Kathleen Brown - An herbalists guide to growing & using echinacea

Kathleen Brown

As more and more consumers are learning, echinacea is wonderful for keeping colds and the flu at bay, especially when youre working in an office, breathing recirculated air. My first experience with echinacea was more than a decade ago, when someone suggested I take it for cold symptoms I was unable to shake. Later, when I worked at a health food store, echinacea was easily the most popular of all our herbal products, usually requested by those already in the advanced stages of a cold or the flu, begging for something to relieve their distress. Unfortunately, they often breathed, wept, or leaned precariously close to us, the staff, while making their frantic requests, so it became important for us to take echinacea ourselves, just to stay on the job!

For anyone who deals with the public on a regular basis, echinacea is essential. An acquaintance of mine, a schoolteacher, takes echinacea as a preventive measure to keep from becoming sick because his pupils are frequently ill and spread their germs about the classroom. Ive found it helpful to take echinacea before, during, and after I travel by air, since I always seem to start feeling sick after a trip. In an airplane full of people carrying germs and infections from all over the world, it makes sense to use echinaceas powers to ward off illness.

Also known as purple coneflower, echinacea (pronounced ek-i-NAY-sha) is a hardy, herbaceous perennial whose flower is beloved by both bumblebees and butterflies. There are nine species of echinacea native to North America, but Echinacea angustifolia, E. purpurea, and E. pallida are the most common varietiesand the ones covered in this bulletin. The name echinacea is thought to come from the Greek word echinos, meaning hedgehog or sea urchin, which refers to its spiny cone center.

Echinacea is not only potent medicine, but it also has a beautiful flower prized in many a flower garden.

Echinacea has enjoyed a long history in the herbal-medicine traditions of Native Americans, many of whom were skilled herbalists. Evidence of echinacea use has been found in Native American archaeological digs dating as far back as the early 1600s. Uses were many and varied; for example, one tribe chewed the root for colds, drank the tea for colic, applied a decoction to burns, and sprinkled the herb on coals during sweat ceremonies for purification. Cheyenne Sun Dancers relieved their thirst and parched mouths by chewing the roots of this black medicine, while other Plains tribes powdered the roots to make a tea for sore mouths, gums, and throats. For most tribes, echinacea was also the remedy of choice for snakebite.

Echinacea was also highly regarded by the Eclectics. Founded in the 1850s by Dr. Wooster Beach, the Eclectic movement, which was among the first to admit women into the ranks of medicine, was responsible for perhaps the greatest Western herbal-medicine movement in history. Thousands of Eclectic doctors worked to integrate native American herbs, homeopathic practices, and Western scientific medicine of the day. Eclectic doctors were using echinacea as early as 1887; in the early 1890s, pharmacies began to prescribe it for colds, snakebites, and scurvy. The first article on echinacea appeared in a medical journal in 1902, and by the 1920s it was the most popular plant medicine in the United States.

By the 1930s, when newer products began to gain popularity, echinacea has fallen from favor, and between 1930 and 1950 it virtually disappeared from medicine cabinets in the United States. It continued to thrive in Europe, however, and in 1930, 50,000 pounds of it were exported from the United States to Europe. Today, in Germany alone there are more than 180 government-approved botanical formulas that contain echinacea, including a liquid extract called resistance drops because of its immune-stimulating properties. In fact, in 1993, German doctors prescribed echinacea more than 2.5 million times.

The Name Game

Theres been a lot of confusion over the years about what to call echinacea. Prairie doctor may have been used by self-medicating pioneer folk, but the herb was also known as Sampson root, Kansas or Missouri snakeroot, Indian head, and cock-up hat.

In the 1970s and 1980s, echinacea was reintroduced to American consumers and has since become so popular that a few species are now close to extinction in the wild. Use of the herb quadrupled from 1985 to 1986 alone.

Echinacea is currently one of the trendiest plants in the herbal kingdom. It is one of the five top-selling herbal medicines in North America and accounts for nearly 10 percent of the total sales of herbal supplements.

The good news is that people trying herbs for the first time are likely to have a good experience with echinacea. Taken at the first sign of cold or flu symptoms, especially with nasal congestion present, echinaceas infection-fighting, immune-boosting power is strong and effective medicine. The bad news is that because of echinaceas popularity, people begin using it for everything, regarding it as a cure-all. It is very effective for many things, but not for everything.

Of all botanical immune-system stimulants, echinacea is the most studied and has the best safety record. After hundreds of years of use, no toxicity or severe side effects have been noted. Allergic reactions have been rare and mild, occurring mostly in people with allergies to plants in the Daisy family, like chamomile and ragweed. Although the plant is native to North America, most of the research on echinacea has been done in Germany. Since 1950, more than 400 studies have been conducted, including one study of 200 schoolchildren that showed that those who took echinacea had fewer colds and had fewer days of fever when they did get sick.

Echinacea is potent not only when taken internally but also when incorporated into creams, lotions, and gels in defense against all sorts of external conditions, such as acne, athletes foot, bites and stings, minor cuts and scrapes, and wrinkles. For treating problems related to a bacterial, fungal, or viral infection, and as a blood purifier in cases of blood poisoning or poisonous spider and snakebites, echinacea is the herb of choice. It also makes an effective cleanser for glands and the lymphatic system, relieves acute inflammatory conditions, and speeds regeneration of new tissue for faster healing of wounds.

In addition to all the curative and restorative powers attributed to echinacea, one of the herbs greatest strengths is that it acts as a preventive medicine, one that offers resistance to infection and disease before they occur. You can often head off a cold or flu just by taking echinaceaas tea, as a tincture, or in capsules, by itself or in combination with other herbs. So during the winter season when colds and flu are most likely to strike, be sure to have plenty of echinacea on hand.