Herbal Medicines and How They Work

Here's a look at some of the most popular herbal medicines and how they work. According to surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, the most commonly used herbal medicines in the United States are echinacea, ginseng, ginkgo biloba, garlic, St John's wort, peppermint and ginger. Other natural products are popular and commonly used, such as fish oil, glucosamine and soy, but these are dietary supplements, not herbal medicines.

Briefly, here, I am going to try to explain a little about these most popular herbal medicines and how they work.

40% of US adults, who use natural products or dietary supplements, use echinacea. As with most herbal medicines, there is some controversy surrounding it's effectiveness. The most recent study, published July 2007 by the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, was a meta-analysis. When performing a meta-analysis, researchers combine the results from a number of previously published studies (in this case 14)and publish those findings.

The conclusion of the meta-analysis was that echinacea reduced the risk of developing the common cold by 58% and reduced the duration by 1.4 days. So, clearly echinacea may be beneficial in preventing colds, which is why most people use it. How it works is difficult for scientists to explain.

If you go to www.pubmed.com and type in echinacea, you will see that there are hundreds of published studies relating to this herb. Most indicate that some compounds in echinacea are antioxidants, some scavenge free radicals, some have anti-microbial activity, some are anti-viral, others are anti-toxin...in other words there are numerous components that can be derived from the root of echinacea. Polyphenols, anthocyanins, flavonols and others.

Historical usage by Native Americans

Given in the form of a tea made from the dried root, echinacea has been used to treat pneumonia, sinus infections, ulcers, cancer and to reduce the effects of aging.

As a wash made from the boiled fresh root, it was used to treat burns, wounds, boils, skin cancer and ear infections.

Other Reported Uses

Treatment of snakebites...anthrax poisoning...natural anti-biotic...immune system stimulant...increase the production of white blood cells...blood cleanser...improve the function of the lymph glands...and there may be others.

Warnings

The only warning for echinacea is that there are different species of the plant native to North America. Another herb (andrographis paniculata) is sometimes referred to as Indian Echinacea. Follow the link to see what one company has to say about Indian Echinacea.

Most of the modern research has been done using purified or standardized extracts from echinacea purpurea (the purple cornflower pictured at the beginning of this post), but echinacea augustifolia (narrow leafed cornflower) and other species may have been used by Native Americans, depending on which species grew in their area. And, there are over 100 studies at pub.med concerning andrographis paniculata, so this one may be effective, but has yet to become popular in the United States. There is a lot of debate over which is best and whether it is best to use fresh herbs obtained from an herbalist or concentrated standardized extracts found in capsules and commonly sold as dietary supplements.

OK, so this was a long post and I only covered echinacea and probably did not cover it fully. So next post I'll try to cover more of the popular herbal medicines and how they work. Numerous books about herbal medicines and how they work are available from expensive to moderately priced, click here to view a list of books about herbal medicines.

Next: Popular Herbal Medicines and How they Work...Ginseng