“Don’t a lot of medicines come from herbs anyway?” No. Nothing that occurs in nature can be patented. Properties that various herbs might have often provide the initial concept for a medication, but when that property is isolated and/or synthesized you have destroyed the inherent balance of the plant and you are going to have side effects. At that point you have created a drug. The difference is that an herb provides the raw material for proper function, while a drug can do one of two things: override the body’s natural process (i.e. anti-inflammatories or pain-killers), or imitate a natural process (i.e. antibiotics, insulin and estrogen). There is no body function we have the capacity t
I believe that most herbs commonly sold over the counter are safe for most people to use, but there are many that are of such poor quality that they can’t do you much good. My only hesitation would be with those herbal combinations targeted to weight loss and “energy” boosting. Ma Huang, or Chinese ephedra, has gotten an undeserved, really bad rap from some of those formulas, most of which contain obscene amounts of caffeine, which is the real danger. Ma Huang is used in Chinese medicine to move blocked “chi”, or energy, which is really helpful in constrictive conditions like asthma. People who are really “uptight” often feel uncomfortable taking it because it gets things moving that they
