Rob McCaleb interviewed by Anthony Qaiyum on October 19, 1995 "Herbs are the fastest growing category of products in the drugstore today." Rob McCaleb is president of the Herb Research Foundation. Tripod: First of all, if medicinal herbs are truly effective, why are so many people skeptical of them? RM: Lack of knowledge. Our culture abandoned medicinal plants with the wonder drugs of the thirties, forties, and fifties. We have not gone back to them because of economic and regulatory pressures that make it financially nonviable to pursue plant remedies in preference to synthetics. Tripod: So would you say that there's some kind of giant drug company conspiracy to keep herbal remedies unpopular? RM: I would not say that at all. I would say it is the drug companies reacting to the regulatory and economic reality that they can patent a chemical and make millions and millions of dollars on it, and they cannot patent a plant and make a dime on it. So why would they put the research money into proving that a plant works when they'll never get the payoff? It's really an inadvertent combination of food and drug law and patent law that has doomed medicinal plants in this country? Tripod: Can you give me a short description of how herbal remedies work? RM: Herbal remedies do so many things-- there are close to 2000 individual herbs used for health in this country, and they have every kind of effect, from stimulant to sedative, from digestive aid to emetic, and everything in between. They all work by different mechanisms. Sometimes those mechanisms are very well understood, sometimes they are poorly understood. In general, with medicinal agents of any kind, it is understood what they do long before it's understood how. But in some cases they do have a lot of knowledge about how they work. Tripod: So, is the only difference between herbal medicine and conventional medicine the natural element? RM: Well, I guess there we get into a philosophical discussion. Because some cultural medicine or traditional medicine -- for example traditional Chinese medicine and Ayurvedic medicine -- focus more on energetics, that is, that plants have a certain energy profile that causes or interacts with the body's energy profile in a particular way. That is a very difficult concept for Western science and medicine, and I think also a fairly foreign concept to most American consumers. To the extent that we've studied plants and their effects, we know that they work with mechanisms that are similar to the way other things work. And not necessarily the way synthetic drugs work, although in some cases they do. Let me give you an example: Many of the best selling herbal remedies work through anti-oxidant properties which protect cells, particular organs or tissues, from oxidative damage that can cause them to wear out and fail sooner. And that is very similar to the way anti-oxidant vitamins and some of the anti-oxidant minerals work. It's probably also similar to the ways that some of the synthetic anti-oxidants work -- that is, they work by absorbing reactive oxygen or nitrogen fragments that can cause damage to DNA, to protein, to enzymes, to cell walls, and so on. I guess the short answer to that is that herbs work, like foods work, like drugs work. They all have similarities in the things that they can do. Tripod: Can I ask you about a few common ailments, and maybe you can tell me something about an herb that is used to treat it? What about the flu? RM: Colds and flues -- the number-one remedy for that in this country now is echinacia, the purple cone flower. Echinacia is a plant used by the native Americans, centuries ago. In fact, it was one of the major medicines of the plains Indians, used by at least fourteen tribes for human and veterinary medicine. It's now been researched for about 50 years, in Europe especially, where it's been shown to stimulate the immune system and actually has been clinically proven to shorten the duration of colds. Tripod: What do you think about the rising popularity of flu shots? RM: Let me highlight the difference between the two. Echinacia is what's called a non-specific immune stimulant, or a general immune stimulant. That means that it turns up the activity of our immune systems. So when someone feels like they're getting a cold, they take echinacia, their body responds by mounting an immune response that goes after any abnormal cells or organisms in the body. Flu shots, as with all vaccines, work on memory cells, a minor component of the immune system, and they only work specifically against a particular antigen. So you can get a flu shot -- and this has happened numerous times -- against whatever doctors predict is going to be the major flu this season, and you can get the flu anyway, because the flu shot is so specific it only protects against one type, rather than everything. "...there are close to 2000 individual herbs used for health in this country... " Tripod: I get headaches all the time. Are there any herbal remedies that can help? RM: There are many different causes of headaches, so it's hard to mention just one thing for headaches. One thing that has been researched specifically for migraine headaches, and also for arthritis, is feverfue. It's