Herb Consults

Eric Brand recently reported on his participation in an ongoing research project regarding authentication of herbs.

Authentication is a multidisciplinary specialty within Chinese herbal medicine that focuses on the correct identification of medicinal products.

Over the centuries, many different regional substitutes and adulterants have been introduced into the herbal marketplace, and many herbs that have similar names and appearances are easily confused. To achieve reliable therapeutic results and avoid potentially harmful substitutes, it is essential for Chinese medical practitioners to use correctly identified herbal medicines.

Many commonly used herbal formulas are very old – some have been in use for thousands of years. And this is because they work! But some of the problems today stem from either the lack of herbal formula ingredients or particular ingredients ave been banned – so substitutes have to be found and tested.

You may recall the withdrawal of ephedra or ma huang several years ago. Ephedra was associated with kidney failure and several deaths in Europe. Now Herbalists and Oriental Medicine Doctors were not the ones prescribing ephedra for weight loss – - it was Western Medical Physicians! In TCM – weight loss is not an indication to use ephredra.

Correctly identified herbal medicines improve therapeutic results and assure the authenticity of a given herbal formula.

What this research and collaboration of multiple sources means to you is that there will be more safe guards in place to assure the ingredients of an herbal medicine are what they should be and are what the label says it is.  Read more... (300 words, estimated 1:12 mins reading time)