A man in Switzerland developed severe lead poisoning after undergoing an alternative medicine treatment he took pills that he thought contained the hair of a dead Bhutanese priest, but the pills were actually replete with the toxic metal lead, according to a report of his case.

It took the man's doctors a week to find out that their patient was taking these pills, and that his symptoms were signs of lead poisoning. (In developed countries, lead poisoning is rare because lead levels in the environment are controlled.)

"It was a very difficult case. The patient had unspecific symptoms, such as abdominal pain, confusion, constipation, vomiting," said Dr. Omar Kherad, a physician at the Hpital de la Tour in Geneva.

"We did all the normal tests in this case, gastroscopy, CT scan, all the blood tests," Kherad said. "We did not find anything, initially."

The doctors finally asked the patient whether he was taking any traditional remedies, because although he lived in Switzerland, he frequently traveled to Bhutan, where people often use alternative medicine.

The doctors were "very surprised when he finally revealed he was taking these pellets every day for three or four months," Kherad told LiveScience. [14 Oddest Medical Cases]

The doctors then checked the level of lead in the patient's blood, and found it to be at least 100 times higher than what is normally found in people living in Switzerland.

The laboratory tests on the pellets found high levels of lead in the red paint on the pellets, corroborating doctors' guess that the pellets were the source of lead in the man's body. [Image of the pellets]

The doctors who treated the man warned that although lead is no longer widely used in Western countries, physicians should ask their patients whether they are taking alternative medications from countries where high levels of lead can still be found in materials such as paint.

"As a consequence of general globalization in medicine, complementary and alternative medicines are being increasingly used in Western countries as they become more popular and easily available on the Internet," the doctors wrote in their report, published last month in the online journal F1000research.

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Man poisoned by lead in alternative medicine