Buying herbal remedy products
What to look for on a label when buying store-bought herbal remedies and information about standardization of mass-produced herbal remedies.
When plants or other forms of natural ingredients are harvested they are naturally contaminated with all sorts of microorganisms including E-Coli and Salmonella. Both are pathogens, they cause disease. Most manufacturers insist that the final blend be sterilized prior to use to eliminate or lower the Bio-Burden. Sterilization even-though necessary, creates a major problem.
The two most common methods of sterilization are Ethylene Oxide and Radiation. Ethylene Oxide is a known carcinogen and residues are likely to be left in the product. Radiation appears to violate the principle of "all natural," and would disturb many who turn to these product to get away from conventional chemical drugs and all their side effects. The consumer has been kept in the dark, and the companies continue to promote their products as all natural.
The ingredients in this discussion are derived from plants, herbs, spices, either the leaves, root, or some part of the plant or tree, that come from various sources where there are no controls over the soil, air or the pesticides used. Due to these factors there needs to be a test done to ensure that a particular dose does not contain more toxic residues or harmful contaminants than the active ingredient.
For example: Antioxidants are for the purpose of ridding the body of free radical and harmful toxins. These products are derived from grape seed or pine bark and must go through a purification and reduction process. Those processes use chemicals to accomplish these tasks.
The chemicals used are: Acetone, Ethyl Acetate, Methylene Chloride, Ethyl Alcohol, and Buty; Alcohol. Throught these steralization processes, the product is exposing you to more toxic chemicals than it is purposed to remove.
When you examine a label of a product, the ingredients such as Magnesium, selenium, Manganese, Zinc, Chromium and iron, adjacent to this list, the % of U.S. Recommended Daily Allowances are listed. If the amount of Chromium listed was 35 milligrams and the RDA was 35 milligrams, the consumer would assume that they are getting 100% of the RDA by using the product.
Upon closer examination, when iron is listed, for example, in parenthesis there is a small "Fe" which doesn't mean a lot to the consumer, but this indicates that the iron in the product is actually Ferrous Oxide, a chemical substitute for iron. Iron as "Fe" is not bio-available as natural iron. "Fe" has only 1% bio-availability. This means that the body can only absorb 1% of the required daily allowance.
Chromium is listed as "chromium/chromium polynicon", once a chemical substitute for Chromium, and its bio-availability is less than 5%.
Selenium is listed as "Sodium Selenate" a chemical substitute for Selenium.
Zinc is listed as "Glutconate" another chemical substitute for the real thing.
Bio-availabily of these chemicals are virtually non existent.
The rationale currently being used for standardizing herbs is that it will "correct" the slight chemical variations that occur in each plant due to soil composition, the amount of rainfall they receive, their age, the time of day or season of the year they are harvested, how they are stored, etc... The general assumption is that by using various techniques to ensure that each product has the same amount of active ingredients, the therapeutic results will be more consistent. In theory, standardization sounds plausible and perhaps even preferred, but in reality it opens up a whole new can of worms.
Standardization does not necessarily mean consistency across products. At present there are no universally accepted methods or legal definition of standardizing herbal products. Ten different manufactures can (and do) "standardize" the same herb using totally different criteria and manufacturing process.
There are three methods generally used to standardized herbal products. One is to dissolve certain active components in a solvent (such as alcohol) to make a tincture. Another method is to blend various batches of herbs together in hopes of getting more consistent product. The third and cheapest way is referred to as "spiking" a product.
In this case, either the active component or synthesized version is added to a base of herbs or other grounded up substances. The end product may not contain any of the initial herb at all, but when checked in a lab it will show it has been "standardized" to contain just the right amount of the active component. The more ethical suppliers steer clear of this shady method.
Active ingredients do not always determine an herb's effectiveness. Scientists are learning more about herbal compounds each day; and often what they uncover renders previous data obsolete. St. John's Wort is a prime example. For the longest time, scientists believed that hypericin was the sole ingredient that gave St. John's Wort its antidepressant properties. That's why everyone standardizes the herb for hypericin content. But it was recently discovered that other components such as hyperiform are equally responsible for the herb's mood-altering abilities.
A similar situation occurred with the herbs valerian and echinacea. It was originally thought that the active ingredient responsible for valerians calming powers was valerenic acid, but later research showed that other compounds produced those effects. Echinacea was being standardized to contain the chemicals called echinacosides, when in fact it was the alkylamides, glyoproteins and polysaccarides that gave the herb its immune boosting properties. Products that are "spiked" or made with low-quality herbs likely don't contain any of these other essential components.
Standardized herbal products are not more advanced versions of whole herbs. Whole herbs have been used for prevention and treatment of illness for literally thousand of years, and are the primary form of medicine for many cultures around the world today. Standardized forms of these herbs should in no way be considered a substitute for or an improvement on whole herbs.
If we allow this misperception to continue, we'll lose the safest and most enduring form of medicine man has ever known. Again, St. John's Wort is a good example. The standardized herb has become so popular for treating depression that its now tough to find the whole, UNSTANDARDIZED form. As a result, the public is completely missing out on the herbs other benefits that traditional herbalists have known about for decades. Whole St. John's Wort can be used in teas poultices and tinctures to treat kidney problems, bronchitis, vitiligo, painful menstrual cramps, gastritis and stomach ulcers, nerve pain, recurrent ear infections, gout and open wounds.