Herbal Medicines

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Both sceptics and believers agree that ‘herbal medicines’ can do no harm. The sceptics regard herbal medicines as completely worthless, having no pharmacological actions of any sort. The believers think herbal remedies are potent healing agents that are inevitably free of any side effects. The magical word ‘natural’ seems to switch off critical mental abilities, and ‘herbal’ is an even more powerful invocation: It must work, because so-called natural medicines are a $200 million dollar industry in New Zealand and $5 billion dollars in the United States.

Plants with potent drugs

Drug-containing medicinal plants are not the same as the dried or fresh leaves we use to enhance food flavour. To avoid confusion with culinary herbs, we should speak of ‘medicinal plants’. After all, one could overdose with a medicinal plant but not with rosemary. Plants have developed the ability to make potent chemicals as defences against dangerous organisms — not merely insects and mammals — but also against bacteria and fungi. Some of these chemical defences have very beneficial effects on the human body. The word for chemicals that affect our bodies is ‘drugs’. The fact that some drugs come from a plant instead of a test tube doesn’t make them automatically safer.

Useful plant drugs

About 40% of the medicines in European and American pharmacies and drug stores come from living organisms rather than from chemical vats. Numerous plant-derived drugs have either been incorporated into conventional medicine or have served as inspiration for man-made chemicals. Some success stories include:

Digoxin (digitalis) from foxglove, used to treat heart-disease victims.
Quinine treatment for malaria, discovered to be the active drug in the bark of the Cinchona tree, long used for treatment of fevers. Modern-day malaria treatments such as chloroquine were inspired by the chemical structure of quinine.
The bitter bark of willow trees, used as a bad-tasting medicine for headache relief, until chemists realised that salicylic acid was the active material.
Ephedrine, in the Chinese drug Ma-Huang, an effective short- term treatment for asthma.
Morphine derivatives from the poppy plant, for pain relief.

Other useful herbal medicines are missing from official druglists, because without patent protection, no commercial organisation can afford the expensive approval process now required. We can buy extracts but in the absence of official standards the amount of active ingredient is unclear. (Indeed, the active ingredient may not be known.) Some of these useful medicinal plants:

Aloe leaf exudate stimulates regrowth of damaged skin
Coltsfoot (Tussilago) teas are handy as occasional-use cough medicines.
Gentian (Angostura Bitters') stimulates the appetite and increases the flow of digestive juices, but can make breast milk bitter.
Ginger is an effective anti-nausea material. If the taste of preserved ginger is too strong for you, you could try ginger capsules.
Hops contain sedating volatiles, well known to hop pickers who have a hard time staying awake.
Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare, also known as feverfew, Bachelor's buttons, or as Chrysanthemum vulgare) can reduce the frequency and severity of migraine headaches.
Valerian roots have sedative chemicals that are safe even if you drink alcohol.

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