But it still can’t hurt to try teas with star anise. Chinese herbal medicine has some old-wives-tale stuff, but there is also a whole lot of genuine healing properties in the herbs, too.
There are now actual universities of oriental medicines that do modern scientific laboratory research to separate the real stuff from the old-wives-tales, and there is a lot of good research coming out.
Yes, it can hurt. First of all, you never know what is in an herbal medicine. There could be too much of the active ingredient, not enough, or none at all. Also, it is very common to have a dietary supplement to actually work, only to be discovered that it was spiked with the actual drug. This has happened with Viagra and supposedly steroid-free psoriasis meds. And plenty of other cases. I follow this rather closely, and virtually every time a supplement is actually studied in a well designed trial it is found to be useless (or harmful—Google news hydroxycut). Add to this the fact that something coming from a plant is no more likely to be safe than something coming from a lab. In fact, the most poisonous substances on earth come from natural sources. Think about it- the plant have evolved not to be eaten in most cases. Thus the alkaloid toxins.