a plant that actually grows wild in a lot of North America. Feverfue at two fresh leaves per day has been found to prevent migraines in migraine sufferers, or reduce their occurrence and severity. It also has some curative effects. It works in a way similar to the way either anti-inflammatory or anti-pain compounds do. It affects the synthesis of neurochemicals, like prostaglandins, that are involved in pain transmission. Another one is ginger, which has aspirin-like effects on prostaglandins. There's only one clinical case reporting its use in migraines, but it too has been shown to be beneficial, might be even more beneficial in something that has a sinus component to it, because it has benefits for the sinuses as well. Tripod: What about for harder-to-treat symptoms like hair loss? RM: Oriental medicine has a lot of remedies for hair loss. I'm not aware of any of them that have decent research behind them. Tripod: Can herbal remedies ever be harmful? RM: Certainly. Anything can be consumed in excess, and there is a toxic dose of everything. In fact, half a dozen people per year die in the United States from water overdose. They literally drown by drinking too much water. Just to let you know, there is nothing that is safe if overused. So yes, certainly. With almost 2000 herbs on sale in this country, some are more potent than others. There are some that, like water, you'd have to drink so much of that you'd really run into problems standing all day in the bathroom before you ran into any toxicity from the plant, something like the flavor herbal teas: mint teas, or chamomile, rosehips, hibiscus. Those kind of things, grocery store flavor teas, have such low toxicity that it would be very difficult to hurt yourself with it. Others are more potent in their effects and consequently have higher toxicity. Now this is true of foods, too. For example you can eat corn starch all day long, it's hard to hurt yourself with that, but you can't eat mustard powder, more than a couple tablespoons without hurting yourself, or salt, without killing yourself. So with the range of foods and drugs and herbs there is an acceptable toxicity range, but it's different for every substance. Tripod: Many people nowadays call marijuana "herb." Is this pure coincidence? RM: Well, it fits within the definition of herb as a dried plant or plant parts which are used for savory, aromatic, or medicinal purposes. So from that standpoint, I guess it would fit the definition. Of course that's a very broad definition-- almost everything fits that definition. So I don't know if it's a coincidence, but it actually fits the definition. It's certainly not one of the major things we study here. Tripod: Is there large support for legalization of marijuana among the herbal community? RM: Frankly, I don't know if I can answer that question. The herbal community is very diverse. For example, one of the major health markets in the country is Utah because the Mormons tend to avoid drugs, and they avoid not only illicit drugs, but legal drugs like caffeine, tobacco, and even prescribed drugs. They try to live a natural lifestyle, and certainly they would not be expected to favor legalization of marijuana. A lot of herb users in the southeastern part of the country are strongly Christian. I would imagine that they too would oppose that legalization. And yet there is also a part of your community that does have a counterculture element, sort of growing up with the granola, herbal tea, brown rice lifestyle, and perhaps a number of people in that community do have experience with or favorable attitudes toward legalization of marijuana. Tripod: It seems to me that the popularity of herbal remedies suffers because it is so often associated with what a lot of people would call "new age drivel." Do you think this is true? RM: Yes. I think it suffers from a lot of things. I think it suffers from the elements within the industry who've relied on hype and exaggeration to sell products -- not that that's unique to the herb industry, but it definitely hurts credibility. It suffers from misinformed attitudes in the medical community. We talk to doctors every day who are astonished when we can send them a dozen solid, double blind, placebo controlled trials of herbs. They had no idea. And of course they wouldn't, because these things are published rarely, in fact never in the Journal of the American Medical Association, sometimes in the Lancet, which is the major British medical journal. But more often it's in things like Plant Emetic or Journal of Ethnopharmacology, things that are well known to plant drug scientists, but are really obscure to the medical community. So the medical community is very out of touch with the level of research that a lot of these herbs have been put to. Tripod: Will herbal medicine gain mainstream acceptance in our country anytime soon? RM: Yes, absolutely. It's happening right now. Herbs are the fastest growing category of products in the drugstore today. They are the second fastest growing category in grocery stores. So it's happening as we talk, and my prediction is that within five years we will not recognize the pharmacy. Visit the Herb Research Foundation on the Web at: http://www.herbs.org