Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 Herbal Supplements
The use of herbal supplements has increased in the United States. Several herbal supplements, such as those containing ginkgo biloba and bilberry, have been promoted to benefit the health of the retina. However, there are no scientific studies that support their benefit except one very small (20 persons) study of ginkgo biloba in patients with AMD, in which improvement in visual acuity was indicated in a preliminary report (recently reviewed [233]).
IV. DIABETIC RETINOPATHY
A. |
| Relationships of overall diet patterns to AMD have not yet been studied.
I. herbal Supplements
The use of herbal supplements has increased in the United States. Several herbal supplements, such as those containing ginkgo biloba and bilberry, have been promoted to benefit the health of the retina. However, there are no scientific studies that support their benefit except one very small (20 persons) study of ginkgo biloba in patients with AMD, in which improvement in visual acuity was indicated in a preliminary report (recently reviewed [233]).
IV. DIABETIC RETINOPATHY
A. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The Genesis Today method and technique for cleansing is to offer the body 100 percent natural ingredients. herbal ingredients. No synthetics and no chemicals. Even the capsules are vegetarian. And all 52 ingredients in our cleanser, the 4 Total Cleanse, have one main objective: to give the body the materials that it needs to facilitate its own cleansing.
Mike: This is not declaring war on the body and trying to take over cleansing. This is supporting the cleanse.
Dr. Duncan:What does your liver do?
Mike: It detoxifies.
Dr. Duncan:Bingo. What does your lymphatic system do? |
| And you know, a lot of herbal medicine is used in an allopathic mindset.
Dr. Duncan: Yes.
Mike:For example, if someone has inflammation, they shouldn't use Vioxx. Instead, they should use this herb. But that still misses the point, doesn't it?
Dr. Duncan: You are very wise, my friend. Your statements and your knowledge and your understanding are very deep. I say to people when I speak and when I do appearances on CNN and ABC and CBS and NBC news, "Depression is not a deficiency of Prozac". Depression is also not a deficiency of St John's Wort.
Mike:Exactly.
Dr. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 You see, that's why the benefit versus risk argument is never applied to herbal remedies. herbal remedies don't benefit pharmaceutical companies, so there's no reason for the FDA to go out of its way to keep them on the market. In fact, the availability of herbal remedies competes with prescription drugs. Consequently, the FDA, which is out there to protect Big Pharma, has every reason to outlaw herbal remedies. That alone will boost the sales of prescription drugs. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Chinese herbal medicine, as you probably know, relies a lot on the synergy of herbs and different energies that the herbs produce. So the Blood Sugar Balance is unique in that it only has five ingredients. But what we've found is that those five ingredients in Chinese medicine work very, very well for balancing blood sugar. It's not a diabetic formula or a hypoglycemic formula; it's a blood sugar balancer, to bring either high blood sugar down or low blood sugar up.
Mike: That's actually quite typical of Chinese medicine. |
| Clair: Most of our formulas started with a traditional Chinese patent herbal medicine. In some cases, all we're using is the traditional Chinese medicine, unchanged. We don't really like to mess with 500 years of success or 1,000 years of success in the case of some of our formulas. So in many cases they are just that.
What we have done in some cases is try to improve upon the speed of the results of the formulas. If there is a negative to Chinese medicine, it is that some of the formulas take up to three, four or five weeks to start manifesting results for people. |
| Clair: A classical homeopathy doesn't generally lend itself to putting homeopathy with herbal medicine. On the other hand, some of the more contemporary homeopaths are now saying that they certainly can be blended and blended effectively. The beauty of homeopathy, of course, is that there are really no negatives to it as far as side effects. We've found that it has proven to be a positive and has made some of our formulas work much more quickly and more deeply than they normally would. So it is uncommon, but it does work really well for our products. |
| Mike: A lot of people are used to seeing Western herbs in this kind of packaging or going to a health food store and finding Western herbs, but even though traditional Chinese herbs are more common now, people still tend to associate them with Chinese herbal medicine shops. You are Westernizing the packaging and the naming of traditional Chinese medicine. I think that's innovative.
St. Clair: Well, we've actually been doing this now for about 12 years, and, initially, some of our formulas were used just in practitioners' offices and not in health food stores. |
| By doing that, we've had a lot of success because one thing I think people do understand is that the Chinese knew what they were doing and still know what they're doing when it comes to herbal medicine. The question is: How do you understand it yourself and use it to your benefit?
Mike: Good point. One criticism from practitioners of traditional and Chinese medicine might be that every person is different and that you can't have "one size fits all." What's your response to that?
St. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 He's the main guy in the country in terms of the anti-vaccination movement and natural herbal alternatives.
