HERB - Echinacea & Ragweed

[Walter J. Wakefield]

Just because you have echinacea in your garden does not mean you will
cause problems for your asthmatic friend.  I have asthma - have had all
my life - I am allergic to both ragweed and goldenrod (both compositae)
and I grow echinacea and it doesn't cause me any particular problems.  I
also use echinacea for coughs and colds, both the capsules of ground
roots and a tincture that I make from the flowers.  Someone else might
have significant problems with echinacea pollen though.  Asthma is quite
variable, both from individual to individual, and from time to time in
one individual.  Not all asthma is caused by allergies, not all allergies
are to pollens, not all pollen allergies are to ragweed (my mother only
has pollen problems in the spring, from tree pollens).  That is why it is
sometimes hard to identify the causes of asthma attacks, and sometimes
difficult to treat asthma.  The best plan is to ask the asthmatic person
what triggers their problems, and then help them avoid that (or those,
more likely) things
Suzanna, herbalist
    
On Mon, 01 May 2000 07:20:13 -0700 Katherine Blackthorne
<kblackthorne at midtown.net> writes:


>  OK, so if I'm understanding all this correctly, we have a family with
>potentially nasty pollens.  But it's the pollens themselves, not the
rest of the plant, that are 
>the problem.  So it may be safe for an asthmatic to take echinacia root,
but keep
>them away from chamomile flowers.  Or flowering echinacia, for that
matter.
>(Which I hope to have in my garedn in a year or two...and one of the
women I
>sew for is asthmatic.  Oh, dear.)
>
>--Katherine Blackthorne
>(1597 Englishwoman)
>West Kingdom
>

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