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OT - Bit of a curly one - bringing herbs into Oz 10-Mar-2011 At 3:45:23 PM Andrew_M

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Regulatory approval in Australia for this sort of thing - ie "herbal extracts" etc is actually very very murky. I come from a hard science background but at one point I somehow got involved quasi-pharma-type company and had to deal very similar issues - particularly TGA guidelines. It was a long time ago, but if I remember the rightly extracts from plants come in under a different classification than manufactured "drugs" - something more akin to foodstuffs.

To make a claim that something has an effect (ie is a "drug"), you actually need to take it formally through a registration procedure that costs mega huge bucks (preclinical trials, then phase I-IV clinical trials). For herbal extracts, so long as you don't make official claims they can be sold pretty much without restriction. However, there it is entirely possible that these herbal extracts CAN have biological (ie "drug") effects, it's just that they haven't been PROVEN do do so (and be safe) via this process. In fact, that was my biggest concern at the time - the company management always wanted to push the envelope - and some of these extracts could potentially have significant biological activity, including major side effects - particularly if they were highly concentrated.

There is actually a whole mainstream branch of drug research called Ethnopharmacology, which looks at cultures all around the world and what traditional remedies they use, sees if these remedies actually work, then to tries to isolate the active ingredients. Just two historical examples: aspirin started as a traditional extract of willow bark, and the most effective antimalarial drug that exists at the moment was originally a traditional chinese herbal remedy for malaria - artemisinin - it is still made by extracting from the herb.

As to the whether the OP is actually wasting her time taking herbal supplements? Who knows - the fact that they are sold as "remedies" rather than "drugs" only means that they haven't been tested for safety and efficacy. Theoretically they could actually be doing harm...