Recently there was another article in the newspaper about another herbal supplement. This time it was about a “study” done on the efficacy of Echinacea. We put the word study in quotes because we are not quite sure it technically qualifies. The premise was to prove or disprove claims that Echinacea products helped to relieve cold symptoms, or if they could prevent a cold entirely or decrease its duration.
Oddly enough, the researchers did not use any Echinacea products nor did they use the part of the plant that has the historical data to show that it contains the “actives” or rather the properties that produce the health result. Now, understand that a high percentage of synthetic drugs are inspired by their natural counterpart. Scientists study the plant, isolate the actives, and then decide how to make it synthetically. Because they can’t patent something that is found in nature, they spend millions of dollars trying to reproduce a chemical version of the natural original while preserving the desired effect. Sounds a little strange, doesn’t it? They find something natural that helps a problem but instead of using the natural product, they make a chemical version of it so they can charge sick people 10,000 times what it cost them to make it! Are we missing something?
Getting back to the study, they took the wrong part of the herb, made an extremely low dosage and gave people a cold. We will spare you the disgusting methods used for that. It is not wonder the study victims, er subjects, were college students who will do anything for a little extra cash. Now let’s see... 300 mg daily instead of 900 mg three times daily, the wrong part of the plant that doesn’t even contain the active alkaloid and there was no measurable effect from the Echinacea. Was anyone surprised at that result?
Let’s explain some plant science. Plants are very complex organisms. They contain many nutrients that vary depending upon how much nutrition is available to them in the soil in which they are grown. They also contain hundreds of constituents to synergistically produce a multitude of effects. Foxglove is the plant from which the pharmaceutical industry synthesized the popular heart medication called digoxin. Medical students are taught to look for three progressive symptoms of overdose when they prescribe this drug to their patients. The first sign is slight nausea; the second sign is vomiting which the students are quickly told is virtually never seen because very quickly the patient progresses to the third sign which is collapse and near death. It seems that the vomiting, seen only when the plan form is used, is caused by a different active that the drug companies did not pay to synthesize. In nature, the safeguards are built into the whole plant, but the drug companies, looking for just one component, threw out the proverbial bay with the bath water making a dangerous substitute for the safer natural one.
St. John’s Wort has been used to treat mild to moderate depression and has a pretty good history of doing just that. The active responsible for this effect is found only in the flower of the plant. It is not at all found in any amount in the stalks, leaves or roots. If a study were done using the plant parts instead of the flower, it would have no effect on the subjects. In fact, there are companies who package and sell St. John’s Wort that contains none of the flowers at all. They are not being untruthful with their labeling. The capsules are in fact filled with St. John’s Wort. They don’t, however, contain anything that will help at all with depression!
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