Free Republic

Americans may love to eat junk, but we’re nearly as passionate about doing penance, with more than half of us scarfing down dietary supplements on a regular basis. From herbal remedies to energy boosters, vitamins and weight-loss pills, supplements form a massive global industry — one that’s expected to reach $200 billion in value by 2025, according to the AMA Journal of Ethics. Trouble is, it’s a largely “Wild West” scene — and that’s by design, believe it or not. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 limits the ability of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate...

BOSTON (Reuters Health) - Use of echinacea, or extract of the purple coneflower, before the onset of full-blown symptoms of the common cold reduces the incidence by more than a half and the duration by almost two full days, researchers reported here at the annual meeting of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology. There are approximately one billion colds reported annually, Dr. Sachin A. Shah told meeting attendees. He commented that 20 percent of patients report using nutraceuticals for symptom management. Of these, echinacea is the most commonly used. Shah of the University of Connecticut, Storrs and colleagues conducted a...

Echinacea, the herbal supplement made from purple coneflower and used by millions of Americans to prevent or treat colds, neither prevented colds nor eased cold symptoms in a large and rigorous study. Then the subjects were secluded in hotel rooms for five days while scientists examined them for symptoms and took nasal washings to look for the virus and for an immune system protein, interleukin-8. Some had hypothesized that interleukin-8 was stimulated by echinacea, enabling the herb to stop colds. But the investigators found that those who took echinacea fared no differently from those who took a placebo: they were...