HERB - Canadian echinacea study

[Betty Braaksma]

Hi all,

I've been lurking, but enjoying your postings very much and learning lots 
from them.

I'm in the Shire of Mare Amethystinum, Principality of Northshield, int he 
Middle Kingdom...or in 21st century terms, I live in the Ontario city of 
Thunder Bay, located on the north shore of Lake Superior. For a U.S. 
reference - find Minneapolis-St. Paul, and we're an 8-hr drive due north! 
Our webite is at: http://www.midrealm.org/mareamethystinum/scapage.html

I've been in the SCA off & on for about 15 years and my interests are garb, 
illumination and gardening. My current project is to recreate a "Mary 
Garden" in my backyard - a challenge with Thunder Bay's Zone 5 climate. I'll 
be presenting a talk on my gardening progress at our next Shire camping 
event in June. If anyone has any information that they think would help, 
please forward!

This echinacea story comes hot off the press of pur national news service, 
CBC. A study by researchers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia has 
proven its the effectiveness as a cold remedy. I'm reprinting the whole 
story, but if you are curious about Canadian news, point your browser to 
www.cbc.ca.

Story follows:

cheers,

Berengaria of Outremer
(Betty Braaksma)

                    Echinacea really works,
                    study finds
                    WebPosted Wed Apr 26 09:25:47 2000

                    HALIFAX - A new study confirms what herbal
                    medicine experts have been claiming for
                    years: echinacea fends off illness.

                    The results of the
                    intensive two-year
                    study in Dr. Tim
                    Lee's lab surprised
                    him more than
                    anyone. Lee, who
                    works at Dalhousie
                    University in
                    Halifax, said, "I fully expected that it wouldn't
                    work. When it did work I became very
                    excited."

                    What excited Lee and the other scientists was
                    the ability of echinacea to boost the activity of
                    a cell that eats bacteria and viruses covered
                    with antibodies. The herb makes the cell
                    destroy even more bacteria. So far the testing
                    only involves mice, but Dr. Lee says that is
                    promising.

                    He said, "This evidence suggests it probably
                    does work with humans."

                    Users have long
                    claimed the herb
                    echinacea can fend
                    off illness, even the
                    common cold.

                    The scientists
                    involved in the
                    study were surprised by its results, but
                    Melanie Boyd was not. She sells echinacea
                    and says customers have been saying it
                    works for years. She says she feels good now
                    that science has caught up.


________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

============================================================================
Go to http://lists.ansteorra.org/lists.html to perform mailing list tasks.