Through most of The Clan of the Cave Bear, that runawaybest seller about the lives and loves of the cave man, the heroine, Ayla, is groomed to take over from the tribe's Medicine lady. Ayla is not only taught what plants to use for what problems, but also what part of the plants (the stem, root or leaves) to use and how to process them (hang them upside down to dry, grind them in a bowl, etc.).
Over the course of nearly 500 pages, a lot of pains are easedand wounds mended through the herbal magic. And it's quite natural that in the thousands of years that the cave man and woman were on this earth they would have learned to use some of nature's offerings for medicinal purposes.
Their method of testing a product was to go directly to clinicaltrials--that is, they used the trial-and-error method. No doubt a lot of people got sick--or sicker--in the process, just as today a lot of laboratory mice and rats are made ill by modern man's testing.
But some of the cave dwellers had their pains eased, possiblyfrom the medicine and possibly from simply being told that they were going to be cured. Whatever the reason, medicine practiced by the cave man has been carried down through the years and into societies as modern as ours.
Such folk medicine leaves a lot of people believing that thereremain simple herbal cures for many health problems. But such is not the case. Much herbal medicine lore has since proved unfounded. And some of the herbs are dangerous--a point that author Jean M. Auel noted when Ayla was being instructed about the herb henbane: "Very useful to a medicine woman, but it should never be eaten; it can be dangerously poisonous if used as food.'
The healing value of herbs is ever controversial. David G.Spoerke Jr., a University of Utah pharmacy professor and author of Herbal Medications, acknowledged the controversy in the introduction to his book, published in 1980.
"There is a growing number of people who are turning to"natural' means of health care. . . . Some of these people say that herbal medicines are the only true means of obtaining "natural' health. They pit themselves against those who think that all herbal medication is quackery and the only safe, effective drugs are those produced by the pharmaceutical industry. The truth, of course, lies between these two extremes.'
Ah, but where between those two extremes does truth reside?There's the rub.
Matthew Suffness, Ph.D., head of the National Cancer Institute'sNatural Products Branch, which studies herbs for antitumor qualities, says that those herbal medications that work generally work only on minor diseases. Dr. Suffness is not surprised that some do work; after all, he says, "You're looking at thousands of years of clinical experience--not "controlled' clinical experience, of course--but the things that survived didn't make people sick and did do some good.' Despite all that "clinical' experience, he warns that "you want to be careful that you don't get into a megadose situation.'
Traditionally, herbal preparations contain only smallamounts of active ingredients. However, those small amounts might be toxic or poisonous.
Richard Ronk, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, also preaches caution. "Man does not graze indiscriminately in Nature's garden,' says Ronk.
The job of deciding where the truth lies often falls to theFood and Drug Administration. Charged with regulating drugs, cosmetics and most foods, FDA is looked to for guidance on herb usage. Botanical or "natural' products that are used in medicines have to be of proven safety and effectiveness. Herbs used in foods must also be nontoxic.
Foods quickly get classified as drugs when thereapeuticclaims are made for them. For example, if a manufacturer claims that his "Dermadough' bread contains "16 herbs that will help get rid of your pimples,' that is a therapeutic, or healing, claim, and therefore the bread can be considered--and regulated as--a drug. That means the manufacturer has to back the claim that those 16 herbs will do as touted, and do it without injuring the health of anyone who tries the acne cure by eating the bread.
Upon discovering that Dermadough has become a drug, themanufacturer may decide to take the claim off the label and simply sell the bread as a food. However, as a result of a recent court ruling, the manufacturer cannot merely issue a new label without the claim. The product has to be relabeled "in a manner sufficient to disassociate the reconditioned product from its history of use as a drug.'
This could require a change in the brand name as well as achange in the name of the manufacturer, packer or distributor.
