Just how safe are herbal medicines?

[Ian David]

Just how safe are herbal medicines?
While many of us believe that "herbal" is synonymous with "safe", herbal remedies can in fact be deadly, says Tammy Cohen.

Herbal remedies made from plant leaves, bark, berries, flowers, and roots have been used to heal illnesses, diseases, and psychological disorders for centuries. Today, with the ease of the internet, you can self-diagnose, order next day delivery, and even learn how to make your own. Last year three million Britons took herbal remedies to treat everything from fever to joint pain.

But renewed debate about the safety of these remedies was sparked last week following the news of an EU crackdown on herbalists and Chinese medicine practitioners who operate unregulated at present. Under the new law, from 2011 sales of all herbal remedies except for a small number of products for minor ailments will also be banned. Regulators warn that many of us believe that "herbal" is synonymous with "safe", whereas herbal remedies can be deadly.

"Research we conducted last year found a significant proportion of people believed 'herbal' means 'benign'," says Richard Woodfield, Head of Herbal Policy at the Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). "That means people are more liable to self-medicate, and to neglect to inform their doctors, even though there's a risk that the herbal remedy will react with any prescription drugs. They're also more vulnerable to fraudulent, even criminal operators who put products out which are heavily adulterated with dangerous pharmaceuticals."

The actress Sophie Winkleman is reported to have taken aconite, or monkshood, found in some 'herbal Valium' last month to calm her nerves prior to her wedding to Freddie Windsor.

More:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/alternativemedicine/6466718/Just-how-safe-are-herbal-medicines.html

[slackmaster]

1. Hemlock is underrated as a home remedy

It cures just about anything.

[Bobbieo]

8. So, what the hell happened to Sophie Winkleman after she took the

herbal valium?

[Euromutt]

12. It certainly alleviates whatever suffering you're undergoing

I think Socrates had something to say on that score.

[tabatha]

2. Any plant or animal food can be dangerous.

As can many pharmaceuticals.

Soda and artificial sweeteners are also dangerous.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. In the wrong hands, they can be deadly. On the other hand, in

Germany.... a postgraduate course in natural healing would be available to your doc if he/she were so inclined.

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/158/5/637.pdf

If you’re a German GP who diagnoses mild to moderate depression these
days, chances are good your patients will be treated with St. John’s wort, not
a synthetic antidepressant product. German doctors prescribed almost 66
million daily doses of drugs containing St. John’s wort — Hypericum perforatum—
in 1994, and that number has undoubtedly risen since then. The expenditure, in
Canadian dollars, was roughly $55 million.

The popularity of drugs such as St. John’s wort is one reason for burgeoning
growth in the use of phytopharmaceuticals in Europe, where sales now stand at
an estimated $6 billion annually, including at least $2 billion in Germany; annual
sales in Canada total less than $200 million. “I’d say close to 80% of German
physicians regularly employ plant medications,” Dr. Joerg Gruenwald of
Berlin’s Institute for Phytopharmaceuticals said in an interview.
The cost of about 40% of the herbal remedies currently prescribed by German
physicians are covered by the health care system — a not inconsequential
reason for their historically high acceptance among the country’s physicians and
patients. Behind this acceptance there also appears to lie a conviction that there is
little to choose between drugs derived from plant sources and those produced
synthetically.

“The tradition of physicians using herbs not only as foods but as active therapy
has long roots in our history,” says Dr. Wolf-Dietrich Hübner, clinical research
director at Lichtwer Pharma in Berlin. “Herbal remedies were widely
used by professionals until the rise of synthetic drugs in this century.”
However, even with their rise the gentler botanical arts did not die out entirely
as they did in North America: they were kept alive by pharmacists who continued
to sell products derived from plants. Ten to 15 years ago, German patients began
demanding alternatives to synthetic drugs and the country’s medical schools soon
felt compelled to reintroduce the phased-out topic of phytopharmacology. This
meant that new physicians now had at least some exposure to complementary
medicine. Today, new doctors can take a postgraduate course on natural healing,<<

