Everything Science Forum

I've done a lot of reading on this herb and it is cited as being helpful for hot flashes due to menopause. In most of the literature it appears to have few side effects. I noticed most articles list usage at 10-20 mg daily, yet many health food stores have it in 1000mg caps. I wondered why that is and if it is typically used at that strength.

I would be hesitant in taking 1000 mg of something if the literature reports 10-20 mg/day.

Some people think if 10 mg is good, then 100 mg or 1000 mg must be great.  People can do more damage to themselves.

Nutrition stores are in the business to sell product.

This (http://www.aafp.org/afp/20030701/114.html) is a good site to see if the herb or substance has been studied.

Many of these products have poorly done studies and this looks like one of them. The results are promising but not well tested.

My criteria is, if it doesn't cost too much and it doesn't have bad effects and if there isn't research that refutes the product, I'd try it and see.

But I take someone else's account that it works for them with a big grain of anecdotal evidence salt.

Um...what 'site' ?

Re 'Black Cohosh' and many other herbs...the 'ancient' ain't necessarily good...anymore than the recent. 

First: we don't have the same genetic make-up that people did when those herbs worked so well; 
 Second: those herbs aren't the same as they were during those times; 
Third:  maybe it might also depend on various areas of the world at these times ?
Fourth: if you want to look at homeopathic ...however it started, and many still apparently work...but although there are basics...  they are inevitably changing ? :-\\

Um...what 'site' ?

American Academy of Family Physicians (http://www.aafp.org/) It is an excellent site to look up direct research reports as opposed to just abstracts you get from PubMed  (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi)searches.

Re 'Black Cohosh' and many other herbs...the 'ancient' ain't necessarily good...anymore than the recent. 

First: we don't have the same genetic make-up that people did when those herbs worked so well; 

Well actually, we do.
"No we don't."
"Yes,... we do."

no wait, that was another thread. ;)

Genetics change pretty darn slowly over thousands of years and there is enough genetic mixing in the population to say we're not going to be that different that fast.

Second: those herbs aren't the same as they were during those times;

Why not?

Third:  maybe it might also depend on various areas of the world at these times ?
Fourth: if you want to look at homeopathic ...however it started, and many still apparently work...but although there are basics...  they are inevitably changing ? :-\\

I think the real problem in thinking these ancient cures worked so well is the human nature to see patterns where they may not always be and the 'noble savage' type of myth.

A lot of herbal remedies have reputations deduced from faulty anecdotal evidence. Where as sometimes they may have been right, ginger root for nausea in pregnancy for example, they were just as likely to have gotten it wrong, herbs around your neck did not ward off the plague.

And there is another commonly believed myth that ancient people were in tune with the environment, that they knew the plants around them and so on. Reality is disease was rampant, life expectancy short, the supposed balance with nature seems to ignore things like the extinction of the Mammoths and so on.

I apologise re statement " we don't have the same genetic make-up that people did when those herbs worked so well",  as I can not state any sources. Was an accumulative study over many years, and have files about this ...SOMEWHERE !  ...However, nothing I can find in endless filing cabinets, (and I keep throwing stuff out, y'know ...when it takes so long to read, and to make the connections between various matters...and, got so fed up with so much information I was carrying around  everywhere I moved ...I flung lot of it in bin!) so at best, it's actually just a memory of conglomerations of experiences and reading...so, in effect, nothing ... :-[