Standardized Extracts ©

Chanchal Cabrera Msc, MNIMH, AHG

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Traditional herbal medicines include teas (infusions and decoctions), tinctures, poultices and salves. Recently we have begun to make increasing use of tablets and capsules. These are all relatively simple preparations, not highly processed and readily available at very reasonable cost. 

Herbal medicine has traditionally been a medicine inherently 'of the people, for the people, by the people' and this is an important distinction between folk healers and allopathic medical doctors. Herbal medicines have always been applied by housewives and mothers as well as by professional clinical herbalists, lay healers and midwives. There is an inherent democracy in this ready availability of herbal medicines - it is non-hierarchical and egalitarian. It is reflective of the intrinsic safety of traditional herbal medicines, given to us by empirical knowledge handed down through millennia from generation to generation and tested again and again on human bodies under all sorts of circumstances. Although herbalism was repressed and refuted, and often branded witchcraft, down through the ages, the knowledge was never quite lost and, indeed, was continually being added to by empirical learning and through apprenticeship

Reductionist scientific orthodoxy has held sway for only about 100 years and it is only 50 years since the advent of modern pharmaceutical science with the myriad of petrochemical-based drugs we know have. This short time has been long enough, however, for millions of ordinary people to realize that most modern pharmaceuticals do not cure the diseases for which they are prescribed and, furthermore, are responsible for a staggering percentage of all hospital admissions. 

The public has been hugely disillusioned and they are turning in ever bigger numbers to natural health care products and services. In response the last decade or so has seen the increasing interest of large multinational pharmaceutical companies in herbal medicines. The impact of reductionist science and commercial interests on traditional medicines has resulted in an entirely new form of medicinal product being created - the standardized extract. 

This type of product is made by refining and concentrating certain constituents to a specified percentage and sometimes discarding the majority of the plant material to make room in the capsule for the required amount of the specified "active compound". This concentration may be achieved using various solvents and often requiring heat to evaporate away any toxic residues. The end result can be measured and precisely calibrated for exact percentages of constituents. This is considered desirable because it conforms to the requirements of scientific rigor in performing the double blind cross over placebo controlled clinical trial. The standardized extract is a highly processed product, not at all similar to a traditional herbal remedy and more akin to a botanical pharmaceutical.

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