A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally (48 page)

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Authors: Sue Frederick

Tags: #Health & Fitness, #Women's Health, #test

BOOK: A Mother's Guide to Raising Healthy Children--Naturally
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Page 120
brand is substantially less than other brands, it is often, though not always, a good indication that quality has been compromised.
And I recommend standardized herbs to beginners. I personally never take a standardized herb, except when I'm on the road. But a naive consumer is at the mercy of the label, the brand, and the retailer. If they take a standardized herb, at least there's a good chance it will have the desired effect. And if a first-time herb user doesn't get the desired effect the first time they try herbs, they'll never try them again.
Also, before you go into an herb store, you should know what's ailing you, and you should use herbal reference books. Of course, I like to recommend my book
The Green Pharmacy.
It's user-friendly.
Q:
I think it's easy for a beginner to be confused by the different forms of herbal medicine from liquid tinctures and powdered capsules to teas. What's your preference?
Duke: At home, I prefer fresh herbs. On the road, I want standardized extracts because they're fast and convenient. In most cases, a standardized capsule is better than a tincture. Michael Murray, N.D., says it costs twenty times more to get hypericin from tincture of St.John's wort than from a standardized capsule.
The bin herbs that you find in the mom-and-pop herb shops are not very reliable. Every time you smell the herb, it has lost a chemical. An herb in a bin is constantly changing, creating an infinitely different profile with the more volatile components leaving fastest. Volatiles are readily lost in bulk herbs. For highly aromatic herbs, you're better off with a tincture or alcohol extract. With other herbs, you're better off with standardized capsules. With some herbs, I take both forms for different reasons, like echinacea. I take both the capsule and tincture of echinacea. The capsules contain more of some active ingredients than the tinctures and vice versa.
The best thing about herbs is the great variety of useful compounds they contain, and the worst thing about herbs is the wide fluctuation in the quantities of useful compounds they contain. To compensate for such variation, the herb is standardized. This concentrates the major active ingredients, and the herb extract can be consistent from batch to batch.
 
Page 121
Q: If I decide to try herbal medicine, should I tell my doctor what I'm taking? Will herbs and pharmaceuticals conflict with each other?
Duke: You should tell your doctor, and your doctor will probably tell you to quit taking herbs. Then find another doctor. Herbs are real medicine, and they will interact with other medicines. I don't tell my doctor, because I know what I'm doing. However, I don't advise other people to do the same. Find a doctor who knows about herbs.
Q: There has been a lot of news stories about "dangerous herbs," and this scares some people away. Are there dangerous herbs on the shelves?
Duke: They're generally not for sale in good herb stores. They've been flagged by responsible people. But somebody, somewhere is going to be allergic to anything. So if you're taking a new drug or a new herb or a new food, watch yourself. For example, I would take the herb chaparral myself, yet I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, so I won't get sued. Most medicines will upset the liver enzymes in most people; well, so does chaparral. We've blown the bugle so loud on some of these herbs, and they're really not so bad. Chamomile has been most misunderstood. There are so few cases of chamomile allergic reactions, yet the warnings about chamomile causing allergic reactions have made big news.
However, I caution against ephedra, except under the advice of a physician. Licorice and ephedra can both raise the blood pressure.
Cascara sagrada,
like most laxatives, can be habit-forming.
Q:
If I only have time to learn about ten herbs, which ones should they be?
Duke: My favorites are celery seed (I take it for gout), St. John's wort, feverfew, ginkgo, echinacea, garlic, ginger, saw palmetto, evening primrose, billberry, kava, and turmeric. That's more than ten, but those are the important ones. I think we'll be hearing a lot in the news in the near future about the benefits of kava and turmeric. Those will probably be the two next most popular herbs. Turmeric is an anti-inflammatory useful for just about everything. Kava's getting a lot of attention for its relaxant properties. However, the one herb that's going to spare Americans the most misery is echinacea.

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