Herbal Healing

In a new display of Flower Power for the late 1990s, baby boomers are gulping down all sorts of old remedies derived from plants

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America's rediscovery of the healing power of plants marks a return to an ancient form of medicine that was medicine for thousands of years--and that remains so for 80% of the world's people. Herbal remedies are common throughout Asia and Europe, particularly in Germany, France and Italy. Poppy extract was used to quiet crying children in the time of the pharaohs, eons before the medical use of opiates. Ephedra, the main ingredient of some over-the-counter asthma treatments, has relieved breathing problems in China for 5,000 years. An estimated 25% of all modern pharmaceutical drugs are derived from herbs, including aspirin (from white willow bark); the heart medication digitalis (foxglove); and the cancer treatment Taxol (Pacific yew tree). There might have been no sexual revolution without the birth-control pill, derived from a Mexican yam.

U.S. doctors more commonly prescribed medicinal herbs before World War II and before the advent of wonder drugs like penicillin. But the connection between plants and healing has never been lost. Today pharmaceutical companies send Indiana Jones-style researchers into rain forests around the world to cajole tribal medicine men out of their secrets and scout out new plants that might be proved as remedies and profitably mass marketed. Such teams have turned up some of the most important compounds used in chemotherapy for cancer.

Yet while there is little clear historic division between herbal and pharmaceutical remedies, the two are as distinct as cats and dogs to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Drugs, whether sold by prescription or over the counter, must meet rigid FDA standards for safety and effectiveness. And companies that package food must demonstrate its purity. But ever since Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah rammed through the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act--with the enthusiastic support of a supplement industry largely based in his state--herbs and other supplements have been all but exempt from federal oversight. "The FDA still doesn't like us," says Loren Israelsen, executive director of the Utah Natural Products Alliance, whose companies grind out preparations with a retail value of $4 billion a year. "They ask, 'Who are these guys--food or drug?' We just don't fit the model. That's the nature of our products. And we've been willing to fight."

In this chaotic marketplace, herbal enthusiasts like Theo Pappas choose their brands with care. Pappas, 58, a graphics artist in New York City, takes ginkgo biloba for mental alertness and goldenseal and echinacea to boost her immune system. She tosses in multivitamins and the mineral selenium, plus a pair of preparations to lower her cholesterol. She tops it all off with primrose oil and a soy extract, two botanicals she believes help prevent a recurrence of the breast cancer that forced her to undergo a mastectomy four years ago. Pappas chose her regimen over the prescription drug Tamoxifen, a powerful remedy that can suppress breast tumors but has also been linked to an increased risk of uterine cancer. "This is working better than any weird prescription medicine," Pappas says of her supplements. "I definitely feel healthier. I have more energy."

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