Coffee is Herbal Medicine, not just a cup of joe.

Possibly that trip to the corner coffee house has more benefits than just the immediate wakeup call. I bet you never thought of coffee as an herbal medicine, but there is more to coffee bean than meets the eye. There are many benefits to ingesting this herbal medicine in moderation. Terry Graham, Chairman of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, is a coffee researcher and says, "Coffee is a complex beverage with hundreds, if not thousands, of bioactive ingredients, a cup of coffee is 2% caffeine, 98% other stuff."

People don't think of the coffee bean as an herb. Indeed, the coffee plant belongs to the Rubiaceae family, which is a source of several different Chinese medicinal herbs. At the proper dosages, the coffee bean has the ability to improve health in several ways. Drinking coffee can increase cardiovascular health and lower the risk of colon cancer, gallstones, cirrhosis, and Parkinson’s disease. A typical dosage for this type of herbal medicine is in the range of 6-18 grams per day, which translates to about 1-3 cups of coffee, depending on how many grams of ground beans are used. Roasting the coffee beans does not detract from the beneficial effects of this herb.

The primary active substances in the coffee bean are chlorogenic and caffeic acids. These substances have been shown to have anti-depressant and anti-anxiety effects. No wonder those local Starbucks have become our favorite pit stop. Another potential beneficial effect of these herbal medicine substances is to regulate blood sugar levels by reducing the absorption of glucose (thus reducing blood glucose levels).

There have been case studies done to examine the effect of long-term coffee drinking on type 2 diabetes mellitus, and it has been found that, “… long-term coffee consumption is associated with a statistically significantly lower risk for type 2 diabetes,” (Salazar-Martinez E et al. 2004). This study by Salazar-Martinez et al. took into consideration age, body mass index, as well as other risk factors to ensure accurate results. Type 2 diabetes mellitus is associated more with behavioral and lifestyle choices than necessarily with genetics and can be brought on by obesity, smoking, and physical inactivity.

Coffee, just like any other potent herbal medicine, is not necessarily for everyone. Some people may be more sensitive to the effects of caffeine or other ingredients present in coffee, such as potassium, niacin, magnesium and tocopherols. However, coffee has proven to be safe for the majority of people when consumed in reasonable amounts. So start your day guilt-free with a freshly brewed cup of herbal chlorogenics, drink up and enjoy.

Herbal Supplements are getting better everyday

This week is another important milestone for the Dietary Supplement industry. June 25, 2009 is the deadline the FDA (Food & Drug Assoc) has given for medium sized companies, (those with more than 20 employees) to comply with cGMP or Current Good Manufacturing Practices. What this means to the consumer is another step closer to more consistency in over the counter herbal supplements and all dietary supplement. The cGMP regulations protect the consumer by providing standards for ensuring purity, identity and strength of composition for each product produced.

All told it’s taken 14 years to get to this point. The FDA made allowances for smaller businesses to comply giving them an additional 3 years if they had less than 500 employees. Companies with greater than 500 employees were required to comply one year ago, June 2008. Finally, those companies with fewer than 20 employees have an additional year to comply with the new regulations, until June 2010.

The best producers in the dietary supplement and herbal supplement industry have been complying with the FDA regulations for years and these regulations have no major effect on them. Now the smaller companies need to comply, bringing standardization in the supplement industry. Most likely it will also give third party certification companies an even more important role, proving to the consumer that products truly contain the amount of herbal supplements listed on their label. No doubt manufacturer will begin putting pressure on their suppliers to give proof of the purity of their raw materials taking some of the testing burden of themselves. Down the road this may lead to increased cost of raw materials as product testing becomes more the norm rather than the exception.

Although this may lead to some retail price increases, overall it is extremely beneficial for the consumer. Products will me standardized and hopefully as a result more effective. Of course, unscrupulous manufacturers exist in every industry and those adding prescription medications into an “herbal supplement” may still find that without FDA inspectors knocking at the doors for regular inspections it is all to easy to provide tainted products. This is where third party independent testing is crucial. FDA will never have enough in their budget to run from factory to factory and oversee these regulations. Consumers must be diligent in knowing where their products are manufactured and by whom. They must do some minimal research at places like consumerlabs.com to get the independent assessments on product effectiveness and discern whether minimum standards for product purity, identity and strength our actually met. At least the FDA has raised the bar and companies must follow. As a consumer of dietary supplements all I can say is it’s about time.

