Your Herbal Meds: Mixed with Cow Dung Or Pure? |Dr.Steve’s Bottom Line

Dr.Steve’s BOTTOM LINE: So you’re about to take your favorite herbal for something like irritable bowel or other ailment and then someone tells you the story they just read about Chinese herbs coming over with cow dung or other undesirable elements added in…. no extra charge!  Yuck! And, that’s not the whole story.  With cow dung come parasites.  Hmmm, maybe THAT’s why you have irritable bowel?   Well beyond this horror show, you also want to know if the ingredients are actually what they say they are.  How do you know?

There is something called GMP or Good Manufacturing Practices, which reputable herbal, supplement manufacturers and compounding pharmacies follow. This paper talks about the details of creating such a quality assurance program and the “technicalese” should get you to realize that you want herbals and supplements from manufacturers that are proudly using such GMPs. It costs more to do this, but the peace of mind is worth it. Bottom line: look for evidence of GMP standards noted on the label or insert and shy away from buying directly from overseas. That “pure” herb you ordered up may be pure dung and parasites.

Quality assurance for Chinese herbal formulae: standardization of IBS-20, a 20-herb preparation.

Chin Med. 2010 Feb 22;5(1):8

Authors: Ip SP, Zhao M, Xian Y, Chen M, Zong Y, Tjong YW, Tsai SH, Sung JJ, Bensoussan A, Berman B, Fong HH, Che CT

ABSTRACT: Background The employment of well characterized test samples prepared from authenticated, high quality medicinal plant materials is key to reproducible herbal research. The present study aims to demonstrate a quality assurance program covering the acquisition, botanical validation, chemical standardization and good manufacturing practices (GMP) production of IBS-20, a 20-herb Chinese herbal formula under study as a potential agent for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. Methods Purity and contaminant tests for the presence of toxic metals, pesticide residues, mycotoxins and microorganisms were performed. Qualitative chemical fingerprint analysis and quantitation of marker compounds of the herbs, as well as that of the IBS-20 formula was carried out with high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Extraction and manufacture of the 20-herb formula were carried out under GMP. Chemical standardization was performed with liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis. Stability of the formula was monitored with HPLC in real time. Results Quality component herbs, purchased from a GMP supplier were botanically and chemically authenticated and quantitative HPLC profiles (fingerprints) of each component herb and of the composite formula were established. An aqueous extract of the mixture of the 20 herbs was prepared and formulated into IBS-20, which was chemically standardized by LC-MS, with 20 chemical compounds serving as reference markers. The stability of the formula was monitored and shown to be stable at room temperature. Conclusion A quality assurance program has been developed for the preparation of a standardized 20-herb formulation for use in the clinical studies for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The procedures developed in the present study will serve as a protocol for other poly-herbal Chinese medicine studies.

PMID: 20175906 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]