Heather Boon, BScPhm, PhD and Michael Smith, BPharm, MRPharmS, ND
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 In Europe, hawthorn is considered to be one of the most important medicinal herbs, used to treat heart, blood, kidney, and memory disorders. Its universal appeal is evident when you consider that it is also consumed as a food in the form of jams, preserves and syrups.3
Current Medicinal Use
Under the supervision of a trained health-care provider, hawthorn products are used for cardiovascular conditions, notably mild congestive heart failure and hypertension. |
| Although herbal medicines have been shown to be effective for preventing and treating health problems, we are not advocating any one herb or herbal procedure, nor are we suggesting that medicinal herbs can replace other conventional drug treatments for serious illness. We strongly recommend you consult with your doctor, medical or naturopathic, and your pharmacist before taking any medicinal herb for any health condition. |
| Introduction
Family
þ Asteraceae (also known as Compositae or Sunflower family)
Synonyms
þ:- Purple co nef lower
þ Purple Kansas coneflower
þ Black simpson •:• Red sunflower
þ Comb flower
þ Cock up hat
þ Missouri snakeroot
þ Kansas snakeroot
þ Indian head12 Medicinal Forms root
þ Dried Root
þ Tincture
þ Liquid Extract aerial parts
þ Expressed Juice (liquid or semi-solid)
Description
There are nine Echinacea species indigenous to the North American mid-west from Saskatchewan to Texas,3 but only three species of this perennial are collected or cultivated as medicinal herbs. |
| The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to the 50 Most Common medicinal herbs presents the "Traditional Use" for each herb discussed, which in some cases has been verified in controlled clinical trials, as well as the "Current Medicinal Use" of each herb, which is based on existing scientific research and medical evidence. |
| Traditional Use
Echinacea species were used extensively as medicinal herbs by native North American tribes,6 reportedly to treat a variety of ailments, including mouth sores, toothaches, colds, sore throats, burns and snake bites.179 Its use for snake bites gave rise to several common names (Missouri and Kansas Snakeroot).
H.F.C. Meyer, a German physician working in Nebraska, is credited with introducing echinacea to the medical profession when he began selling a patent formula containing a root extract of E. angustifolia in the 1870s. |
| Here is a summary of those regulations designed to ensure safety in using medicinal herbs.
Canada
In Canada, all botanical medicines are regulated by the Federal Government. The regulations for Natural Health Products (NHPs) have recently undergone extensive modification, with new regulations taking force in January 2004.
Prior to this date, all herbs legally for sale in Canada were regulated as either foods or drugs (with drug identification numbers or DINs) as stipulated by the Food and Drugs Act. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 That's when many people begin investigating medicinal herbs, acupuncture, or chiropractic care. It is only after they have tried everything with conventional medicine -- drugs, surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy -- that they finally realize they are not getting any healthier and need to do something different.
It is interesting how conventional medicine can so strongly motivate people to check out alternatives because most of the therapies in conventional medicine simply do not work. Even worse, they actually cause tremendous harm to patients even while promising to help them. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Supplements and herbs will become contraband, and gardeners who grow their own medicinal herbs may be raided and arrested by DEA agents wielding assault rifles. Simply selling dried broccoli sprouts as being "good anti-cancer foods" may land you in prison, and running a vitamin shop could result in you being arrested for "practicing medicine. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Then they are getting these small doses of medicinal herbs that do help with many different conditions.
Mike: One of the principles in Chinese medicine says that the skin reflects the health of the large intestine. I am curious if there may be some benefits of your products to the large intestine as they are treating the skin.
Ashley: That is interesting because many of the things that really support the large intestine are oils and seeds, which help to promote movement through the large intestine. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I've known people to overcome cancer by starting with a detox event like this, and then turning to daily juicing and medicinal herbs to beat their cancer. I've seen people reverse type-2 diabetes in a matter of just a few weeks, and I know that virtually everyone who takes prescription drugs of any kind (even "happy pills" like antidepressants, or over-the-counter painkillers) has a clogged liver and could experience incredible benefits from a serious liver cleanse.