[virgogal]

4. That's an 11 year old article. Wonder if it is still true---things change.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

5. Newer.... similar trends... 2005, with some interesting history on

why Germany and not other countries.


http://www.pharmj.com/pdf/articles/pj_20050319_germany.pdf

[virgogal]

7. Thanks---just what I needed.

[Euromutt]

11. Because the Germans have long had a love of naturopathy

...that is rooted more in culture than in evidence. Naturopathy was developed from Kneippism, named after its founder, Sebastian Kneipp, who believed he'd cured his tuberculosis by bathing in the Danube, but the underlying notion fits in with the idea of Blut und Boden ("Blood and Soil") that was coined as part of the Romantic nationalism of that period, and later used by the Nazis (who were also quite big on naturopathic ideas). Part of the ideology is that the people are inextricably linked to the land, and that the land reciprocates by providing them with that which they need to keep or regain their health.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. Curious similarities

“Here are the facts: A sliced carrot looks like our human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like our human eye, and science shows carrots greatly enhance blood flow to our eyes and the function of our eyes. A tomato has four chambers and is red. Our heart has four chambers and is red. Research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopene—a red carotenoid pigment present in tomatoes and many berries and fruits—and are indeed pure heart and blood food. Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of our heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and research shows grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food. A walnut looks like a little brain with a left and right hemisphere, similar to our upper cerebrum and lower cerebellum. Even the wrinkles (folds) on the nut are just like our neo-cortex. We know that walnuts help develop more than 30 neurotransmitters for our brain function, allowing a chemical substance to help fibers in our brain communicate with each other.

“Kidney beans look like our human kidneys, and actually heal and help maintain our kidney function. Celery, bok choy and rhubarb look like our bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium (salt) and these foods are 23% sodium. If you do not have enough sodium in your diet, the body pulls it from the bones, thus making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of our body.

“Avocados, eggplant and pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female—they even look like these organs. Research shows that when a woman eats one avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight, and prevents cervical cancers. It also takes 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are apparently more than 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods; modern science has only studied and named about 141 of these. Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm, increase the number of sperm, and can help overcome male sterility. Sweet potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics. Olives assist the health and function of the female ovaries. Oranges, grapefruits, and other citrus fruits look like the mammary glands of the female, and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

[trotsky]

15. Especially curious when there are no cites whatsoever with all those claims.

But it sounds good, so it MUST be true, right?

Oh, never mind, Google to the rescue: http://asktheatheist.com/?p=160

- Even the most common variety of tomato has between three and five chambers, not just four. Other breeds have between two and ten.
- You have to cut a carrot to even make one side of it look like a picture of an eye, and even then it’s a creepy orange eye. Once you’re shaping these foods yourself like this, their natural appearance is irrelevant.
- Carotene gives tomatoes and carrots their health benefits and their colour. If God’s trying to draw us to healthy foods by making them red or reddish, why are most poisonous berries the same colour?
- Blood cells aren’t round like grapes, they’re flattened and pitted like a Strepsils tablet.
- The stalks of celery, bok choy and rhubarb can look like the long, thin bones in our arms and legs. That’s just 12 out of the 206 bones of all shapes and sizes in the human body.
- Who decided that garlic is a “working companion” to onions, and how does the appearance of onions link to the benefits of garlic?

...

The real problem here is naked confirmation bias. Every one of these foods has a long list of benefits all over the body (the kidney bean, for instance, could sustain you all by itself for ages), and every body part mentioned has a multitude of foods which are good for it and yet look nothing like it. Pick the most interesting twenty out of the innumerable billions of combinations, and you’ve got an amazing list. View it in the context of the whole of the human body and the whole of the fruit and vegetable family, and it’s just an amusing highlight reel.

[lumpy]

16. Really enjoyed reading your post. Wonderful how closely

we are related with other living forms. Mother Nature is our friend !

