Echinacea Buyers Feel Dumb

The established herbology prescriptions are well known.

Tired? Ginseng! Depressed? St. John's Wort! Losing your memory? Gingko! Cold season? Echinacea!

Ever since the alternative medicine craze took off a decade ago folks have bought echinacea by the barrel, believing that ingesting the root boosted their immune system so it could ward off potential colds or fight the one they already had (I have a bottle at home).

It appears we were wasting our money.

A study in today's New England Journal of Medicine suggests that if anything helped our colds it was the water we used to swallow the pills.

Dr. Stephen E. Straus, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the government agency that sponsored the new research, says he for one is satisfied that echinacea is not an effective cold remedy.

"This paper says it will not pre-empt a common cold, and it stands on top of prior studies saying it doesn't treat an established cold," he said, adding, "We've got to stop attributing any efficacy to echinacea."

Pass your friend in echinacea sales some St. John's Wort...