Bamboo as Medicine

I just finished reading the most interesting article called “Bamboo as Medicine” By Subhuti Dharmananda, Ph.D., Director, Institute for Traditional Medicine, Portland, OR.

Asia has over 300 specie of bamboo (Zhu Ru) and many different parts of the plants are used in Chinese Medicine. The leaves are used for fevers, the inside whitish-greenish middle is used for convulsions and vomiting. Dried sap from the joints of bamboo are used for fevers and coughs with phlegm and even epilepsy. The stem of small bamboo are used in Japan for urinary retention and blood in the urine. The leaves can also be made into a beer. Not sure if that’s medicinal though. This article has excellent comparisons and characteristics on functions of the different specie, something I never learned in school. There are several species which are specifically for phlegm misting the brain. In Ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine bamboo has many uses including as an aphrodisiac. Since there’s no shortage of bamboo in the world and chemical constituents in bamboo are now known antioxidants, seems like a win-win situation to use bamboo as medicine.

One more bamboo fact. Bamboo was used in ancient China to make writing tablets. A wonderful Chinese SHL teacher I had back in Chinese Medicine College, when faced with a difficult student question on conflicting material, he would always answer with “Bamboo Problem. The meaning was: some very old bamboo reeds survived with ancient text about Chinese Medicine but some disintegrated and written words were lost forever. So bamboo as medicine is great but there’s a reason we don’t still use bamboo as writing tablets.

Check out this great article at: http://www.itmonline.org/arts/bamboo.htm

Malaria, Chinese Herb Advancing Science

In case you haven’t already heard, today is World Malaria Day,
April 25th, 2009.

I can’t think of a better way to start my first blog on Traditional Chinese Medicinal herbs than on the subject of malaria. Ok, I know most of us in the west don’t know much or maybe anything about this disease. Some may even be thinking… isn’t malaria one of those plagues from the middle ages?

Malaria is the number one killer in underdeveloped countries, especially prevalent in Africa where it’s an epidemic. As many as 5 million people each year contract malaria, many recover, many do not. Malaria kills nearly one million people worldwide each year. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has given millions of dollars for malaria research with the goal of eliminating malaria in our lifetime and by the looks of recent developments, well… read on.

So what does this have to do with Chinese herbal medicine and why did I choose this topic? Malaria has been successfully treated with Chinese herbal medicine for centuries. This is not news, well not to Acupuncturists or Chinese Medical Doctors nor to the scientists and drug companies searching out a cure or a vaccine for malaria. What is news is what Reuters published in an article (yesterday) which I’ve cited below and am quoting here, “elimination (of malaria) in a number of countries is certainly in sight." Fantastic, right?!

Here’s what really exciting! “New medical treatments such as a drug developed by a Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis using artemisinin, a compound derived from a herb used in Chinese traditional medicine, are driving down deaths and infections, said Chris Hentschel of the Medicines for Malaria Venture.” The FDA has also recently approved the drug Coartem, an artemisinin-based combination treatment (ACT) for malaria, which is said to have a 96% cure rate. Can you imagine: A pharmaceutical company using an herb-derived compound? Should we be shocked?

We in the Chinese Medical community are not shocked. We know the use of Chinese Medicinal herbs have been used for centuries with great success and we’ve all known that Artemisinin, Qing Hao, has been successfully used in the treatment of malaria. But doesn’t it feels great to be vindicated through “Big Pharma” ? When any big pharmaceutical company decides to study the compounds in “our” (Chinese) medicine cabinet we can all stand proud and say, look big pharma, our herbs have proven compounds that even your labs haven’t been able to invent and there’s more in the medicine cabinet than just Artemisinin.

The credibility of Chinese herbal medicine is coming full circle in the scientific age. We can only hope this is just the tip of the iceberg. The efficacy of Chinese herbal medicine has a 2000 plus year history. Reuter’s goes on to report, “The treatment, administered to 57 million people last year, saved half a million lives last year.” That’s big news! If there was a drug that saved 500,00 people in the US, last year alone, we would be hearing about it. Because it’s in underdeveloped nations, this news doesn’t make the nightly 5 o’clock. But I can think of no better way than to start my blog page with what should be the Biggest News in the world today, especially on World Malaria Day.

Reuters Article:Goal of eliminating malaria in sight -
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LO491804.htm

http://www.pharmacychoice.com/News/article.cfm?Article_ID=368705