The use of herbs as chemical medicines. Herbal traditions are very different in different countries: the two major traditions represented in the UK are Western and Chinese. Some traditions use animal as well as plant substances. Historically, herbal remedies have been associated with quackery, and they have not entirely shed this image; for example, remedies are found on Internet offering ‘cures’ for cerebral palsy – this is currently not plausible.
The European Herbal and Traditional Medicine Practitioners Association (EHTPA) are working towards a system of statutory self-regulation in the UK and elsewhere, also including Ayurvedic and Tibetan herbal medicine, www.ehpa.eu.
Western herbalists are registered with the National Institute Of Medical Herbalists, tel: 01392 426022, www.nimh.org.uk. The website contains a clickable map to find a local member.
Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine, tel: 01603 623994, www.rchm.co.uk
Individualised (“High Street”) herbal medicine was recently the subject of a systematic review, which looked at existing studies and found they provided no proof of benefit. It also expressed concern about possibly harmful side effects. An NHS description of this study suggests that phytotherapy which confines itself to substances of proven benefit, may be different from the type of practice that was studied in this research. (Tailored herbal medicines offer no benefit. NHS Choices October 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2aqrdr.)
Herbmed, www.herbmed.org, sets out the known safety data and evidence about each individual herb.
