Thoraiya DyerRicola Cough Drops and the Secret Life of Alpine Herbs
May 19th 2008 22:02
So. You have a cold. Your mouth feels like a constipated Rottweiler took a dump in it, and you’re desperate for something to restore that fresh, healthy feel.
What could be healthier than Switzerland? Just look at that yodelling mountaineer on the TV ad for Ricola!
And what could be fresher than Alpine Herbs? Alpine, that’s, like, freezing cold mountains with glaciers, right?
EXACTLY what you desperately need your furry mouth to taste like, before your breath causes a second Chernobyl.
If you check Ricola’s website, you find the following zestful announcement:
“Nature at its best. And for more than sixty years, Ricola's Original Herb Candies have remained unchanged, as good as they always were: hard and slightly rough on the outside, wonderfully mild and delicious inside. Since time immemorial, Ricola has been blending 13 precious medicinal herbs from Switzerland with the same delicious recipe. The mix is particularly effective for colds, coughs and hoarseness, always refreshing and has that fabulous, unique flavour.”
Forgive me, but I suspect that the Canadian half of Niagara Falls might be nature at its best. The Milford Track in New Zealand or Cradle Mountain in Tasmania might be nature at its best, and so might Mt Fuji or the Great Barrier Reef or the Aurora Borealis.
A Herb Candy does not even rate.
But leaving “nature at its best” aside, can 13 precious medicinal alpine herbs really help your cold or cough?
At Ricola.com, these “medicinal” herbs are listed as Sage, Speedwell, Yarrow, Plantain, Marshmallow, Peppermint, Burnet, Thyme, Cowslip, Elder, Mallow, Lady’s Mantle and Horehound.
The company has their own special herb gardens, right across Switzerland, where they grow these little beauties.
For each herb, I was curious to know whether they are actually alpine (Dictionary.com: Alpine, adj. Living or growing on mountains above the timberline: alpine plants) and what their active ingredients are.
Handily, there’s a little blurb for each plant on Ricola’s site.
Keeping in mind that the timberline lies at roughly 2000m above sea level, I was shocked and horrified to discover that only 4 of the 13 herbs grow above the timberline.
Well, potentially 6 out of 13, if you count Sage (“found on sunny mountainsides”) and Lady’s Mantle (“thrives practically everywhere”).
I’m heartbroken, really I am. I wanted alpine herbs. Not ones I can grow in an old gumboot full of dirt under the back stairs.
Still, Ricola assures me that they are good medicine and I’ll feel better if I eat them.
Is that right?
I wasn’t going to have a go at the herbs, really I wasn’t.
I like herbs. I just wanted to see if THESE herbs were alpine or not. But how could I ignore a blurb like this, for Marrubium vulgare, or horehound?
“Paracelsus, Kneipp and the herbalist pastor Kunzle prized horehound and its therapeutic effect in disorders of the spleen, liver and lungs and in cases of asthma and bronchitis. Horehound strengthens and stimulates the gastro-intestinal tract, promotes the appetite and the secretion of bile and has a mucolytic effect in cases of bronchial catarrh.”
Paracelsus was a sixteenth century alchemist. He may have been ahead of his time but he also prescribed mercury compounds for the treatment of syphilis – so that impurities would be sweated, spat and vomited out of the system. Now, who wants to be treated by Paracelsus, and who wants some penicillin instead?
Sebastian Kneipp (kneipp.de) was a preist and naturopath from the 1800s who first suggested alternating hot and cold water treatments as a medical treatment. He believed that “in times of illness, (water) is the prime remedy.”
Who, in times of illness, perhaps when they are suffering a severe asthma attack, wants a real doctor to give them some Ventolin, and who wants Kneipp to gives them horehound? Why should the recommendations of these historical quacks make us want to buy Ricola?
Pubmed lists several articles studying the effects of horehound and its extract marrubenol on respiratory disease in horses and the relaxation of smooth muscle cells in rat aortas.
The rest of the 28 horehound articles are about the history of medicine, and we can safely ignore, “Lady Sedley’s 16th Century Receipt Book”.
It turns out the stuff may actually have medicinal action – as an injectable L-type calcium channel blocker in rats, and as part of a ten-herb mix that reduced respiratory rate in distressed horses.
But the proper trials have not been done. Not one human study. Not one shred of evidence to show that horehound strengthens and stimulates the gastro-intestinal tract or any of the rest of it, and even if it did, is the active ingredient even detectable in Ricola?
“It's quackery,” says Dr. Meera Thadani, assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Manitoba and a member of the Natural Health Products Advisory Committee struck by Health Canada in 1997 to examine the need for regulation in the area. “It's not scientific. Traditional use can mean that my grandmother used it. But so what? Granny never kept track of things. Thousands of years of use? Well, who was keeping track thousands of years ago? The people who died using the product, that weren't saved by it, don't have a voice in any of this.”
The blurb for horehound is only to be outdone by this:
“When the air is very humid in the summer, glistening drops of dew form on the leaves of the lady's mantle plant. These "magic golden pearls" were collected by the alchemists and used in their concoctions. Thus in days gone by, in addition to its effects against female disorders, the lady's mantle was regarded as a typical "alchemist's herb". Lady's mantle has constipating, antiphlogistic, contracting and haemostatic properties.”
Unbelievable.
Even the dew on the stupid leaves is being milked for all it’s worth.
I guess that’s only normal, considering what this ( Really Long Link ) article says about the non-prescription over-the-counter cough and cold market being worth $233 million in Canada alone, way back in 1989.
And besides, after all that, Ricola drops may have one redeeming feature. They contain menthol, a known cough suppressant and oral anaesthetic (see above article, page 146).
