Re: US to BAN Ephedra. Contact your representatives Now!

Please be advised that serious injuries, adverse reactions, and/or deaths are usually not attributed to the herb ephedra. It is difficult to find any such info in the 100s of years of useage in Western or Eastern medicine in any literature. http://www.supplementquality.com/news/ABC_ephedra_monograph.html states that 'the rate of occurrence of heart attacks and strokes among people who use ephedra seems to be no different from that in the general population' and that:
'The Ephedra Education Council, an industry-based group, presented a review of both the published literature on ephedra safety and on the FDA's collection of 1000 adverse event reports. This review concluded there was no evidence of an association between ephedra and serious adverse events at the industry-recommended levels of intake. It also criticized an analysis of 1000 adverse event reports that was conducted by FDA consultants and subsequently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

An FDA-sponsored review of 140 of the events reported to its MedWatch program concluded that one-third were "probably" and another third were "possibly" associated with ephedra. These included 17 reports of hypertension, 13 reports of palpitations and/or tachycardia, 10 reports of stroke, and 7 reports of seizures. Of these, 10 resulted in death and another 13 in disability.

The Ephedra Education Council also presented the results of the first comparison of how often heart attacks, strokes and seizures occur in the general population and among ephedra users, discovering no evidence of increased risk.'

Overdose was the frequent cause in most if not all of the cases attributed to this drug.

Ephedrine is an isolated component of ephedra. It is concentrated and potent. Instant coffee is also a concentrated and more potent form of the coffee bean. I hope that the more 'stringent' standards will apply to coffee as well.