It wasn't until it became apparent that there were problems with some of the prescription drugs in terms of side effects that people began to rethink that attitude. When women who had been taking the anti-nausea drug Thalidomide for morning sickness during pregnancy started to give birth to children with birth defects, it was the first sign that these drugs might not be as safe as was previously thought.
As more and more cracks started to develop in the corporate drug world, and as the sixties progressed, people began to "discover" other methods of dealing with illnesses. Unfortunately, too many people had come to expect the quick fix provided by the synthetic drugs as the standard for treatment, and demanded similar results from herbals.
This has resulted in a willingness to overlook the potential for abuse that exists in herbals as much as it does with any drug. One of the best examples is the way in which Echinacea angustifolia has been misused. The root of this flower had long been known for it's antimicrobial properties, and works well to fight off low level infections such as fevers brought on by colds and flu.
But it is a remedy, not a preventative. Somehow or other, people started to believe it was some sort of miracle drug that they could take to prevent themselves from getting colds or the flu. Would you take an antibiotic before you got sick? No, because it would be dangerous to your health.
But that's exactly what people are doing when they take echinacea when they have nothing wrong with them. What's even worse is that the demand for the root of this flower has been so high that it has now become an endangered species in the wild. It takes four or five years for an echinacea plant to become fully developed and it was not given sufficient time to replenish.
Open any decent herbal book and not only will it tell you all the properties of the plants — what ailments it should be used to treat, what part of the plant is used, when to pick it, and how to best utilize it (tea, tincture, or compress) — it will also tell you it's contraindications — what medical conditions make what herbs unsafe (if you have high blood pressure don't use any liquorice root in a tea for instance), and they always say consult your doctor to see what long-term effects this medicine could have upon any other medications you are taking.
It's been a number of years now since herbals have caught the public's attention again and have risen in popularity, so much so that you can buy them everywhere now. But even after the idiocy of using an asthma drug in diet pills (ephedra) caused people to have strokes, people don't seem to be learning the lesson that these are potentially dangerous.
Article comments
1 - sal m
an unfortunate new component to human behavior is the "more is better" syndrome. this applies to most everything, even medicine in all its forms. this is why people suffer from - or die from - tylenol poisoning, become resistant to anti-biotics and a whole host of other, self-inflicted problems. add to the mix the reality that some people "self medicate" and "self diagnose" and you have a bigger problem.