Herbs are defined in several ways depending on the context which the word is used. In the field of medicine, the they are most accurately defined as crude drugs of vegetable origin utilized for the treatment of disease states, often of a chronic nature, or to attain or maintain a condition of improved health. Pharmaceutical preparations made by extracting herbs with various solvents to yield tinctures, fluidextracts, extracts, or the like, are known as phytomedicinals (plant medicines).
It is our premise that herbs in their medicinal sense, are drugs. It is still the case that many persist in defining herbs as foods or nutritional supplements. If however, they are used in the treatment of disease or improvement of health, they conform to the definition of the word drug.
Herbs are different in several respects from the type of purified therapeutic agents we customarily call drugs. Firstly, herbs are more dilute than the concentrated chemicals that are so familiar to everyone in the form of Tylenol tablets or Amoxicillin capsules. A simple example might illustrate this subtle difference. Many take caffeine for its stimulatory effects on the central nervous system. The usual dosages are 100mg to 200mg contained in an over the counter tablet formulation. Alternatively, it is possible to get the same effect by drinking a caffeine-containing beverage, such as coffee or tea. Coffee contains 1 to 2 percent of the active constituent, it is necessary to extract up to 20gm of the product to yield the same amount.
Herbs often contain additional active principles that may be closely related both chemically and therapeutically to the major active principle. Add to this many physiologically inert substances such as cellulose and starch. Unlike the drugs that we are familiar with, which contain one active ingredient plus a number of inert substances which make up the dosage form (such as tablet, capsule, lozenge).
The proper identification and appropriate quality is an extremely important issue in the field of herbal medicine. At one time, the herbs commonly used today were once the subject of official monographs in The United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) and The National Formulary (NF). These official monographs established legal standards of identity and of quality of the botanical drugs.
Unfortunately, no such standards exist today. Many of the herbs sold are collected in the wild in developing nations by people who are not necessarily knowledgeable about the subtleties of plant taxonomy. The herbs are then sold to companies that usually market them by their common names instead of their recognized Latin binomial, adding to the inaccuracies and so on with each change of hands. As a result, it is ordinarily impossible for the lay person to determine the quality or even the identity of the plant material visually. Government standards of quality are nonexistent, so the buyer is totally dependent on the reputation of the seller. The size of the selling company is not necessarily an indicator of quality either.
Quality, as measured by concentration of active principles, or lack of adulterating chemicals, or simply the accuracy of the species is maintained by the supplier, voluntarily. Fortunately, there are companies concerned with developing a reputation for quality products. It is the responsibility of the practitioner, herbalist or pharmacist to research the supplier sufficiently to assure a reputable product.
Despite the problems and shortcomings of current "paraherbalism", there is much happening within this area that promises to preserve and promote the rational use phytomedicinals. The use of medicinal herbs has a long history and is intimately linked to the development of modern therapeutic agents. Therefore, these agents already have credibility. What is required to prevent the renewed interest from falling prey to faddism is the development of some model of rational herbalism. This involves not only improving the quality of the products, but enhancing our understanding of their use.
What we hope to do at the Stafford Pharmacy & Home Healthcare website is to promote the safe and effective use of those herbal medicines, by sharing our information about these medicines and their therapeutic uses. Because this industry is in such a state of growth, we expect that this information will be updated out of necessity.
Specialized Products (Standardized Constituents and Extracts)
There is a growing number of products derived from botanical sources that have been refined and standardized according to new techniques that have allowed for the production of some extremely effective medications that have the safety that one would expect from an herbal, but the potency and the consistency of action, mirroring that of a traditional pharmaceutical. Listed are a few of the products in this category that we are familiar with (so it is not exhaustive).