Echinacea: Why and How to Take It?
Traditional use of Echinacea comes from the Native Americans, and Eclectic physicians who adopted their use of Echinacea angustifolia.
They preferred the root due to its high content of alkylamides. You can feel the alkylamides when ingesting Echinacea as they cause a persistent tingling sensation in the mouth and stimulate the flow of saliva.
In Europe during the 1930’s, in Germany, E. purpurea was promoted as it was easier to grow.
The real value of Echinacea root lies in its continuous use, at least during times when infection is more likely, such as cold and flu season, stressful periods or during travel.
The common understanding, of taking Echinacea for only short periods after getting an infection, is not what traditional herbal use would indicate.
Best results are achieved by taking a low maintenance dose daily, and doubling it a day before travel, the day of travel and the day after the travel. Tinctures of echinacea are best, as they can be used to gargle before swallowing it, and help prevent sore throats too. If you become ill the maintenance dose can be tripled.
The following two trials illustrate the ability of Echinacea root to prevent infections.
LONG HAUL TRAVEL
Supplementation with Echinacea, if taken before and during travel, appeared to have a protective effect against the development of respiratory symptoms, during long haul flights travel. The lack of symptoms indicates the inhibition of infections by the Echinacea (Tiralongo et al., 2010).
Clinical trial participants travelling return from Australia to America, Europe or Africa for a period of 1 to 5 weeks on commercial flights via economy class were administered E. purpurea and E. angustifolia extract. The dose was 2 tablets/day, the travel dose was 4 tablets/day, and the dose when ill was 6 tablets/day (Tiralongo et al., 2010).
5 MONTHS WINTER TRIAL 2021-2022
This trial has also shown that Echinacea purpurea extract works well as a preventative.
The results show Echinacea purpurea reduced risk of viral respiratory tract infections, as well as substantially reducing viral load in infected subjects, supporting faster healing times and reducing infectivity (Kolev et al, 2022).
For more details please see the published study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9087554/
