Senecio

[Guest guest]

Response to Jill , St Albans:

One practitioner I did training with used Senecio aureus a lot (internally)

for menopausal problems. This was 12 years ago. I don't recall any problems

but the concern I suppose is that it belongs to the Ragwort genus and

contains those nasty alkaloids. However, I have no information about the

level of pyrillozidine (spelling ?) alkaloids in this particular species.

Would not advise drinking the lot though.

Caroline

[Guest guest]

Caroline Wheeler wrote to

<ukherbal-listegroups>:

>One practitioner I did training with used Senecio aureus a lot (internally)

>for menopausal problems. This was 12 years ago. I don't recall any problems

>but the concern I suppose is that it belongs to the Ragwort genus and

>contains those nasty alkaloids. However, I have no information about the

>level of pyrillozidine (spelling ?) alkaloids in this particular species.

>Would not advise drinking the lot though.

Let's see:

" 4.6 Senecio aureus L.

Golden ragwort, Squaw weed, Life root, Stinking Willie (ger. Gold-Kreuzkraut,

fr. Senecon d'or, it. Senecione aureono) is widely distributed in North America

and canada where it grows on humid river-bank meadows. Already the red Indians

cultivated this ragwort as a medicinal plant in many ways. Today it is still

used by the aborigines as a remedy against injuries, internally as diaphoretic,

diuretic and emmenagogue. The Red Indian wives today ingest high doses of this

drug both for acceleration of the course of labor and abortion. In Europe,

especially in Germany, it is administered in homeopathy as mother tincture and

as dilutions down to D3 in the case of hemorrhage of various kinds of genesis in

gynecology. The drug contains the alkaloids floridanine (53), otosenine (55) and

florosenine (56) in a total concentration of 0.02 o/o [158, 159]. The presence

of senecioinine could not be confirmed [160]. According to the regulations of

the BGA (Bundes Gesundheits Amt, German Federal Health Department) golden

ragwort is allowed to be applied internally for therapeutic purposes in humans

only in concentrations from D6 on. "

From " Medicinal Plants in Europe containing pyrrolizidine alkaloids " , E. Roeder,

Bonn; published in Pharmazie 50 (1995), pp. 83-98. I'll put the full article

online one of these months (I got permission for that, from Prof. Dr. E. Roeder,

last December. Time flies.)

Cheers

Henriette

--

hetta@... Helsinki, Finland http://ibiblio.org/herbmed

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