Medicinal herbs are a fact of life in the United States. "Thirty percent of the general population uses herbs regularly, and you can double that for psychiatric patients, who are always trying to self-medicate," said Dr. Mary L. Hardy, director of integrative medicine at the Ted Mann Family Resource Center, University of California, Los Angeles.
Patients take herbs for reasons that may or may not be related to the condition for which they are being treated. "If there has been an incomplete response to medication, they may be trying to maximize it without going up on the dose," Dr. Hardy said. They may use herbs to address side effects or for medical purposes.
The clinician is likely to be the last to know. "Patients don't tell their doctors about their use of herbs, because they don't consider them medications or because they're afraid of being laughed at," said Dr. Edzard Ernst, professor of complementary medicine at Peninsula Medical School, Exeter, England.
The literature suggests that patients are particularly reluctant to disclose herbal use to a physician who has prescribed medication for the same indication, Dr. Hardy noted.
But it's important to know. Medicinal herbs are pharmacologically active agents and they can, in theory at least, alter the response to prescribed medications.
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Good post,at least half of all prescription pharmas come from or are syntheticly derived from plants in the first place.
My issue is Zyprexa which is only FDA approved for schizophrenia (.5-1% of pop) and some bipolar (2% pop) and then an even smaller percentage of theses two groups. So how does Zyprexa get to be the 7th largest drug sale in the world?
The drug causes increased diabetes risk,and medicare picks up all the expensive fallout.There are now 7 states (and counting) going after Lilly for fraud and restitution.