Watchdog Healthcheck

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone,

Did anyone see Watchdog Healthcheck tonight? (Mon 4th), it was about

Complementary Medicine and included a section on herbs. The safety of Raspberry

leaf tea was brought into question (in fact the advise was not to use it),

Gingko, Piper and Hypericum were all given a mention. Concerns about safety,

combining with other prescribed drugs, etc were brought up, very real concerns I

know, but what are we all trained to do? Aren't we the experts here? Prof Ernst

(is that man on our side?) gave his opinion that although a herbalist will tell

you herbs are safe, research and clinical trials must be performed and that

evidence must be provided to prove them so.

The jist of the report was damning on herbal remedies, and, my main gripe is

that no differentation was made between the pitfalls of OTC self-prescribing

(most of the herbs pictured were Holland & Barratt, etc,etc) and the advice of a

properly qualified Herbalist. Certainly there was no mention of the Institute,

or any recommendation to seek treatment from specialists in the field such as

us!

A report such as this, has the potential to do much damage to our credibility

and we can ill afford it - I still struggle to get patients. It was on primetime

BBC, it strikes me that the Institute must raise it's profile, big time.

Researchers for these programmes should be thinking, Herbalism - National

Institue, in the same breath! A little ambitious perhaps, but surely they

shouldn't be able to research Herbal Medicine without falling over the

Institute's name somewhere.

On a more positive note there was a token gesture by a GP who is also a

Complementary therapist who was given a few seconds to say that Raspberry leaf

tea was OK to take in pregnancy and that moves were being made by the Gov to

invest in research, but blink and you'd miss it!

All the best,

from a disgruntled Sue Cobbold sue.cobbold@...