If you've never done a cleanse like this, you probably have no idea just how good you can feel afterwards. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It is only in the last 75 years or so that western medicine has gained power over the industry and surreptitiously declared that all of the medicinal herbs used for thousands of years throughout human history are now suddenly inert or harmful. In today's system of medical oppression, merely telling the truth about your own product that actually works to regulate blood sugar is enough to get your warehouse raided by the highly corrupt FDA -- an agency with such a corrupt history of armed raids against supplement companies that you would think it was operated by the Russian mafia. |
David W. Grotto, RD, LDN
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 Home Remedies
Parsley is one of the medicinal herbs used by diabetics in Turkey. It is valued as a breath-freshener, due to its high concentration of chlorophyll, and in tea form, parsley is often used as a diuretic.
Throw Me a Lifesaver!
DIABETES: The Turks were on to something! In a study testing parsley's benefits with diabetic rats, researchers found that the rat subjects who were given parsley experienced lowered blood glucose while their GSH (a cell protector) levels increased. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Both the AMA and FDA are still primarily drug pushers, and neither one is willing to admit that medicinal herbs, superfoods or nutritional therapies have any ability to treat or cure any disease whatsoever. These groups are so stuck in the outdated mindset of drugs that they cannot see just how quickly they are both becoming obsolete.
The future of medicine is about using plants, sunlight, homeopathy, superfoods, living foods, mind-body medicine and other modalities that virtually no one in the conventional medical industry is willing to acknowledge. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Plus, attendees will learn about censored nutritional secrets, growing medicinal herbs at home, Chinese medicine tonics, fasting on sunlight, wild food remedies, and numerous other experimental and cutting-edge health topics. Full details are available at The Best Weekend Ever website (click here).
The lineup also includes progressive (even "radical") explorations of topics like alchemical transformation, Ormus accumulators, resonant energy and bio-energy, the healing power of negative ions, water vortex technology and much more. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 It's based on brown rice, exotic grains and a long list of medicinal herbs, vegetables and superfoods (including microalgae and sea vegetables). The Juvo company has the ratio of ingredients down to an art, making sure you get a little of each nutrient while still keeping the taste very smooth and enticing.
There are a hundred ways to use the Juvo powder. I often blend it into a smoothie (it goes great with a chocolate avocado smoothie) or stir it into almond milk when I'm eating granola. This is truly medicinal food. |
Joerg Gruenwald, Ph.D.
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 Although the publisher has endeavored to provide the most extensive possible coverage of currently available botanical preparations, not all medicinal herbs can be found herein. As review of the literature continues, additional herbs will be included in future editions. Inclusion of an herb in the current editions does not signify an endorsement by the publisher; absence of an herb does not imply its rejection.
It should be understood that by making this material available, the publisher is not advocating the use of any substance described herein. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The FDA has used disinformation and half-truths to ban ephedra and attack kava kava, among other medicinal herbs. The agency routinely invents or exaggerates selected piece of information to justify any action it desires to take against natural medicine.
12) Thanks to lax FDA drug safety standards, U.S. citizens are now routinely treated as guinea pigs by drug companies, and the real dangers of new drugs are only realized after they harm or kill tens of thousands of patients. The FDA remains consistently slow to pull dangerous drugs off the market. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The quiet, behind-closed-doors practice of using medicinal herbs, homeopathic remedies, nutritional supplements or even Bach Flower Remedies will be tolerated... for now.
But then, one day a new tyrant will lead the FDA, and he (it's always a HE) will interpret the CAM Guidelines in a new way. He'll say the guidelines clearly spell out that the FDA should be regulating ALL naturopathic remedies in order to "protect consumers. |
Joerg Gruenwald, Ph.D.
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| Further information in:
Duke JA, A Handbook of medicinal herbs, Pub. CRC Press Boca Raton 1985.
Frohne D, Pfaiider HJ, Giftpflanzen - Ein Handbuch fur Apotheker, Toxikologen und Biologen, 4. Aufl., Wiss. Verlags-Ges Stuttgart 1997.
Kern W, List PH, Horhammer L (Hrsg.), Hagers Handbuch der Pharmazeutischen Praxis, 4. Aufl., Bde. 1-8, Springer Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 1969.
Lewin L, Gifte und Vergiftungen, 6. Aufl., Nachdruck, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg 1992.
