Hitting The Books On Herbal Cures

By Daniel Eisenberg

Nutritional supplements can seem baffling, what with all those concoctions of exotic-sounding plants and roots. And there are almost as many books on the subject as there are herbs and vitamins. Fortunately, experts in the field have identified a few authoritative titles to help separate the wheatgrass from the chaparral.

Dr. Varro Tyler has written some of the most comprehensive guides, including The Honest Herbal and Herbs of Choice (Haworth Press; $40-$50). For a more folksy but still informative survey, try James Duke's The Green Pharmacy (Rodale; $30). Hard-core herbalists can delve into the first English translation of The Complete German Commission E Monographs ($190), a 685-page scientific tome just published by the American Botanical Council. It will soon be joined by the American Pharmaceutical Association Practical Guide to Natural Medicines (William Morrow; $35) and a PDR for Herbal Medicines (Medical Economics; $60).

Celebrity best sellers like Andrew Weil's 8 Weeks to Optimum Health (Knopf; $23) and Jean Carper's Miracle Cures (HarperCollins; $25) may promise more than they can deliver, but they do contain healthful hints. If you want to add adventure, read Mark Plotkin's Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice (Penguin; $14), which shows how ethnobotanists comb jungles for natural cures.

Though the Internet is host to more than its share of quacks touting dubious cure-alls, a few serious sites on supplements are worth checking out: Columbia University Medical Center's Fact Sheets on Alternative Medicine at cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/rosenthal/factsheets.html the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at altmed.od.nih.gov/nccam/ and the University of Texas Center for Alternative Medicine Research at sph.uth.tmc.edu/utcam/default.htm Finally, the surest sign that alternative medicine has gone mainstream: Herbal Remedies for Dummies (IDG Books; $20) is just hitting the stores.

--By Daniel Eisenberg