Monday, September 30, 2002

Herbal remedies 'could harm health'

Herbalists have warned people are putting their health at risk by using remedies inappropriately.

The UK market for herbal remedies such as St John's Wort and ginseng is worth around £126m a year, but experts say some of that is money badly spent.

Trudy Norris, president of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists warned against mixing remedies, combining them with conventional medicines or taking poor quality supplements.

She told BBC News Online herbs were safe and could be used successfully.
But she added:" What we are concerned about is that lots of people self-prescribe in an inappropriate way.

"So someone may want to use a herb instead of a drug, for example someone may buy a herbal combination and equate it with HRT, and they don't equate.

"And they may go into a shop to buy, say, St John's Wort, where there's a whole shelf-full of various quality and standards."

Source BBC News

Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home