that they need to know about this subject, for a couple of reasons. First of all they want to help people, so if there’s stuff out there that can help people, is safe and works as well, they want to use it. But also they know their patients are using these things, so they recognise there’s a gap in their knowledge. “For doctors, it’s so hard to keep in touch with all the drugs coming through, and to then get into the nitty gritty of all the complimentary therapies where they don’t know much about to start with, is hard. That’s one thing, and another is that doctors are naturally conservative anyway. When you look at pharmaceutical drugs, going back to betablockers for heart disease, in hindsight we can see that once the evidence and the data was out there, it was around ten years really until it became standard practice.” Which brings us back to Cardiomax. Why is this product having such a hard time reaching the consciousness of doctors? We know it is safe: “An extract of Crataegus-WS 1442-standardized by a special process of production and adjusted to 18.75% oligomeric procyanidines, was investigated in single and repeat-dose toxicity studies. No target organ toxicity was defined at high multiples of the human dose (100 times) and the battery of standard mutagenic and clastogenic tests were negative,” reports one study.
Holt thinks the studies he’s seen are too small to get cut through with doctors, and that Cardiomax simply needs greater awareness. “Take, for example, the hawthorn extract. I’ve seen some very good papers coming through on that, but it’s not proven to the level, I would say, of a pharmaceutical. Off the top of my head there would be one, two hundred people in these studies, while with pharmaceuticals there might be three to five thousand. Now that’s not to say there’s not good evidence [supporting the use of Cardiomax] – I would say that for people with heart failure hawthorn is well worth trying, based on what I’ve seen.” Now Holt is well-briefed and well up to speed on natural remedy research, but even his reaction is a perfect example of how medically-tested natural remedies still have an uphill fight for attention – here’s why: the WS 1442 extract has been medically trialled by thousands, not just a few hundred people. Koller et al in 2005 put Cardiomax to the test in a trial of 711 patients2, and found, “The quality of life of the patients and the cardinal symptoms of CHD (performance impairment, fatigue, exertion dyspnea, palpitations) improved in the Crataegus [WS 1442] cohort to a significantly greater extent than in the comparison cohorts.” Significantly for taxpayers, the medical costs of those being
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treated with Cardiomax were lower than conventional medical costs. The American Heart Journal reported a study of 209 patients taking either Cardiomax or a placebo, with significant improvements in the Cardiomax patients.3
B
ut if it’s backsides on seats you’re after, the granddaddy of the studies to date is the SPICE trial published in 2008, which followed the fortunes of 2,700 congestive heart failure patients for two years. What they found was that patients on Cardiomax not only gained more time on the clock before suffering a cardiac event, but a significant reduction – nearly 40% – in sudden cardiac death within the two year study, for patients with reduced left ventricular ejection fraction. As Science Daily reported: “An herbal medicinal substance, Crataegus Extract WS®1442, safely extends the lives of congestive heart failure patients already receiving pharmacological treatment for the disease, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 56th Annual Scientific Session. “Crataegus Extract WS®1442 is an extract of leaves of the Crataegus tree, and is a natural antioxidant. The herb is currently approved for use in some European countries to treat early congestive heart failure, a