Alt Med - Herbs (3 of 20)

(From PT and Alternative Medicine)

Points to ponder

• Americans spend billions of dollars per year for capsules, tablets, bulk herbs, and herbal teas. Although many of these items are consumed for their flavor, most are probably used for supposed medicinal qualities.
• Herbs are marketed by naturopaths, acupuncturists, iridologists, chiropractors, and unlicensed herbalists, many of whom prescribe them for the entire gamut of health problems.
• Herbal advocates like to point out that about half of today's medicines were derived from plants. This statement is true but misleading.
• Drug products contain specified amounts of active ingredients. Herbs in their natural state can vary greatly from batch to batch and often contain chemicals that cause side effects but provide no benefit.
• In the United States, herbs intended for preventive or therapeutic use would be regulated as drugs under federal laws. To evade the law, these products are marketed as "foods" or "dietary supplements" without health claims on their labels. Since these are not regulated as drugs, no legal standards exist for their processing, harvesting, or packaging.
• Many products marked as herbs contain no useful ingredients, and some even lack the principal ingredient for which people buy them. Investigations have found that the ingredients and doses of several products vary considerably from brand to brand.
• The manufacture of prescription and over-the-counter drugs is closely regulated by the FDA, but herbal products are not. When the FDA concludes that an herb is dangerous, it usually issues a warning rather than a ban.
• Most published information about herbs is unreliable.
• Many web sites selling herbs make illegal claims for the treatment, prevention, diagnosis, or the curing of specific diseases

Summary

With safe and effective medicines available, treatment with herbs rarely makes sense, and many of the conditions for which herbs are recommended are not suitable for self-treatment.