Nutrition Information: Supplements

Plants have been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. All major cultures including Native American, European, South American, Asian, and African cultures have used botanicals for healing purposes. As an example, saw palmetto was used for urinary symptoms in men from Egypt in the 15th century BC. Hippocrates documented the use of St. John's wort for mood ailments in the 5th century BC. The Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor around 100 BC describes complex traditional Chinese herbs [3]. Herbal medicines flourished in Europe in the 17th century, then showed a decline with the Scientific Revolution. European immigrants brought to North America their own herbal medicine traditions as well as acquiring many from Native Americans. Two-thirds of entries in the first edition of the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) published in 1820 were botanical substances. After about 1920, standardized pharmaceutical drugs increasingly replaced herbal therapies in the US. Synthetic drugs were found to have larger pharmacologic effects and greater profitability.