Herb and Dietary Supplement Information

The FTC (along with the FDA) monitors dietary supplement claims. Their web page provides consumers with tips on how to judge the quality of information provided on HDS whether on the web, in print or TV/radio broadcasts.

Patient handouts from the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database are freely available here along with information provided by government agencies such as NCCAM, National Cancer Institute, CDC and more. Entries discuss the effectiveness, usual dosage, and drug interactions for herbs and dietary supplements.

Highlights include news, herbs at a glance, and articles on health problems and their treatment with CAM therapies. Information is also available in Spanish. Guidance on finding a practitioner is available.

This government office has many fact sheets on herb and supplement products. In addition they generate reports of supplements of interest or concern. A mobile app is available called My Dietary Supplements and numerous links take users to sources of additional information.

Check out Henrietta's Herbal webpage. You will find a gallery of great photos of herbs. (Be sure to read the information on how they may be used.) There are also articles on herbs, older classic texts in several languages, information on plant names and a blog. This is a freely available treasure chest of information. Registration is requested.

Mindful is the voice of the emerging mindfulness community. We’re the place to go for insight, information, and inspiration to help us all live more mindfully.

Headspace is your very own personal trainer, here to help you train your mind.

An introduction to easy meditation.

Mindfulness at Work is a local initiative that grew out of Katie Lapp’s ongoing commitment to providing employees in Central Administration with new tools to manage stress and increase personal resilience. The programs and courses that comprise Mindfulness at Work are for CADM staff, but are part of the University-wide initiative, Healthy Harvard, which is designed to support the well-being of staff and faculty across the many dimensions of their lives.

A link to a guided meditation on mindfulness of the breath (30mins).

This page provides links to safety alerts, consumer advisories, and other safety information about the following FDA-regulated products:

Food and beverages
Dietary supplements
Infant formula

This website is created and maintained by the College of Pharmacy at the University of Texas Al Paso and Austin. It includes scientific monographs, fact sheets, presentations, educational materials and information on Mexican products. Some of the information is also available in Spanish.

An independent analytical testing laboratory.

Q & A, information on new ingredients, report adverse events, tips on supplement use.

Created by University of Texas El Paso College of Pharmacy. Fact Sheets and monographs are well referenced and available in English and Spanish. Scientific publications and presentations are also available with an emphasis on use by the local population and Mexican Americans. Safety information for special populations such as the elderly, and pregnant and lactating people.

Consult the safety sections of monographs. Evidence-based safety rating are included in each. Remember you can search multi-ingredient brand name products and link to the monographs on each constituent.

Natural Medicines Watch™ is an independent program that gives health professionals and consumers a simplified, efficient approach to reporting adverse reactions related to herbals, dietary supplements, or any other natural medicine. This program fills a huge need because adverse events are currently vastly underreported. In 2007, only 479 reports related to dietary supplements were submitted through FDA's MedWatch.
Natural Medicines Watch™ is integrated with Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database Users to select specific commercial products from a database of over 40,000 products. The system automatically identifies the active ingredients and populates the reporting form with this data. This feature will improve the efficiency and accuracy of adverse reaction reporting related to these products. Additionally Natural Medicines Watch™ was developed to work seamlessly with the FDA MedWatch reporting system. Reports originating in the US are automatically shared with FDA.
If you suspect an adverse reaction, you can submit a report today.

A toxicology database from the NIH and the National Library of Medicine. Includes information on teratogens and environmental toxins.

the toxicology and the alternative medicine sections of Micromedex are outstanding sources for safety information. They include information on the management of adverse reactions for herbals and other supplements.

The toxicology section of Micromedex provides in-depth information on natural products, supplements, traditional medicines, venom, and more. Entries include effects on anatomical systems, antidotes, foreign names, and references to the literature.

Factsheets, monographs and patient handouts created by a multi-disciplinary team from Dana Farber, MCPHS, Children's Hospital. Well-referenced documents based on comprehensive research, however, this site has not been updated in several years.

Part of the Micromedex database suite. Excellent for toxicology information.

A guide for healthcare professionals from Southern Cross University in Australia.

Also known as NCCIH, provides a wealth of information on complementary therapies including:
CAM on PubMed
Herbal Fact sheets
Educational programs and materials
Safety information
research studies, news, graphics and photos
Information also available in Spanish, sections for patients, and health professionals

A project of the CAM Special Interest Group of the Medical Library Association Find books, websites, and databases carefully selected an annotated by medical librarians.

Learn more about drug discovery from natural products by retrieving these references. This bibliography emphasizes the role of ethnobotanical literature, structure searching, and taxonmomic searching.

Medicinal Plant Network - an international network of people, events, and information on medicinal plants

A Database of Foods, Drugs, Dyes and Fibers of Native American Peoples, Derived from Plants. Freely available, searchable curated by Dan Moerman from the University of Michigan.

A potpourri of web sites related to Oriental Medicine

Program of Applied Research on Medicinal Plants of the Carribean. Includes Plant Database which requires registration but is free.

Created by Dr. Leslie Taylor this website provides free access to well-researched and referenced monographs on healing plants from the rain forest and nearby areas. Although the site offers some of these products for sale, the information provided is unbiased and critical of extravagant claims made by others.

This collection of monographs is part of the Micromedex drug information database from Thomson. Monographs on major herbs and supplements follow the same format and easy navigation used in the drug monographs. Well researched.Toxicology information is a strength of this database.

These monographs from Memorial Sloan Kettering focus on herbs and supplements used by cancer patients. Also available for mobile access.

Herbal Index Information on herbs used by cultural groups in Boston from the Carribbean and South America.

Try going to the Advance Search page and selecting terms from the indexes

An index to agricultural and botany literature.

The Chemical Abstracts online database. An excellent resource for mechanism of action, analytical chemistry.

Interdisciplinary database covering biomedical literature. Coverage of recent literature is strongest. For older studies search Science Citation Index. (Not at HU)

Covers the scientific cross-disciplinary literature back to 19th C. Keyword searching only. Citation searching.(Harvard access)