THE BENEFITS OF THE USE OF COMFREY
IN HERBAL PREPARATIONS
MEDICINAL QUALITIES OF COMFREY
IN HERBAL PREPARATIONS
MEDICINAL QUALITIES OF COMFREY
COMFREY
by Sabrina G. Seitz, RN
by Sabrina G. Seitz, RN
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"Natural Healing with Herbs for a Healthier You"
The traditional therapeutic actions of comfrey include demulcent (soothes mucous membranes), cell proliferant, pectoral (relieves disorders of the chest and lung), astringent, nutritive, tonic, expectorant, hemostatic, alterative (promotes a beneficial change in the body), vulnerary (heals fresh cuts and wounds), mucilage and styptic (arrests hemorrhage and bleeding). These claims have been backed by thousands of years of successful, albeit anecdotal evidence.
Comfrey’s leaves or roots can be applied as a poultice, wash or ointment and are used for bruising, sciatica, boils, rheumatism, neuralgia, varicose veins, bed sores, wounds, ulcers, insect bites, tumours, muscular pain, pulled tendons, gangrene, shingles and dermatological conditions. It can be added to bath water to promote a youthful skin. Its emollient effects are very soothing, inhibiting further damage to tissues, stimulating the production of cartilage, tendons and muscles. It is highly regarded as a blood, bone and flesh builder.
Internally, comfrey has been used for indigestion, stomach and bowel problems, excessive menstrual flow, hoarseness, periodontal diseases, bleeding gums, thyroid disorders, diarrhea, gastro-intestinal ulcers, hernia, glandular fever, coughs, lung conditions, hemorrhaging, cancer, catarrh, anemia, sinusitis, lupus, lowering blood pressure, hiatal hernia, blood purifier and to ease inflammation of the joints and mucous membranes.
In addition to its medicinal use in humans, it has been used to feed animals from horses to zoo animals due to its rich vegetable protein content. Its ability to knit flesh and bones together has been known from the beginning. It will promote healthy cells but not malignant ones. The monks used comfrey for its ability to cure bronchial disorders and injuries. The roots made into a tea were beneficial for those spitting up blood. Nicholas Culpeper, an 18th century herbalist, described the properties of comfrey as being “cold, dry and earthy”. He used it to treat fresh wounds, to dry up the fluids from old ulcers and cankers and stopped hemorrhages. He found the root beneficial for blood in the urine, to help patients to expectorate from the lungs and belly, for broken bones, hemorrhoids, and to cool and ease pain.
But in our modern “scientific” age, the thousands years of use and anecdotal evidence is not adequate to recommend this wonderful plant for safe use now. Research and clinical trials/studies are the standards in finding any food, drug or herb safe and therapeutic. There are obvious flaws in this method e.g. political and economic biases. But one of the less obvious flaws is a consistent short-coming that modern scientific methods refuse to overcome. That is their insistence that the sum of the parts should equal the whole, and in dealing with live, biological plants with hundreds of active constituents; this simply doesn’t work. Nowhere is this more evident than in the nutritional research done by Dr. T. Colin Campbell. In his ground breaking, 20-year research called The China Study, where he studied the health benefits of whole “foods” in the Chinese diet, instead of singling out certain nutritional components e.g. specific vitamins. He was accused of “shotgun” science by his colleagues and they have been trying to deny the validity of his research since his findings were published. But the evidence is overwhelming. Whole foods make a difference where supplementation of isolated “active” constituents do not.
Comfrey has fallen victim to this “reductionist” type of science. Studies were done with rats, using only certain PA’s, in differing amounts over differing amounts of time. In all cases where only certain PA constituents were used, the results ranged from liver tumors to death. In one feeding where the rat was fed up to 30% of its diet from the whole leaf over 21 days, there were no adverse effects.
There were many things wrong with this study. First, only one species of rat was used which limits the broad applicability of the results and poorly translates to predicting human response. In fact, the characteristics of PA toxicity in animals can differ tremendously between species from that of humans. In rats, the confounding result was tumors/cancer/death whereas humans have never manifested tumors, instead developing veno-occlusive disease of the liver. Secondly, the doses given the rats far exceeded any equivalent human dosing. Humans typically use comfrey as an infusion which extracts only about 1/3 of the alkaloids present in the plant. In one feeding, the rats were given a single dose of the total leaf and they all showed evidence of liver damage. But the dose was the equivalent of a human taking in 4.4 pounds of root or 29 pounds of the leaf in one single dosing. This would be impossible to do. Thirdly, in very few cases do humans take in comfrey consistently over the majority of their life span. The studied rats were given comfrey daily for up to 600 days or until they died, their life spans being only two to three years. The death was then attributed to liver toxicity. And lastly, the route of administration did not mimic traditional and approriate use. In some studies the lab animals were injected with the PA’s, thus bypassing the gastrointestinal system when taken internally and the integumentary system when applied externally. These systems are necessary for appropriate absorption. The result was that these animals were exposed to greatly increased levels of PA’s. It has never been recorded that humans inject comfrey or any other herb, therefore this does not parallel the normal delivery route.
