Sir, - The report in The Irish Times (July 11th), claims herbal remedies may cause serious health complications because they interact with drugs. Anyone who wasn't raised on a strict diet of pharmaceutical doctrine might have said that drugs cause complications because they interact with herbs - including culinary herbs such as garlic and sage by the way, so hold the stuffing!.
The article purports to justify a ludicrous decision by the Irish Medicines Board to confine St John's Wort to prescription use, despite the fact that an estimated 70,000 people were using the herb without any ill effect whatsoever. Thanks to the efforts of the IMB it is now well known that this herb affects the absorption of the drug cyclosporin. Strangely, there has been less publicity surrounding the discovery that grapefruit juice has the same effect.
It is patently obvious that anyone seeing their GP or undergoing surgery should advise them of any self-medication, but if there is to be honesty in the patient-GP relationship, there must also be tolerance of other systems of medicine, and this is sadly lacking in the report.
If the attitude shown in this report is prevalent within the medical profession, then it is little wonder that patients feel embarrassed about admitting to self-medication.
Thankfully an increasing number of enlightened GPs support the concept of patients taking herbs such as echinacea or garlic before resorting to antibiotics. If a drug interacts with either herbal medicines or a food, then the prescribing doctor must verify that the patient avoids these.
It is a rather sinister over-kill to confine the sale of herbal products simply because they interact with drugs. A simple warning not to combine such herbs with other medication would suffice, as applies in the UK on St John's Wort.
Echinacea is a valuable alternative to antibiotics, but the report claims that echinacea poses a risk of poor wound healing.
Someone has their wires crossed here - the website of the American Society of Anesthesiologists that actually lists wound healing as one of the benefits of echinacea!
There is already severe over-prescribing of antibiotics. It is high time that the Department of Health supported other natural systems such as herbs and homoeopathy which help the immune system, rather than constantly warning us of the dangers of traditional medicines which, despite their increasing popularity have not produced any significant side-effects. If only the same thing could be said of the pharmaceutical industry. - Yours, etc.,
Quentin Gargan, Coomanore North, Bantry, Co Cork.