abnormal movements after drinking a herbal tea, seek emergency care immediately and tell the treating team exactly what was consumed, bringing the packaging or remaining material with you.

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