Herbs used in food for flavoring and other purposes and forwhich no drug claims are made must also be safe for consumption. In looking at such herb-containing foods, FDA "must consider whether the substance has a history of use in food . . . and whether there have been any adverse effects associated with consumption of the substance, including long-term toxicity or carcinogenicity,' 1986 policy guidelines note. "Such history of use in food must include information that the substance has been used as a food ingredient and not as a drug, tonic, or folk remedy.'
For a number of years, FDA included in its policy guidelinesa list of 27 botanical products that were classified as unsafe on the basis of published scientific studies. The list was a reference tool for agency investigators, but it proved controversial and has been dropped from FDA's current Compliance Policy Guidelines (copies of which are available to the public and industry). The new guidelines state that the agency "will consider action against botanical products as food on a case-by-case basis under provisions' of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
Hundreds of plant extracts are used in cosmetics. Generally,the herbs are assumed to be safe and are put into cosmetic products without any prior FDA approval under the law. The agency may take action when a product or ingredient proves to be harmful.
One reason humans shouldn't munch about cavalierly in Nature'sgarden is that the gardener, Mother Nature, for all her simple appeal, is a complex person. As NCI's Dr. Suffness says of natural products: "You can isolate just about as many [chemical] compounds as you want, depending on the sensitivity of the instruments you're using.'
Nature is not only complex, but also capricious. Bloodroot isa case in point. In herbal medicine lore, bloodroot, which gives out a red juice when the root is damaged, is used for the treatment of warts, nasal polyps, and skin cancer. The American Indians also drank bloodroot tea for their rheumatism. Back in 1857, an English doctor by the name of Fell thought enough of it to develop a salve for treating breast tumors, according to Herbs That Heal by William A.R. Thompson, M.D. However, Dr. Thompson reports that a London hospital ran a trial on the salve with contradictory results. Thompson says other studies resulted in only "some scientific evidence for its folklore reputation. . . .'
Now along comes a U.S. toothpaste manufacturer claimingthat a bloodroot derivative fights plaque that builds up on teeth and causes all kinds of dental problems. (See "The Dental Plaque Battle Is Endless but Worth It' in the September 1984 FDA Consumer.) The extract of Sanguinaria canadensis contains an alkaloid (a nitrogen-based organic compound) that was the very same substance thought by Dr. Fell and others to fight cancer.
A November 1986 monograph in the Lawrence Review ofNatural Products said: "A large body of well-designed studies has found that toothpastes and oral rinses containing sanguinarine help reduce and limit the deposition of dental plaque in as little as 8 days.' Many of the studies cited in the monograph were done by scientists associated with the toothpaste manufacturer.
One such study told how the compound was linked with oralhygiene. "The chemical structure of sanguinarine is similar to [compounds found in a] species of plant, which is used in Africa as tooth-cleaning sticks and are reported to be beneficial to the oral hygiene of these native cultures,' according to a March 1984 article in the Journal of the American Dental Association.
But no New Drug Application for the product has been filedwith the Food and Drug Administration, and the agency has yet to decide on the claims being made for sanguinarine and other anti-plaque products that are intended for sale over the counter (without prescription).
However, the case of bloodroot and its sanguinarine derivativeprovide a good example why we should graze with care in Mother Nature's garden. The "clinical trials' of the American Indians using bloodroot for rheumatism have proved to be of little value. Man was deceived, but the compound still may (or may not) have some other medicinal value.
Still another example of the it-doesn't-work-for-this-but-it-may-work-for-that approach is periwinkle. As a folk medicine it was supposed to cure diabetes. But it didn't stand up to 20th century studies. However, it has been discovered that an alkaloid in it may be able to fight tumors. NCI's Natural Products Branch believes that the periwinkle plant from Madagascar has the best properties for the job. The anti-tumor value was discovered by scientists looking for the key to the supposed diabetes use.
Mother Nature, it seems, is a coy lady when it comes tosharing the secrets of her pharmacopoeia. by Jean M. Auel , Roger W. Miller