[Euromutt]

17. Do I detect magical thinking?

Why yes, I do believe I do, specifically the notion of sympathetic magic ("like cures like") that forms the foundation for such nonsense as homeopathy. And before you say "well, there you go, then," ask yourself why Hahnemann had to come up with his second "principle," namely that of dilution. Very simply, it was because he discovered that if you give someone who's suffering from a condition that causes him to vomit an undiluted emetic, it doesn't stop him from vomiting, but only makes it worse. So Hahnemann concocted the principle of dilution so that he could maintain his first premise--that "like cures like" despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary--while actually giving his patients "medicine" that was so diluted that it was vanishingly unlikely they'd ingest even a molecule of the active ingredient.

Here are the facts: A sliced carrot looks like our human eye. The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like our human eye <...>

No, it doesn't and they don't. Even sliced, the carrot continues to be an elongated orange tube, with a core running through its length, whereas the human eye is a sphere filled with translucent liquid, with a bundle of nerves running off the back, and a transparent opening at the front.

A tomato has four chambers and is red. Our heart has four chambers and is red. Research shows tomatoes are loaded with lycopene—a red carotenoid pigment present in tomatoes and many berries and fruits—and are indeed pure heart and blood food.

So tomatoes are only one of "many berries and fruits" in which lycopene is present. So how come those other fruits don't merit the comparison? Could it be because it's significantly more difficult to claim even a superficial resemblance between watermelon or papayas and the human heart?
"The watermelon is a fruit with a smooth green exterior rind, and a red, fleshy center riddled with seeds. Our heart has a smooth green exterior rind and a red, fleshy center riddled with seeds."
Doesn't sound quite so compelling, does it? And to further throw a damper on the comparison, bioavailability of lycopene is greatly increased by cooking and crushing the source fruit and serving it in oil-rich dishes, whereas cooking and crushing a human heart is unlikely to improve the health of its owner.

I could go on, but what's the point? The whole claim is based on rather contrived visual similarities. To counter, I'll point out that broccoli is supposed to have certain beneficial effects in preventing prostate cancer and heart disease, but I don't see anyone claiming that it's because the prostate gland and heart look like green bushes.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

20. Your post provides curious similarities to some others in here. n/t

[Euromutt]

26. That's probably because reality only works in one way

So it rather figures those others and myself would see things that same way.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

27. Reality.... it's so overrated. n/t

[the other one]

6. Marijuana - zero deaths so far

Always makes me feel better

[stray cat]

9. How safe is dog poo since there is no regulation that dictates what goes in them or is reported

you really need to make sure you know what you are getting - so watch the brands and do your research

[SidDithers]

19. Here you go...

http://www.helios.co.uk/cgi-bin/store.cgi?action=link&sku=Excr-c

Yes, Excrementum Can. is homeopathic dog shit.

Sid

[trotsky]

21. Oh. My. Koresh.

Now I've seen it all.
:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[xchrom]

10. Love, Love, Love

:spray: is all you need -- and some herbs.

[LeftishBrit]

13. Any medicine that is powerful enough to cure is powerful enough to kill.

On a milder level, any medicine that is powerful enough to help is powerful enough to have side effects.

[Richard D]

18. Certainly, using the wrong plant at the wrong time can be deadly . . .

. . . but if you weigh the deaths and damages from properly prescribed, properly dosed pharmaceutical drugs vs. herbal medicines - well, it's not even a contest. We're talking hundreds of thousands from pharmaceuticals versus 37 (average) from herbs (some sources say far less).

[trotsky]

22. Actually, we have no way of knowing how many deaths from herbs.

There is no regulatory and reporting system for them like there is for pharmaceuticals. Would you count the deaths of people who eschewed drugs in favor of herbs, when drugs could have saved them? I would.

[Richard D]

23. True that . . .

. . . but also need to take into consideration the people who died from drugs that didn't work when herbs might have saved them.

[trotsky]

24. LOL

Sure.

[mopinko]

25. no system because it was fought tooth, nail and money bags by little pill.

after the ephedra deaths there was legislation proposed to require reporting of this stuff, but it did not pass. little pill's lobbyists were out there spinning and cigar chomping just like the big boys.