Aug. 2 - The Big News on Echinacea
Echinacea has been making the headlines recently, thanks to a large study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. This was a large, well-controlled study and it produced reliable results. They took almost 400 people, and divided them into groups. They exposed everyone to a particular cold virus, and then one group started taking Echinacea while another group took a dummy pill. This was to see if the Echinacea could prevent the onset of the cold symptoms. Other groups waited for the onset of cold symptoms and THEN started the Echinacea or dummy pill to see if there was an effect on length of symptoms. The results of all this seemed to indicate that there was no difference between the Echinacea and the dummy pill in either prevention or treatment of a cold.

So, now all the anti-herbal people are shouting, “See, I told you this stuff doesn’t work!” While all the pro-herbal folks are saying, “This study was flawed!”

Dr Sears’ comment. A few points here: The study used a dose of 300mg. The doses I recommend are much higher: between 1000mg a day for prevention, and 6000mg a day for initial treatment of a cold. These amounts are much, much higher than the 300mg used in the study. It is possible that higher doses would have yielded results in favor of Echinacea. I personally have never remembered to try Echinacea when I get a cold. Some people swear by it. Even the effect is purely a placebo effect, these folks are beating their colds faster, and using less antibiotics.