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Ensuring Safety and Quality in Supplements and Herbal Medicine |
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Written by Braxton Ponder
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2 4 If the product is well made, is it safe for me?
Chinese herbal medicine constitutes a highly complex approach to herbal treatments. Most of the formulas contain numerous herbs, and are meant to treat a specific pattern of disease symptoms. It takes years of study to get a good grasp of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnostics, individual herb properties, dosages, cautions and formulation theory. If you are picking formulas for yourself off the shelf or from a web site, understand that you are taking responsibility for diagnosing and treating yourself using principles and medications that you probably don’t understand very well. In TCM, diseases are sub-divided into specific “patterns” which indicate the nature of the disease and imply root causes which can be very different from one another. There might be half a dozen different treatments for a general condition like stomachache, or headache. Without understanding the properties of the formula you are taking, you can easily make yourself worse because it is inappropriate for your specific condition.
Another key point: “natural” does not automatically mean “safe” (think of hemlock, lead, arsenic, etc.) TCM medicinals include a number of potent substances that most definitely are not safe when used inappropriately. A good example is the misuse of ephedra (da huang) as a weight-loss aid. In TCM, its primary application is for certain respiratory problems, and it is noted to be unsafe for those with heart problems and other conditions. It’s a useful herb when properly used. It can be deadly when abused.
The dietary supplement industry is big business, and products can be rushed out with the flimsiest of evidence that they are beneficial. Consumers are the primary testers for side-effects. And yes, herbs - like any other substance that changes the way your body functions - can have side effects.
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