Madaus G, Lehrbuch der Biologischen Arzneimittel, Bde 1-3, Nachdruck, Georg Olms Verlag Hildesheim 1979. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 There is no meaningful effort in medicine today to actually prevent disease, teach holistic nutrition to patients or promote non-patentable things that help people heal (like sunlight, water or medicinal herbs). And that's partly why conventional medicine doesn't work. The system has failed America, and this failure is obvious in the simple fact that while Americans pay the highest prices in the world for health care services, they simultaneously suffer the highest rates in the world of preventable degenerative disease (like cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, depression, etc. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 But there's something missing from the film: A serious discussion about how a nation can prevent disease using nutrition, medicinal herbs, sunshine, clean water, avoidance of toxic chemicals, smart dietary choices, banning the advertising of junk foods and pharmaceuticals, and so on. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 I've also created a free report called "Beat the Bird Flu virus" that lists the top antiviral vitamins, minerals, nutritional supplements, medicinal herbs, amino acids and products. The report is available as a free download on www.truthpublishing.com.
So if there is an outbreak of the bird flu virus, the solution is readily available if people would just get the right information. That information should include knowledge about the antiviral properties of these medicinal herbs and supplements. But of course, the public won't ever be told that. |
Joerg Gruenwald, Ph.D.
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| Its conclusions represent the best expert consensus on medicinal herbs currently to be found.
For those herbs not considered by Commission E, Physicians' Desk Reference has augmented this section with the results of an exhaustive literature review conducted by the respected PhytoPharm U.S. Institute of Phytopharmaceuticals under the direction of noted botanist, Dr. Joerg Gruenwald. These monographs, some 300 in number, provide a detailed introduction to an array of exotic botanicals that you'll be hard pressed to find in any other source. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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| But no pharmacist is required to learn anything substantial about nutrition, superfoods, exercise, medicinal herbs, sunlight therapy, homeopathy or other safer, more natural modalities for preventing and reversing disease.
As a result, pharmacists are one-trick ponies: For every health symptom observed, they see drugs as the primary treatment option. If you only carry a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you only know drugs, every health concern looks like it needs a pharmaceutical.
What the drug companies really want: A pharmaceutical vending machine! |
Tori Hudson, N.D.
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 Phytoestrogens are found in many medicinal herbs with a historical use in conditions that are now treated by estrogens. The weak estrogenic effects of phytoestrogen-containing herbs can provide some benefit in relieving menopause symptoms. One advantage of phytoestrogens is that they have not been associated with increasing the risk of breast cancer. |
David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes
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 There seem to be several reasons why there isn't more significant scientific research being done on medicinal herbs. There are certainly economic concerns. Herbs are inexpensive, especially when compared to the retail price of pharmaceuticals, and companies that market pharmaceutical and nutritional products would find it very difficult to profit from expensive herbal research. It is difficult, although not impossible, to patent herbal products, and without this type of legal protection, few companies are willing to invest significant amounts of money into herbal product research. |
| Medicinal herbs that replenish the vital energy are called qi tonics. In Western pharmacologic terms, they might be called bioenergy modulators.
In an ideal state, yin and yang in all their forms are perfectly balanced in every part of the body. However, external (cold, heat, dampness, dryness, wind) or internal (emotions, stagnation or deficiency of qi or blood) factors can upset this balance, leading to disease. Chinese medical diagnosis and treatment involves identifying the factors that are out of balance and attempting to bring them back into harmony. |
| The USP editors are unreceptive to accepting any research that is not placebo-controlled and double-blinded as the basis for determining the efficacy and safety of medicinal herbs. Studies that use placebos give the medication under study to some volunteers and another agent that they know has no effect to others. In studies that are double-blind, neither the researchers nor the volunteers know which drug they are getting. In single-blind studies, the researchers know but the volunteers do not. See our discussion of scientific research in chapter 4. |
| Certainly, there is much more to say about other types of medicinal herbs. We recommend that you consult some of the many excellent books that are available. A few of our favorites are Medical Herbalism by David Hoffmann, Principles and Practice of Phytotherapy by Simon Mills and Kerry Bone, and Herbal Therapy & Supplements: A Scientific and Traditional Approach by Merrily Kuhn and David Winston. |
| The American Herbalists Guild represents the goals and voices of many clinical herbalists, the American Herbal Products Association represents the voice of the herbal products industry, and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, is doing research and providing information on complementary and alternative medicine (including medicinal herbs) to the general public.
The future looks relatively bright for herbal medicine in the United States. |
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