Mike: Yeah, Len will blow your mind with a listing of what's actually in vaccines.
Wolfe: It is absolutely frightening. I mean, I saw that list and I just about fell over.
Mike: It's like shooting up with toxic waste. Amazing. Well, David, it's always a pleasure talking with you. I want to thank you for taking a few minutes here today.
Wolfe: Thank you so much, and I applaud the work you're doing, and, you know, I'm there supporting you. Just go, go, go, and make it happen. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 They'll send me some herbal formula -- let's say for intestinal health -- that has 50 ingredients in it. They'll say, "This is the most complete formula I've seen." Yes, it's very complete, but it was put together by someone who doesn't understand what they're doing. Fifty ingredients in a 500 mg tablet gives you like a ten-thousandth of a gram of each herb. And since its probably weighted to the top ingredients, so the bottom ones in there are probably just two to three milligrams each. In the industry, we call it pixie dust. They sprinkle pixie dust in the formula just to put it on the label. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| He's the main guy in the country in terms of the anti-vaccination movement and natural herbal alternatives.
Mike: Yeah, Len will blow your mind with a listing of what's actually in vaccines.
Wolfe: It is absolutely frightening. I mean, I saw that list and I just about fell over.
Mike: It's like shooting up with toxic waste. Amazing. Well, David, it's always a pleasure talking with you. I want to thank you for taking a few minutes here today.
Wolfe: Thank you so much, and I applaud the work you're doing, and, you know, I'm there supporting you. Just go, go, go, and make it happen. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| Mike: I think I found pixie dust in herbal Essences Shampoo. That may have been homeopathic, too.
Barron: Actually, we can talk about homeopathies a little bit, too. There's a knock against it that's just not true. Oftentimes what you'll see is people putting formulas together out of a book, and you'll get a formula that has no value because nothing in there is strong enough to have any value or quality. The other thing people do wrong is look in a book on intestinal health and throw in everything that looks like it's good. |
| Mike: I've purchased herbal tinctures from health food stores because I appreciate the taste of the herbs. Sometimes it's not enjoyable, but it's part of the experience. I've purchased products before that really don't have the taste that's supposed to be in them. It's like alcohol or water with absolutely no taste.
Barron: You're absolutely right. I actually once went into a health food store and they had 30 different kinds of echinacea -- either liquid, tablet or capsule form. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I was incredibly excited to discover a raw aloe product from herbal Answers, Inc. (www.HerbalAnswers.com). It's called herbal Aloe Force and it combines raw aloe vera gel with a potent combination of anti-cancer herbs including cat's claw, "Essiac" herbs and astragalus. I'm not sure yet if there's any of the aloe vera leaf sap found in this formula (I'm working on finding that out), and that's important because I like to avoid the leaf sap and just eat the gel. |
Abram Hoffer, PhD, MD, FRCP(C) and Dr. Jonathan Prousjy, DPHE, DSC, ND, FRSH
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 Other herbal bitters, such as Zingiber officinale (ginger) or Centaurium minus (common or red centuary), might work equally as well.
The preferred form is an herbal medicine in tincture form, which is simply an alcohol-based preparation. The alcohol helps to dissolve all the necessary ingredients in the herbal, and, at the same time, acts as a preservative. The dose, regardless of the concentration, is 5 to 15 drops 15 to 20 minutes before meals, three times daily. There are no side effects to herbal bitters. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 Likewise, research institutes that have long specialized in conventional, Westernized medical care are starting to investigate whether plant extracts and herbal preparations may yield promising results for patients. The Mayo Clinic, for instance, recently announced that they are decoding—using "sophisticated data mining techniques"—ancient, historical herbal texts to help develop potential new drugs for the future. Using nontraditional, ancient medical information taken from seventeenth-century texts, they have pinpointed certain herbal extracts to be "invaluable sources of healing agents. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| They also needed formulas, so the other thing I did was to begin working as a formulator to take what they wanted and put it in a form that was usable -- in other words, nutraceutical or herbal.
Mike: Can you explain that a little more for those that may not be familiar with what a formulator actually does?
Barron: Things tend to work better in combination. With herbs, for example, green tea and curcumin reinforce either other and make each other stronger. So you can often make things more effective, whether they are immune boosters or antioxidants, by combining things. |
Thomson Healthcare, Inc.
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 Mumcuoglu, 2004). indications and usage
Unproven Uses: Externally, Lemongrass is used for lumbago, neuralgic and rheumatic pain, sprains, and as a mild astringent. Internally, the herb is used for gastrointestinal symptoms, and mild states of agitation.
