What You Should Know About Drugs vs. Herbs
(Page 3 of 5)
December 2006/January 2007
By Lynn Keiley & Stephanie Bloyd
Proving That Herbs Work
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There are millions of people taking herbs and other dietary supplements who swear by their efficacy. And though many herbs and supplements are safe and effective, medical science has been slow to verify health claims. While pharmaceutical companies spent more than $51.3 billion in 2005 on drug discovery and development, herbs and other supplements often don’t get big money for research since they can’t be patented for a financial payoff the way pharmaceuticals can.
Noted herbalist James A. Duke, Ph.D., says choosing between herbs and drugs is difficult because the information we need to make these decisions is largely unavailable. To date there have been only a few clinical trials in which the closest herbal medicine was compared to a pharmaceutical drug and a placebo control.
That’s why for years, Duke has been campaigning to get a Congressional mandate that an alternative choice for treating a condition must be trialed along with any new drug in order to determine which is most effective, and just as importantly, which has fewer side effects. Unfortunately many new drugs currently are tested only against placebos, rather than existing medications or herbs.
“If the government really wants to improve Americans’ health, they should mandate independent research to prove that many herbs are competitive with pharmaceuticals,” Duke says. “Herbs are orders of magnitude safer, and they’re also cheaper.”
Mark Blumenthal, founder of the nonprofit American Botanical Council, thinks that if the current regulations were to be fully, consistently and effectively enforced, no further regulations would be necessary. “By law, dietary supplements are foods, not drugs, so they shouldn’t be required to show safety or efficacy in the same way as conventional drugs, which by their very nature are usually novel chemical compounds that have never existed in nature and to which humans have never been subjected.”
Blumenthal’s group and many in the supplement industry support better labeling to clearly indicate a product’s potential to produce adverse effects, as well as to outline conditions when the supplement might create complications or interfere with medications.
Drug/Herb Interactions
Many herbs have been used to treat specific ailments for centuries. But just because a product is natural or has been around for a long time, that doesn’t mean you should assume that it’s safer than pharmaceuticals. Just like interactions between drugs, many herbs can cause adverse reactions when combined with drugs or other supplements. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that among prescription drug users, one in six adults takes at least one herbal supplement along with a prescription drug, and many are completely unaware of the impact one might have on the other.
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