Herbal Remedy Questions? Reliable Advice Now Online
April 26, 2006 — -- Is it true that glucosamine chondroitin relieves arthritis? Or that caffeine may help headaches?
The herbal supplement market is a booming business. U.S. consumers spend more than $14 billion on supplements a year. But for people interested in herbal remedies, it can be hard to find accurate information.
But a new Natural Medicine Ratings online database from Consumer Reports should help fill the void. The database contains information on more than 13,600 natural products, including safety precautions and possible dangerous interactions with other drugs.
Various Web sites offer information on herbal remedies, but Consumer Reports claims its site is the first accessible, comprehensive source on the safety and effectiveness of such treatments.
For the most part, health experts welcome the new database.
"The natural medicine marketplace currently operates on a buyer-beware basis. I think that patients need all the objective guidance they can get where natural medicines are concerned," said Lynn Willis, professor of pharmacology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. "Unfortunately, the sources of objective information are out numbered by the nonobjective sources."
The site contains an "effectiveness scale" that rates natural substances in regard to specific ailments. Subscribers can search the interactive database by condition or remedy, and therapies are rated as "effective," "possibly effective," "possibly ineffective" or "insufficient evidence" of their effectiveness.
You must subscribe to Consumer Reports ($19/year, $4.95/month) to tap into the new database and Consumer Report's complete medical guide, but Consumer Reports offers one-month free trials to new users.
"Unlike prescription drugs, herbal remedies can be legally marketed without being approved by the FDA. Consumers are very much on their own in trying to figure out whether the product at the health food store is helpful or dangerous," said Nancy Metcalf, senior project editor at Consumer Reports.
Metcalf said the ratings are based on published clinical research, which researchers and scientists evaluate. For a therapy to receive the "effective" rating for a certain condition, two or more academic studies must prove that the therapy works.
There are more than 70 listings for echinacea, and to help sort through all that information the editors have categorized products by brand so that consumers can find information on the exact products they are searching. The site explains how substances work in the body.
The site also covers how the treatments interact with other medications, conditions or therapies. Consumers can find out when certain therapies should be avoided and search for possible interactions with prescription medications they take.
Many doctors are not prepared to discuss alternative therapies with their patients, because they haven't been adequately trained on the topic, said Dr. Nicole Nisly, associate professor of internal medicine and director of the complementary and alternative medicine program at University of Iowa Health Care.
Pharmacologist David Kroll agreed that many medical professionals are somewhat in the dark about supplements.
"Many doctors don't know much about [natural medicines], and even those who do are reluctant to comment for medical-legal reasons. [They fear] 'prescribing' something that isn't FDA approved," said Kroll, a senior research pharmacologist at RTI Natural Products Laboratory and adjunct associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center.
'Worth the Price of Admission'
However, those using the Consumer Reports site shouldn't assume that products listed are necessarily "pure" or accurate, said Conrad Earnest, director of the Center for Human Performance and Nutrition Research at the Cooper Institute in Dallas.
"It becomes more problematic when examining a multi-ingredient formula, whereby a company will seek to distinguish its products from others by adding unique ingredients," he said.
Because the FDA does not require research on such products, Earnest said "producing complete and authoritative reviews on every product is both unenviable and unlikely to happen."
Nonetheless, he said, "Consumer Reports has stepped up with an admirable product that, with proper oversight, can only grow to be more beneficial to consumers and health care practitioners alike. The site is worth the price of admission."
To create the database, Consumer Reports partnered with the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, an existing site for professionals.
Metcalf said that Consumer Reports also worked with the Therapeutic Research Center, a nonprofit that provides independent, objective drug analysis and has created the Comprehensive Database because it is a "well established, scientifically rigorous organization."
To get into the database, go to