What's in your natural medicine cabinet?

The results of our on-line survey on herbal health knowledge reveal there are a couple of areas you need to gen up on.

If you regularly use herbal medicines you may be interested to hear that the results of our recent on-line survey show that there are still some grey areas in herbal health knowledge.  For example the results showed that 69 per cent of participants take herbal medicines alongside conventional medication yet only 52 per cent remember to check with their doctor if taking the two together could have an adverse reaction.

Furthermore although more than half the participants  (64 %) think herbal medicines are just as safe as over-the -counter medicines most of them (82 %) still don’t realise that not all remedies are safe as each other.

They could be forgiven for being confused because until recently there has been no sure-fire way of telling if a product has been assessed for quality and safety and accuracy of product information. Over the past few years, however, the herbal product market has started to be regulated. The reason? To help reassure us that the products we are buying are safe, of consistent and appropriate quality and that the information about the product is reliable and accurate.

And from 2011 all unregulated herbal medicines will have to be authorised for sale by the UK’s Medicine’s and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA). You can find out more about how to tell if a product has been awarded MHRA registration in our Safety-first feature.