This article is from the book, New Choices in Natural Healing , by Bill Gottlieb. To send a link and summary of this article to a friend, click here . When you walk into a health food store, you'll find that herbs are sold in a variety of forms.
Teas are probably the most familiar, but here's a quick consumer's guide to other types.
Capsules and tablets. Swallowing tablets is probably the easiest way to take any medicine, but many herbalists prefer tinctures and teas because they believe that the active ingredients of the herbs are released more quickly and more efficiently in these forms. Extracts and tinctures. Technically, extracts are stronger and more concentrated than tinctures. But today, these terms are generally used interchangeably.