Webinar Forum: Bala (Sida Cordifolia)

Tamara Z. Saleh, BS Pharmacy, MS Applied Natural Products, MCPHS, is presenting this month's webinar on an Indian weed called bala (Sida Cordifolia). Using the Natural Standard Grading Scale™ as a guide, Saleh discusses the available evidence of efficacy for bala in a variety of conditions.

To listen to the lecture, please click here. Complimentary access is available October 1-31, 2009.

Natural Standard remains impartial and offers these educational webinars as an informational public service. All webinars are recorded and archived at www.naturalstandard.com.

Natural Standard values the opinions and views of its readers and welcomes feedback and questions. Individuals are invited to leave comments on Natural Standard's blog and/or e-mail questions@naturalstandard.com.

Comments

[JL]

This is such a great service. I love that Natural Standard provides a new complimentary webinar each month. It's a great teaching tool that's both informative and easy to access.

[diatplan]

That is a decent service by Natural standard. This teaching tool is very user friendly and easily accessible.

[EF]

I recently had a patient ask me about Sida cordifolia after seeing some Internet ads. I was glad I had viewed this Natural Standard webinar and was able to inform the patient on the risks and benefits.

[P.E.]

I had no idea Natural Standard offered these lectures for free. How cool. I had seen that these were offered for some of my classes, but I didn't know that NS could provide us with lectures pertinent to CAM.

[AK]

The webinars posted on the Natural Standard site are quite interesting. They provide a lot of information about a particular topic that you would normally have to acquire by going to a live presentation. Sometimes you may not want to read the entire monograph pertaining to a particular topic, and these webinars are a good way to obtain the most pertinent information regarding the subject in which you are interested.

[Josh]

I love how Natural Standard is such a good resource for both healthcare professionals and consumers. The webinars that they offer are not specifically geared toward those in healthcare, and I firmly believe that everyone will find them understandable and informative. This is a great way to present information on very specific topics.

[Sue]

Natural Standard's monthly webinars are a great tool to learn more about integrative medicine. Having a live presentation that you can listen to at your leisure provides convenience and makes it more interesting to learn over reading extensive monographs. I think this is a great source for everyone, not only for healthcare professionals but also for consumers. I really enjoyed listening to this webinar on bala and learning something new.

[karina gordin]

The webinar introduced bala as a promising treatment for a variety of ailments, ranging from inflammatory skin disorders to lung and liver complications. By the end of the 40-minute webinar, I was admittedly feeling starkly less optimistic and encouraged to experiment with the Ayuverdic herb for my circulatory and inflammatory complaints. Indeed, as Tamara repeated regularly throughout the webinar, human studies are lacking, and long-overdue to standardize and formulate the herbal remedy to validate all the purported risks and benefits associated with bala root, stem, seed, flower administration through capsules, tinctures, infusions and other forms.

For any researchers out there reading this blog, please note that I am willing and eager to be a human subject for your investigative trial of bala for any number of conditions (as long as I'm not randomized into the control group). Contrariwise, I suppose human trials would be rather redundant in the greater scheme of things since there are thousands of years worth of actual, confirmed human empirical evidence of bala's success supporting its many uses.

[steven]

This webinar was very enjoyable and educational. I agree with the previous bloggers that this is a great service that Natural Standard is offering. Online lectures like this one provide accurate, reliable and up-to-date information at the viewer’s convenience and it’s so easy to view. I know of courses that offer this quality of data, but at the cost of hundreds and thousands of dollars. I’m extremely happy to know that this is available to me with such ease of access. Thank you Natural Standard. I look forward to viewing future webinars!

[Ty]

What a great service! These webinars are always great to listen to if you have the chance. They provide high-quality information and are suitable for medical professionals and the consumer alike. Because they are of a specific topic, not all of the webinars that they offer will appeal to you. There is a definite difference between reading literature included in the site and being given an interactive lecture. In the webinars, the speakers usually offer great insight on the use of certain therapies with the experience to back up what they say. Steven is right, these lectures are of very high caliber, and I encourage any who is interested to check it out.

[Emad]

An unbelievable webinar! The information provided is well prepared, and the presenter was very professional and organized. I was impressed by how little information there was when it came to human studies. The presenter made it clear that future research is needed. I hope that pharmaceutical companies would start supporting such research projects. Well done, and thank you, Natural Standard, for giving us access to this valuable material, and I hope it continues.

[TMP]

I agree with everyone. This is a great service. It was very informative and educational. It would be great if Natural Standard could offer this service as continuing education credit for healthcare practitioners. Our patients are seeking alternative treatments, and we must educate them correctly. I hear from so many pharmacists that they don’t know enough, and they don’t know where to find the information. With Natural Standard, there is no excuse. Great job!

[Smith]

I am so glad that Natural Standard offers these webinars to the public for free. They have been very informative. I enjoy learning about new herbs/supplements, such as bala. It is also good that these webinars are not trying to sell you anything; they are just telling you the facts about each topic they present.

[MJ]

I think the webinars provided by Natural Standard is a great resource and way of learning about new and different therapies that people may be using. I listened to this webinar on bala, and it was very informative. I didn’t know an Indian weed such as this can have so many different uses and therapies associated with it — ranging from skin disorders to weight loss. Natural Standard offers many different webinars on their Web site, regarding all sorts of topics, so one can listen to whatever specific topic they want to gain more knowledge about, and I know some people are able to learn better from an interactive lecture than reading the literature.

[T.b.]

This is another testimony about the gifts of nature and the smallness of man. This weed is said to contain alkaloids that is greater than ephedra. It would be remarkable if it can be test marketed for mass consumption because its numerous benefits (benefits all aspects of the five senses) and widespread nature alerts the portending values of Bala.

[DF]

For information on heavy-metal contamination in Ayurvedic medicines, see Dr. Robert Saper’s article in the August 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). He and his colleagues analyzed nearly 200 Ayurvedic medicines sold via the Internet and found that more than 20 percent contained lead, mercury or arsenic. Interestingly, US-manufactured products fared even worse than those made in India.