So, in reality, no research has been done to determine the validity of the traditional uses of comfrey e.g. in the treatment of broken bones, tendon damage, ulcerations in the gastrointestinal tract and lung congestion. However, there have been several studies done documenting the anti-inflammatory, analgesic, wound healing and immune modulating effects which support the use of comfrey as a vulnerary. In the majority of subjects studied, they observed relief or healing over the placebo groups.
Comfrey’s leaves or roots can be applied as a poultice, wash or ointment and are used for bruising, sciatica, boils, rheumatism, neuralgia, varicose veins, bed sores, wounds, ulcers, insect bites, tumours, muscular pain, pulled tendons, gangrene, shingles and dermatological conditions. It can be added to bath water to promote a youthful skin. Its emollient effects are very soothing, inhibiting further damage to tissues, stimulating the production of cartilage, tendons and muscles. It is highly regarded as a blood, bone and flesh builder.
Internally, comfrey has been used for indigestion, stomach and bowel problems, excessive menstrual flow, hoarseness, periodontal diseases, bleeding gums, thyroid disorders, diarrhea, gastro-intestinal ulcers, hernia, glandular fever, coughs, lung conditions, hemorrhaging, cancer, catarrh, anemia, sinusitis, lupus, lowering blood pressure, hiatal hernia, blood purifier and to ease inflammation of the joints and mucous membranes.
In addition to its medicinal use in humans, it has been used to feed animals from horses to zoo animals due to its rich vegetable protein content. Its ability to knit flesh and bones together has been known from the beginning. It will promote healthy cells but not malignant ones. The monks used comfrey for its ability to cure bronchial disorders and injuries. The roots made into a tea were beneficial for those spitting up blood. Nicholas Culpeper, an 18th century herbalist, described the properties of comfrey as being “cold, dry and earthy”. He used it to treat fresh wounds, to dry up the fluids from old ulcers and cankers and stopped hemorrhages. He found the root beneficial for blood in the urine, to help patients to expectorate from the lungs and belly, for broken bones, hemorrhoids, and to cool and ease pain.
But in our modern “scientific” age, the thousands years of use and anecdotal evidence is not adequate to recommend this wonderful plant for safe use now. Research and clinical trials/studies are the standards in finding any food, drug or herb safe and therapeutic. There are obvious flaws in this method e.g. political and economic biases. But one of the less obvious flaws is a consistent short-coming that modern scientific methods refuse to overcome. That is their insistence that the sum of the parts should equal the whole, and in dealing with live, biological plants with hundreds of active constituents; this simply doesn’t work. Nowhere is this more evident than in the nutritional research done by Dr. T. Colin Campbell. In his ground breaking, 20-year research called The China Study, where he studied the health benefits of whole “foods” in the Chinese diet, instead of singling out certain nutritional components e.g. specific vitamins. He was accused of “shotgun” science by his colleagues and they have been trying to deny the validity of his research since his findings were published. But the evidence is overwhelming. Whole foods make a difference where supplementation of isolated “active” constituents do not.
Comfrey has fallen victim to this “reductionist” type of science. Studies were done with rats, using only certain PA’s, in differing amounts over differing amounts of time. In all cases where only certain PA constituents were used, the results ranged from liver tumors to death. In one feeding where the rat was fed up to 30% of its diet from the whole leaf over 21 days, there were no adverse effects.
There were many things wrong with this study. First, only one species of rat was used which limits the broad applicability of the results and poorly translates to predicting human response. In fact, the characteristics of PA toxicity in animals can differ tremendously between species from that of humans. In rats, the confounding result was tumors/cancer/death whereas humans have never manifested tumors, instead developing veno-occlusive disease of the liver. Secondly, the doses given the rats far exceeded any equivalent human dosing. Humans typically use comfrey as an infusion which extracts only about 1/3 of the alkaloids present in the plant. In one feeding, the rats were given a single dose of the total leaf and they all showed evidence of liver damage. But the dose was the equivalent of a human taking in 4.4 pounds of root or 29 pounds of the leaf in one single dosing. This would be impossible to do. Thirdly, in very few cases do humans take in comfrey consistently over the majority of their life span. The studied rats were given comfrey daily for up to 600 days or until they died, their life spans being only two to three years. The death was then attributed to liver toxicity. And lastly, the route of administration did not mimic traditional and approriate use. In some studies the lab animals were injected with the PA’s, thus bypassing the gastrointestinal system when taken internally and the integumentary system when applied externally. These systems are necessary for appropriate absorption. The result was that these animals were exposed to greatly increased levels of PA’s. It has never been recorded that humans inject comfrey or any other herb, therefore this does not parallel the normal delivery route.
So, in reality, no research has been done to determine the validity of the traditional uses of comfrey e.g. in the treatment of broken bones, tendon damage, ulcerations in the gastrointestinal tract and lung congestion. However, there have been several studies done documenting the anti-inflammatory, analgesic, wound healing and immune modulating effects which support the use of comfrey as a vulnerary. In the majority of subjects studied, they observed relief or healing over the placebo groups.