HERBS FOR HEALTH

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Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) has taken an interesting journey in the last decade. In the 1970s and ‘80s it emerged as the herb of choice among “in-the-know” herb consumers for topical and internal use, perceived as a natural antibiotic. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it emerged as an underground and unproven natural ploy to beat urinalysis for drug tests. The theory was that if you took goldenseal capsules, tincture, or tea the day before a drug test, the goldenseal in your system would interfere with the chemical detection of illicit drugs in your system. I heard more than one story of athletes complaining that steroids were still detected in their urine or truck drivers who tried the technique and were disgruntled when marijuana showed up in their tests. In addition, during the 1990s, echinacea/goldenseal combination products emerged as the best-selling herbal combination product in the American market. Then in 1994, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act catapulted herb products into the mass market, and for a few short years between 1996 and 1998, demand for goldenseal skyrocketed. Even the demand in health-food stores increased as more consumers came to shop, looking for the latest and greatest herbal cure.

The new market demand for goldenseal created supply shortages at the wholesale level. To some well-meaning individuals and even companies, this supply shortage (sparked by increased demand, hence higher prices), along with observations of increased difficulty in obtaining the supply from the wild, translated into a slogan: “Save the Endangered Species—Goldenseal.” The former Frontier Herb Cooperative (now Frontier Natural Products Coop) of Norway, Iowa, produced bumper stickers and buttons with the slogan. With no information on the biology or economics of the plants, what in essence seemed to be a supply-and-demand problem translated into a conservation problem by association. Consumer awareness became heightened and plant biologists took notice.

To discover just how much goldenseal was being used, the American Herbal Products Association commissioned a survey to measure the status of cultivated and wildharvested goldenseal root for 1998. The survey, conducted by the Arthur Andersen consulting firm, surveyed companies known to be engaged in the whole trade or cultivation of goldenseal. The report represents the first modern study on the total annual harvest of goldenseal roots. Wildharvest of goldenseal for 1998 was just over 250,000 pounds of dried root. An additional 3 tons were produced in cultivation.