Herbal Products Recommendations

Mercury free dentists

This list represents the input of complementary medicine practitioners and our research. We will continually add to the list. If you want to recommend a product or company that compounds herbs with integrity, please send us an E-mail.

Please visit the Dietary Supplement Vocabulary page for additional information on making wise purchases.

Herbal Product Recommendations

Crystal Star Herbs
Linda Rector-Page has been working with nutrition and herbal medicinals for the last twelve years in the Sierra foothills, first as a self-taught, and now as a certified Doctor of Naturopathy and Ph.D. in herbal research. Her experience has been extensive in formulating and testing herbal combinations. She has owned and operated The Rainbow Kitchen, a natural foods restaurant, worked as an employee and now half owner of The Country Store Natural Foods store, has written two successful books, Healthy Healing and Cooking /or Healthy Healing, and is the developer/owner of Crystal Star Herbal Therapy. Crystal Star Herbal Therapy is an extensive, complete line of herbal products. The combinations are wide-ranging in both form and use. All the formulas used by Crystal Star were developed by Linda, and tested for viability and proficiency over a considerable length of time, and with many hundreds of people. The growth and expansion of Crystal Star Herbal Therapy has been the key factor in the writing of her latest book, How To Be Your Own Herbal Pharmacist. http://www.everybodys.com/books/herbal.html

Eclectic Institute - they freeze dry their herbal extracts and have a line for the professional and the public.

Enzymatic Therapy

Frontier Herbs

Gaia Herbal Tinctures
12 Lancaster County Road, Harvard, MA 01451
800.831.7780, fax 800.717-1722

Green Terrestrial Herbs

Planetary Formulas
www.planetherb.com

Phyto-Pharmica
For professionals only

Rainbow Light Herbs

Red Mountain Remedies
Remedies for the Road
Convenient cotton pouch holds quick reference guidebook and remedies for: Jet Lag, Cold and Flu symptoms, Motion Sickness, Injuries, Foreign water and more. Owned by Jill Ruttenberg
1-888-791-8333 for orders
www.redmtremedies.com
rembox@aol.com

Sacred Medicine Sanctuary
Dr. Ingrid Naiman
seventhray@msn.com
www.cancersalves.com
www.astroheal.com

7 Song Botanicals
Available at herbalist's conferences.

Solaray Herbs

Wise Woman Herbals
1-800-532-5219
Owned by Sharol Tilgner, N.D., student of Herbalism since 1978. She graduated from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in 1990. Dr. Tilgner was Director of the Portland Naturopathic Clinic Medicinary for two years. Wise Woman Herbals Inc., is a 10 year old company which supplies more than 350 herbal products to health care practitioners. She and her husband own the organic, biodynamic herb farm, Wise Acres.

She is the editor of Herbal Transitions, associate editor of Medical Herbalism, and has produced 2 herbal videos entitled Edible and Medicinal Herbs, Volume 1, and
Edible and Medicinal Herbs, Volume II.

Each label also contains an expiration date. Some of the fresh plant liquid extracts have dry plant added to the product to increase their strength. In these cases, the fresh plant is necessary to achieve the required results. However, the addition of the dry plant creates a stronger extract in other aspects.

The Controversy

"We're in limbo," says Varro Tyler, one of the country's foremost herb experts and author of The Honest Herbal. On the one hand, he says, some unethical companies are making outrageous claims for inferior products, and the law makes it difficult for the FDA to do anything about it. On the other hand, the few restrictions on the books force responsible companies to word their labels so vaguely they're useless, even misleading. The only guarantee is confusion.

When it comes to the public's health, there's been a long tug-of-war between individual liberty and regulation. For most of the country's history, liberty had the upper hand. In 1937, however, a poisonous elixir killed more than 100 people, and the regulators began to gain ground. At first the FDA merely required manufacturers to prove that a drug was reasonably safe. Then a wary official in 1962 refused to approve a sedative called thalidomide. In Europe, where the drug was widely available, thousands of babies were born with terrible limb deformities after their mothers took the drug during pregnancy. Having averted disaster here, the agency went a step further and began to require large well-controlled trials to prove prescription drugs safe and effective.

The FDA also decided to reappraise all previously approved drugs to see if they worked as claimed. Of the many herbs on the list, only a handful made the cut. Most others could still be sold, but manufacturers couldn't claim they would treat a disease or condition. That loophole left the FDA uneasy. Finally, in 1993, the agency proposed that many herbs, and any vitamins sold in dosages exceeding 150 percent of the recommended daily allowance, should be considered prescription drugs. To many health-conscious baby boomers, it was a call to arms.

"If I were FDA commissioner," Tyler says, "I would take the 25 to 50 best-proven herbs in the world and approve them as over-the-counter drugs. I would set up a blue-ribbon panel of experts to review the evidence and then set about expanding the list." Tyler models his suggestions on Germany's widely respected Commission E. In 1978 that commission began reviewing all the available literature -- whether scientific or anecdotal -- on more than 300 herbs, eventually approving two-thirds. The United States, he says, should adopt the German standard for sanctioning herbs as drugs: absolute proof of safety and reasonable proof of efficacy. ....In other words, for the foreseeable future you'll have to fend for yourself. Read labels skeptically, avoid kitchen-sink herbal cocktails, and look for standardized extracts. If you have a serious condition or take prescription drugs, discuss any supplements with your doctor. (Pregnant women should be particularly careful; many supplements pose risks to the fetus.)