The Echinacea Supplement - Exposed!

Echinacea Supplements

The History: Echinacea has a rather short history, when compared to many herbal remedies. It was used among native American Indian tribes to treat cold and flu symptoms, such as sore throats, coughs, and infections. Appearantly, the Dakota Indian tribe used it to treat their horses when they became ill. In the late 1880’s, Echinacea was introduced into the mainstream American medical community. It was very popular, and became the most commonly used herb, until penicillin was discovered. It soon began to lose it’s popularity, when in the 1930’s, it was completely dismissed as “quackery” by the American Medical Association. In spite of these dismissive actions by the U.S., Europe and Germany in particular was exploring medical uses for Echinacea. In fact, many German studies have been conducted on Echinacea to determine how effective it can be at treating medical ailments. Then, in the 1960's Echinacea begain to become more popular in the United States, and has grown in popularity ever since...

But, just because everyone uses something doesn't necessarily make it work. So where is the proof that echinacea works to cure any ailments at all?

The Real Deal:

Well, according to an article on WebMD.com - The echinacea herb does reduce cold and flu occurance by about 50%. When combined with vitamin C, it may reduce the incidence of catching a cold by 86%.

Now, this evidence contradicts some very rigorous studies conducted recently that say the herb echinacea does nothing to prevent colds. The problem is, there are more than 200 known viruses that cause colds, and these studies only looked at one virus. So, it may be very active to protect from a cold or reduce durations of colds by stopping OTHER viruses.

And in this recent study, the most rigorous studies were taken out of 70 echinacea studies, and they were reviewed to determine if most found echinacea herb helped a cold...and it turns out most studies have demonstrated it DOES help.

Since this was a collaboration of 70 seperate studies, it seems pretty conclusive. The one flaw is that there are multiple controls, testing situations, and levels of rigor in each study that differ. However, when taking an aggregate it is generally possible to find a conclusion if there is a large enough statistical difference and large enough sample size. For echincea, many agree that both of these criteria are met.

Echinacea Supplement exposed:

Well, it looks like echinacea does indeed play a part in minimizing cold and flu symptoms. This herb still needs further study to DEFINATEVELY say this, but for now, it is very likely that the sniffles you are feeling can be remedied by taking echinacea supplements.