Pay attention to the quality of herbal medicines

Herbal medicines - pay attention to the drug quality!

15/10/2014

In recent months, twice passions-containing preparations had to be recalled by their manufacturers. The authorities have discovered that they contained mold toxins. Nevertheless, Prof. Theodor Dingermann from the Committee of Research Natural Medicine e.V. sees no cause for concern for the consumers: „As serious as these incidents are, they also show that drug control works in this country.“

The quality of a herbal medicinal product depends, among other things, on the quality of the vegetable raw material. Only if cultivation or collection, harvest time and further processing take place at the highest level can the pharmaceutical production lead to an optimal result. The best prerequisite for this: own cultivation or a long-term, trusting cooperation of manufacturers and pharmaceutical drug dealers. Good goods have their price.

However, the cost and competitive pressure on the market means that low-quality pharmaceutical drug deliveries can find their buyer. Especially where producers buy the drugs for mass preparations already prepared by an extract manufacturer, they often do not know where the raw materials come from. Of course, even drugs traded in this way can have a good quality, but the fact is: the more stations a vegetable raw material passes on the way to the finished product, the more sources of error will arise.

In the case of herbal medicines, quality control still applies, as the current example of Passion Flower preparations shows. Plant nutrition supplements lack comparable quality assurance mechanisms. Because they are handled according to food law. Consumers should therefore consider carefully when they want to buy a cheap product from the supermarket or drugstore instead of a well-documented and state-controlled herbal medicine. (KFN)

Picture: JPW. Peters