Phytotherapy
This article describes on how to make herbal medicines, use them, sell them and how herbal medicines of commercial companies can be used.
Contents |
[edit] Making herbal medicine
Incomplete: for tinctures see also: Ethanol production
[edit] Selling herbal medicines
Although the herbal medicines need to be made primarily for own use, we can opt to sell any remaining medicines. A proper package insert then needs to be made. The following headlines should be made in each package insert, and information should be introduced under the headline:
- A description of the product
- The characteristics of the product
- The ingredients of the product
- The amount of material of the product ingredient per capsule, 100 grams, ...
- The daily dose
- The duration of intake
- The method of administration
- Contraindications
- The potential adverse effects
- The license under which the product is distributed
- The various names under which the product is on the market in several countries
- The best method of preservation
- Expiration date
- Impact on driving and using machinery
- Measures when using large quantities
[edit] Using commercial herbal medicine
In Europe, commercial medicines are sometimes distributed as "Food additives". When using such medicines, the dosage needs to be increased heavily to have any kind of medicinal effect. How this is done is demonstrated below. As the costs of commercial herbal medicines are quite high, we will always opt to make the general herbal medicines ourselves. However, in certain cases (eg when customised medicines are made requiring some specific, hard to grow or economicly unintresting crops, or when the plot with herbal plants has not yet matured enough; eg in the early stages) it may be useful to simply obtain commercial herbal medcine and implement them in the complex mixture or use as is in the suitable dosage. An alternative could be (if herbal medicines are being made by several AT villages) to simply have a network in place to share specialised medicines grown in seperate AT villages.
[edit] Method
1. Estimating the appropriate dosage of plant material: This can be done using books such as "Rational Phytotherapy: A Physicians' Guide to Herbal Medicine by Volker Shulz". Example: a suitable quantity of Panax ginseng is: 1 to 2 grams of root, or 1000 to 2000 mg/day for 1 month for Eleutherococcus senticosus: 2 to 3 g of root, or 2000 to 3000 mg/day for 1 month
1 capsule contains: Panax ginseng extract c.a. Meyer: 150 mg Eleutherococcus senticosus extract: 100 mg Vitamin E: 15 mg Magnesium: 75 mg
Calculation of capsules/day: Panax ginseng: 1000 mg/150 mg capsules = 6.66 capsules 2000 mg/100 mg = 20 capsules --> lowest value: 6.66 capsules
Eleutherococcus senticosus: 2000 mg/150 mg = 13.33 capsules 3000 mg/100 mg = 30 capsules --> lowest value: 13.33 capsules
Vitamin E Maximum safe dosage: 500 mg 500 mg/15 mg = 33.33 capsules --> lowest value = 33.33 capsules
Magnesium: 150 mg Maximum safe dosage: 250 milligrams per day 250 mg/75mg = 3.33 capsules --> lowest value = 3.33 capsules
If we assume that the other constituents (gelling agent, hydroxypropylmethylcellulose, tocopheryl acetate, filling agent: magnesium stearate, coloring: titanium dioxide, cupperchlorofyline) are only present in too small quantities to be able to limit the amount of capsules that can be consumed, we may take 3.33 capsules a day . If no magnesium was to be present in the capsules, we could take 6.66 capsules/day during 1 month.
