Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists. Maybe you've heard that the herb echinacea can help. Smart shopping takes on new meaning when it comes to herbal products.
Herbs can both cause and cure illness, but labels on herbal products are often unreliable.
So consumers must do careful research before stepping into the store. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires rigorous and expensive testing before a manufacturer can make any health claims for its products. Few herbal products have been tested in this way, so labels on herbal remedies usually don't tell you what illnesses they're used to treat. By law, an herb's label must say how much each dose contains. But many such labels are inaccurate.