The Handbook of Clinically Tested Herbal Remedies

The Handbook of Clinically Tested Herbal Remedies is the reference tool you need to distinguish those herbal products that have been clinically tested from those for which there is little or no real evidence that substantiates or disputes their claims of efficacy. This essential volume provides a snapshot of 160 herbal products that have been tested in clinical trials. Details of the products and the clinical trials they underwent are here in an easy-to-read, at-a-glance format.

Each botanical profile in The Handbook of Clinically Tested Herbal Remedies contains a summary section (table, text and references), followed by product information and clinical trials for that particular product. An evaluation of the strength of the evidence from the trials, along with the context for therapeutics is included to give you a complete picture of each remedy and its usefulness or lack thereof. If there is more than one product based on a particular botanical then the trials are grouped according to the product.

This valuable book also makes purchasing easy with manufacturer contact information. With over 30 individual botanicals and 10 multi-ingredient formulas, 160 products and 360 clinical studies, The Handbook of Clinically Tested Herbal Remedies is the book you need to make an informed selection of herbal products. Not only does it list proprietary herbal products that have been tested in controlled clinical studies and provide a rating of the quality of those trials, but, it also describes the fundamentals of herbal medicine, including regulation, characterization, standardization, bioavailability, efficacy, safety, pharmacopoeial monographs as well as incentives, or lack of incentive, for US and European manufacturers to conduct clinical studies.

Contributors to the chapters describing the fundamentals of herbal medicine include:

the late Dr. Varro Tyler, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Purdue University and co-author of Tyler’s Honest Herbal, Rational Phytotherapy, and Tyler’s Herbs of Choice
Loren Israelsen, JD, president of the LDI group
Tieraona Low Dog, MD, Chair of the USP Dietary Supplement Information Committee
Joerg Grünwald, PhD, co-author of the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) for Herbal Medicines, and Stefan Spiess, RPh, President of Grünwalder GmbH
Anton Biber, PhD, and Friedrich Lang, PhD, experts in the bioavailability of herbal medicine at Dr. Willmar Schwabe GmbH & Co., Germany
Anthony Almada, MSc, founder and Chief Scientific Officer of IMAGINutrition, Inc.
Joseph M. Betz, PhD, Director of the Dietary Supplements Methods and Reference Materials Program at the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements
Ezra Bejar, PhD, president of Plant Bioassay
Uwe Koetter, PhD, Director of New OTC and Dietary Supplement Product Development at GlaxoSmithKline
Srini Srinivasan, PhD, Vice President of the Dietary Supplement Verification Program of the United States Pharmacopeia (USP)
Roy Upton, Executive Director of the American Herbal Pharmacopoeia.

All of the clinical trials in The Handbook of Clinically Tested Herbal Remedies were rated as to their Level of Evidence according to a system designed by Tieraona Low Dog, MD, Chair of the United States Pharmacopoeia Dietary Supplements/Botanicals Expert Panel and a member of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The reviewers of the clinical trials included Karriem Ali, MD; Richard Aranda, MD; Elliot Fagelman, MD; Mary Hardy, MD; David Heber, MD, PhD, FACP, FACN; John Trimmer Hicks, MD, FACP, FACR; Hannah Kim, MD; Franklin C. Lowe, MD, MPH; Richard D. O’Connor, MD; Barry S. Oken, M.D; Lynn Shinto, ND; and Keith Wesnes, PhD.