Exploring Interdisciplinary Data And Traditional Knowledge When Researching Herbal Medicine

Exploring interdisciplinary data can help refine our strategies for assessing both efficacy and safety of herbal medicine. Data from different disciplines of primary research can often support and provide layers of data to inform the decisions of medicine maker, grower/wild crafter or clinician. This paper will review research – including pharmacokinetic, field, in vitro and clinical trial research – to create overlays of interdisciplinary data in reviewing four herbs, Hypericum perforatum, Panax quinquefolius , Ephedra sinica and Sambucus nigra. The goal is to identify the congruent data that may improve rational choices in dosing, extraction methods and growing practices in real life settings.

These explorations suggest that clinician/medicine maker investigate where traditional wisdom can provide effective dosing; standardized extracts using biomarkers that have no proven clinical efficacy is misguided; enhancing the phytochemical complexity of the extract may produce a more clinically relevant product; the use of contemporary extraction methods needs to be explored on a case by case basis, beneficial in some instances (SFE for St. John's wort) and not so in others – creating high surface area, in the case of ephedra; and the rational data from ginseng protopanaxadiol to protopanaxatriol may provide an indication about the plants readiness to serve us as a healing agent.