Some time ago I referred to Lamberts Immune - Strength. I was taking this on a Medical Herbalist’s advice . The product contains concentrated berry juices primarily elderberry. The Mary Shoman blog which attracted much attention yesterday had a section on supplements that stated “ many experts and practitioners” were advising to avoid elderberry/sambucol products as they may increase the risk of a cytokine storm which is the cause of a serious complication in Covid 19.
As pointed out in responses to the earlier post there are many unknowns regarding this virus but in the meantime it may be sensible to avoid elderberry products.
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Treepie
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I have a spoon in my tea each day during winter. It’s one of my herb med arsenal that I’ve used for over 20 years. I have others to add once I have more than a sniffle. I must look up this article as I don’t know about cytokines storms. Do you have a link please? Thanks in advance!
I have been taking it since August from when my chemo ended. Bear in mind this may just be opinion .The full article is interesting . No idea how to make it a link but:
"First, an important note: many experts and nutritional practitioners are issuing a warning about the popular over-the-counter elderberry supplements, including the well-known brand Sambucol (Sambucus nigra L.). While elderberry is a popular natural remedy that’s commonly recommended by some natural practitioners to help with colds and mild flu, research has shown that it may increase cytokine response — and therefore increase the risk of a dysregulated immune response called cytokine storm. Researchers are reporting that cytokine storm is a cause of serious complications in COVID-19. As a result, it makes sense to avoid Sambucol and elderberry supplements at this time."
See the final question, 'Are there any supplements for COVID-19?'
I make my own elderberry tincture & syrup. I dislike ginger, so added a lot of star anise which was found to be beneficial for SARS a few years ago. It's hard to know what to do given I feel as snuffly as is my normal during this point in winter. Echinacea doesn't work through over use when I was teaching, & I save goldenseal for when I have something serious. The other research I linked states it's beneficial, so odd it's been found to be otherwise.
Hi Treepie, I remember this dilemma from the time of the swine flu. I take elderberry syrup throughout the winter and think it's wonderful, so I’ve been reading again about it and it seems there are two distinct schools of thought:
One group think that it can cause a cytokine storm which could be fatal, based on the trial which BadHare has linked to, and note that the trial also mentions echinacea!
The other group think it doesn’t cause the storm because it disables the virus from replicating, so you don’t reach the point of having a storm.
Still others think that the study on how it could cause a storm was invalid because it wasn’t tested on humans, but only on blood and cells. However I don't have references for any of these, they're notes I made from what I was reading a few days ago.
Because of this I've decided to take two doses a day for prevention, then increase to four a day if I feel at all unwell. If I think I've got Covid-19 I'll continue for a further two days, but if I then get worse I’ll reduce to one dose a day and see what happens.
I'm quite sure that the original Sambucol website, when it was still made in Israel, had a link to a trial they had done of its use for SARS. I remember it was found to be effective in treating it, but I can't find any record of the trial, presumably because the formula has been sold on to several other companies since then.
Edited to add this link which I'd saved and just re-found:
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