Indian Medicine: Lemongrass is used for intestinal parasites, stomach complaints, flatulence, leprosy, bronchitis, and fever. contraindications
Pregnancy: Not to be used during pregnancy. precautions and adverse reactions
No adverse effects have been reported. |
| P. africana plus Urtica dioica. The doses of P. africana extract used in trials varied from 75mg to 200mg per day. The data were pooled using two methods: First, for summarizing trials with various outcome measures, treatment effect size for continuous variables was assessed by dividing the difference of the mean change for each outcome by the pooled standard deviation for that outcome. Second, effect size was estimated using the most clinically important outcome per study, according to the following preference scale: symptom score > nocturia > peak urine flow > residual urine volume. |
C. P. Khare
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 Exponents of Indian medicine can no longer undermine the importance of active principles of the herb in the name of "pure herbal legacy." Active principles of a herb give a clear picture of the herb's therapeutic properties and toxicity, and we find ourselves in a better position to judge the balancing potential of the total herb. Also, it will be easy for scientists to select or reject herbs which have been used in various compounds for ages. (Col. Ram Nath Chopra recommended that after systematic investigations, drugs of questionable and doubtful value must be excluded. |
Richard P. Brown, M.D., and Patricia L. Gerbarg, M.D.
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 Other countries involved in extensive herbal research include China, Japan, India, and Russia. Very few of the studies from Russia and the former Soviet Union had been available in the West because they had not been translated into English, the predominant international language of science and medicine. This is one of the major reasons why the West has remained largely unaware of the increasingly impressive health benefits of Rhodiola rosea, sometimes called Arctic root or golden root. Most of the research occurred in Russia and appeared in Russian medical journals. |
| SHR-5 is a standardized Rhodiola rosea extract used for research purposes by the Swedish herbal Institute.)
• Of 60 foreign students enrolled in Russian high schools, 20 received 660 milligrams a day of Rodaxin, a Rhodiola rosea preparation with vitamin C. Another 20 took a placebo, while the remaining 20 took nothing. The students given Rodaxin had less mental fatigue and anxiety. They also showed better work performance, coordination, and well-being.26
• Researchers tested the ability of 60 foreign students to learn Russian. |
Andrew Pengelly
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 While some authorities have questioned the credibility of a genuine salicylate anti-inflammatory action in salicin herbs due to the low levels of active constituents found in traditional herbal preparations (Robbers and Tyler 1999), recent clinical investigations in Germany have been based around high-dose willow bark extracts (120-240 mg salicin daily). These trials have demonstrated significant reduction of back pain with few side effects, and include a randomised double-blind study of 210 patients, reported in the American Journal of Medicine (Chrubasik et al. 2000). |
| An effective understanding of modern herbal practice fundamentally begins with a sound knowledge of the phytochemistry and related therapeutics of medicinal plants.
Given this, Andrew Pengelly's much revised second edition of The Constituents of Medicinal Plants is a welcome arrival. In this text he comprehensively covers the major phytochemical classes found in plants and their implications for human therapy. Key features are the many chemical structures and the wide-ranging discussion of their pharmacological activities. |
| Rather, it adapts the technical information to existing knowledge, in the process helping to better define the traditional understanding that underlies the practice of herbal medicine. As such, this book provides both a unique education and a rationale for practitioners to broaden the range of clinical indications for many existing medicines. Useful technical data for better understanding potential adverse reactions and interactions with pharmaceutical drugs is another important learning outcome. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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| The Mayo Clinic, for instance, recently announced that they are decoding—using "sophisticated data mining techniques"—ancient, historical herbal texts to help develop potential new drugs for the future. Using nontraditional, ancient medical information taken from seventeenth-century texts, they have pinpointed certain herbal extracts to be "invaluable sources of healing agents. |
Andrew Pengelly
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| While this is an admirable objective, it cannot be achieved overnight, given the complexities of the herbs themselves, the variety of formulas and prescribing methods available and the difficulties in adapting medical models to the herbal practice.
Indeed there are many inside the medical establishment who question the validity of double-blind controlled trials and
'evidence-based medicine' in general (e.g. Black 1996; Vincent and Furnham 1999). |
| Piperine has also been shown to influence the bioavailability of other compounds, be they herbal or pharmaceutical. This interaction is thought to occur via an increased absorptive surface of the small intestine linked to alterations in membrane dynamics and permeation characteristics following ingestion of piperine (Khajuria et al. 2002).
Arecoline arecaidine methyl ester, found in betel nut derived from the palm Areca catechu, is widely used in many countries as a masticant. Areca also contains about 15% tannins.
Lobeline is found in Lobelia inflata along with lobelanine and lobelanidine. |
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