Lucky they weren’t relying on the herbs to do the work, eh?
And lucky most people don’t know what alpine really means.
What could be healthier than Switzerland? Just look at that yodelling mountaineer on the TV ad for Ricola!
And what could be fresher than Alpine Herbs? Alpine, that’s, like, freezing cold mountains with glaciers, right?
EXACTLY what you desperately need your furry mouth to taste like, before your breath causes a second Chernobyl.
If you check Ricola’s website, you find the following zestful announcement:
“Nature at its best. And for more than sixty years, Ricola's Original Herb Candies have remained unchanged, as good as they always were: hard and slightly rough on the outside, wonderfully mild and delicious inside. Since time immemorial, Ricola has been blending 13 precious medicinal herbs from Switzerland with the same delicious recipe. The mix is particularly effective for colds, coughs and hoarseness, always refreshing and has that fabulous, unique flavour.”
Forgive me, but I suspect that the Canadian half of Niagara Falls might be nature at its best. The Milford Track in New Zealand or Cradle Mountain in Tasmania might be nature at its best, and so might Mt Fuji or the Great Barrier Reef or the Aurora Borealis.
A Herb Candy does not even rate.
But leaving “nature at its best” aside, can 13 precious medicinal alpine herbs really help your cold or cough?
At Ricola.com, these “medicinal” herbs are listed as Sage, Speedwell, Yarrow, Plantain, Marshmallow, Peppermint, Burnet, Thyme, Cowslip, Elder, Mallow, Lady’s Mantle and Horehound.
The company has their own special herb gardens, right across Switzerland, where they grow these little beauties.
For each herb, I was curious to know whether they are actually alpine (Dictionary.com: Alpine, adj. Living or growing on mountains above the timberline: alpine plants) and what their active ingredients are.
Handily, there’s a little blurb for each plant on Ricola’s site.
Keeping in mind that the timberline lies at roughly 2000m above sea level, I was shocked and horrified to discover that only 4 of the 13 herbs grow above the timberline.
Well, potentially 6 out of 13, if you count Sage (“found on sunny mountainsides”) and Lady’s Mantle (“thrives practically everywhere”).
I’m heartbroken, really I am. I wanted alpine herbs. Not ones I can grow in an old gumboot full of dirt under the back stairs.
Still, Ricola assures me that they are good medicine and I’ll feel better if I eat them.
Is that right?
I wasn’t going to have a go at the herbs, really I wasn’t.
I like herbs. I just wanted to see if THESE herbs were alpine or not. But how could I ignore a blurb like this, for Marrubium vulgare, or horehound?
“Paracelsus, Kneipp and the herbalist pastor Kunzle prized horehound and its therapeutic effect in disorders of the spleen, liver and lungs and in cases of asthma and bronchitis. Horehound strengthens and stimulates the gastro-intestinal tract, promotes the appetite and the secretion of bile and has a mucolytic effect in cases of bronchial catarrh.”
Paracelsus was a sixteenth century alchemist. He may have been ahead of his time but he also prescribed mercury compounds for the treatment of syphilis – so that impurities would be sweated, spat and vomited out of the system. Now, who wants to be treated by Paracelsus, and who wants some penicillin instead?
Sebastian Kneipp (kneipp.de) was a preist and naturopath from the 1800s who first suggested alternating hot and cold water treatments as a medical treatment. He believed that “in times of illness, (water) is the prime remedy.”
Who, in times of illness, perhaps when they are suffering a severe asthma attack, wants a real doctor to give them some Ventolin, and who wants Kneipp to gives them horehound? Why should the recommendations of these historical quacks make us want to buy Ricola?
Pubmed lists several articles studying the effects of horehound and its extract marrubenol on respiratory disease in horses and the relaxation of smooth muscle cells in rat aortas.
The rest of the 28 horehound articles are about the history of medicine, and we can safely ignore, “Lady Sedley’s 16th Century Receipt Book”.
It turns out the stuff may actually have medicinal action – as an injectable L-type calcium channel blocker in rats, and as part of a ten-herb mix that reduced respiratory rate in distressed horses.
But the proper trials have not been done. Not one human study. Not one shred of evidence to show that horehound strengthens and stimulates the gastro-intestinal tract or any of the rest of it, and even if it did, is the active ingredient even detectable in Ricola?
“It's quackery,” says Dr. Meera Thadani, assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Manitoba and a member of the Natural Health Products Advisory Committee struck by Health Canada in 1997 to examine the need for regulation in the area. “It's not scientific. Traditional use can mean that my grandmother used it. But so what? Granny never kept track of things. Thousands of years of use? Well, who was keeping track thousands of years ago? The people who died using the product, that weren't saved by it, don't have a voice in any of this.”
The blurb for horehound is only to be outdone by this:
“When the air is very humid in the summer, glistening drops of dew form on the leaves of the lady's mantle plant. These "magic golden pearls" were collected by the alchemists and used in their concoctions. Thus in days gone by, in addition to its effects against female disorders, the lady's mantle was regarded as a typical "alchemist's herb". Lady's mantle has constipating, antiphlogistic, contracting and haemostatic properties.”
Unbelievable.
Even the dew on the stupid leaves is being milked for all it’s worth.
I guess that’s only normal, considering what this ( Really Long Link ) article says about the non-prescription over-the-counter cough and cold market being worth $233 million in Canada alone, way back in 1989.
And besides, after all that, Ricola drops may have one redeeming feature. They contain menthol, a known cough suppressant and oral anaesthetic (see above article, page 146).
Lucky they weren’t relying on the herbs to do the work, eh?
And lucky most people don’t know what alpine really means.
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