Word: herbalize
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...considering the effectiveness of any medicine, conventional or herbal, it's important to consider that the placebo effect, or the patient's desire to believe in a cure, can have a powerful influence. Recent studies show, for instance, that while 86% of men taking a baldness remedy reported that it worked, so did 42% of men taking a placebo...
Research on herbs has lagged in the U.S. because companies have little incentive to spend $500 million on 10 to 15 years of tests--as pharmaceutical firms typically do to check out new medications. Unlike drugs, most herbal preparations cannot be patented, so the testing company would not be rewarded for its efforts. The FDA, meanwhile, would have to prove that a supplement is unsafe before yanking it off the market, yet it has no authority to test nutritional supplements. "The result is that there are a lot of products on the market that little is known about," says...
...absence of tight oversight has allowed makers of herbal products to flourish, particularly in Utah, where the dry desert air helps keeps raw materials and pills and capsules fresh, and where land and skilled labor have been relatively inexpensive. Utah's free-enterprise culture has nurtured characters like Tom Murdock, an Arizona entrepreneur who in 1969 started what is now Murdock Madaus Schwabe, whose Nature's Way line is the top-selling herbal brand in health-food stores. Murdock founded the company to market the chaparral herb, which he had used to treat his cancer-stricken wife...
That will happen naturally as the newcomers slug it out with big-bucks ad campaigns. Bayer and Whitehall-Robins are spending a total of $75 million between them to launch their herbal brands. Bayer, sensing the public's confusion about such products, decided not to cite herbs in the names of its new One-A-Day preparations but to use tags like Cold Season and Memory and Concentration instead. Says brand manager Michaela Griggs: "We found that consumers don't fully understand what herbs...
...ever nursed a cold with hot tea and honey, jump-started the day with a cappuccino, or soothed a sore throat with a mentholated cough drop, you've practiced herbal medicine. These remedies are so much a part of our daily routine that no one thinks them flaky. Nor do most doctors mind that you use them--as long as you don't overdo it. So why are so many U.S. physicians reluctant to recommend herbal supplements? Is it just a matter of ignorance and provincialism...