While herbal remedies are a good bet for some health problems, they can also create new ones. "For some conditions like depression and chronic pain, herbs might be a less toxic, less extreme kind of solution," says Kennedy. "These kinds of conditions are tough to treat effectively with conventional drug treatment." But in the case of blood thinners - feverfew, garlic, ginkgo, ginseng, and ginger - they can compound to make you a mini-haemophiliac. Also, ginseng alters blood glucose levels and should never be used by people with diabetes. The biggest problems are that people using herbal remedies almost never tell their doctors, and herbal remedies are often unregulated so purity and strength is a crapshoot. In an extreme case: Researchers from Columbia University and the City University of New York tested 11 commercially available brands of black cohosh, used to treat symptoms of menopause, and found that three of those products contained no black cohosh at all. Caveat emptor indeed! [GT]
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