This is Starwest's nitrogen-flushed double wall silverfoil pack.

Used as a decoction, extract and tincture.

Native Americans Americans have long used the fruit of this shrub for food and harvested honey from its flowers.

The 1997 Commission E on Phytotherapy and Herbal Substances of the German Federal Institute for Drugs recommends Saw palmetto berry for 'Urination problems in benign prostatic hyperplasia stages I and II.'

'Daily dosage: 1 - 2 g saw palmetto berry or 320 mg lipophilic ingredients extracted with lipophilic solvents (hexane or ethanol 90 percent v/v); equivalent preparations. Mode of Administration: Comminuted herb and other galenical preparations for oral use. Actions: Antiandrogenic; Anti-exudative.'

Benign prostate enlargement appears to be triggered by abnormally high levels of the male hormones testosterone and dihydrotestosterone in prostate tissue. Saw Palmetto reduces absorption of these hormones within the prostate gland, while reducing inflammation and swelling. This reduces bladder obstruction and improve urinary flow.

Saw Palmetto prevents the conversion of testosterone to dihydortestosterone, which helps to prevent the development of prostate disease and may also be beneficial for genitourinary problems, endocrine disorders, infertility, impotence, menstrual disorders, ovarian dysfunction, lactation, thyroid deficiencies, and painful menstrual periods.

Saw palmetto does not appear to inhibit production of testosterone elsewhere in the body. At least three rigorous clinical trials have confirmed Saw Palmetto's ability to remedy urinary difficulties. In one comparative trial, it proved equal to the prescription drug Proscar (finasteride) as a source of symptomatic relief (although, unlike Proscar, it had no beneficial impact on the size of the prostate).

Grieve's classic 'A Modern Herbal': 'Diuretic, sedative, tonic. It is milder and less stimulant than cubeb or copaiba, or even oil of sandalwood. Like these, it has the power of affecting the respiratory mucous membrane, and is used for many complaints which are accompanied by chronic catarrh.'

'It has been claimed that sabal is capable of increasing the nutrition of the testicles and mammae in functional atony of these organs. It probably acts by reducing catarrhal irritation and a relaxed condition of bladder and urethra. It is a tissue builder.'

'Dosages: Of fluid extract, ½ to 1 drachm. Of solid extract, 5 to 15 grains.'

King's 1898 Dispensatory: 'Saw palmetto appears, from clinical reports, to be a nutritive tonic. It is also an expectorant, and controls irritation of mucous tissues. It has proved useful in irritative cough, chronic bronchial coughs, whooping-cough, laryngitis, acute and chronic, acute catarrh, asthma, tubercular laryngitis, and in the cough of phthisis pulmonalis. Upon the digestive organs it acts kindly, improving the appetite, digestion, and assimilation.'

'However, its most pronounced effects appear to be those exerted upon the urino-genital tracts of both male and female, and upon all the organs concerned in reproduction. It is said to enlarge wasted organs, as the breasts, ovaries, and testicles, while the paradoxical claim is also made that it reduces hypertrophy of the prostate. Possibly this may be explained by claiming that it tends toward the production of a normal condition, reducing parts when unhealthily enlarged, and increasing them when atrophied.'

'At any rate, it has been lauded as the 'old man's friend,' giving relief from the many annoyances commonly attributed to enlarged prostate. May its results not be due to its control over urethral irritation, and thereby reducing swollen conditions not in reality amounting to hypertrophy? Besides this, it increases the tonus of the bladder, allowing a better contraction and more perfect expulsion of the contents of that viscus. Thus it overcomes the tenesmic pain so dreaded by the sufferer.'

'We would rather regard it a remedy for prostatic irritation and relaxation of tissue than for a hypertrophied prostate. It is said to relieve aching, dull, throbbing pain in the prostatic portion of the urethra, with mucoid or prostatic discharge. It relieves the irritation following a badly-treated gonorrhoea. Orchitis, ovaritis, orchialgia, ovaralgia, and epidymitis have been asserted cured with it. It is reputed to restore sexual activity after exhaustive excesses, and even in the feeble woman, strengthens the sexual appetite.'

'Long-continued use of it is said to slowly and surely cause the mammae to enlarge. Its reputed power to reduce uterine hypertrophy is probably due to its power over relaxed tissues, the organ being not in reality hypertrophied, but large, flabby, and actively leucorrhoeal. The remedy needs a more careful and extended study. The dose of the fluid extract is from 1 to 60 drops; of specific saw palmetto, 1 to 60 drops.'

American Materia Medica, 1919 (Ellingwood): 'The direct influence of this agent is exerted upon the entire reproductive apparatus, especially upon the prostate gland of the male. It is demanded in enlarged prostate, with throbbing, aching, dull pain, discharge of prostatic fluid, at times discharge of mucus, also of a yellowish, watery fluid, with weakened sexual power, orchialgia, epididymitis and orchitis, when associated with enlarged prostate. In women, ovarian enlargement, with tenderness and dull aching pains, weakened sexual activity, and small, undeveloped mammary glands, are much benefited by its continued use.'

'It is a sedative to all irritable conditions of these organs, and is a profound nutritive tonic, operating much like phosphorus. It increases the size and secreting power of the mammary glands where they are abnormally small and inactive. It improves the tone, and overcomes irritability of the ovaries, relieving dysmenorrhea when due to atonicity. It may be given with confidence in wasting of the testes in the early stages, and the author has retarded the development of varicocele and has developed the growth and nutrition of the testes materially by its use.'

'To this agent is ascribed considerable power in reducing the size of hypertrophied prostate in old men, and in quickly relieving cystic and other disorders incident to this condition. In the writer's hands it has produced no marvelous cures of this disorder, but it has been of assistance to other measures and could not be well dispensed with. It relieves irritation of the bladder to a satisfactory extent, correcting the irritable character of the urine, increases the muscular power of the patient to expel the urine and produces a sense of relief, that is in every way gratifying and satisfactory.'

'In the treatment of impotence in young men who have been excessive in their habits, or have masturbated, it can be relied upon with positiveness. It will overcome the excitability from exhaustion and increase sexual power in those newly married who, having been anxious concerning their sexual strength or ability, have become suddenly almost entirely impotent after marriage. If the patient is instructed to abstain, for from four to six weeks, and to have confidence in his ultimate recovery, this agent in doses of from twenty to thirty drops three or four times daily, combined with a direct nerve tonic, such as avena sativa in doses of fifteen drops, or the one one-hundredth of a grain of phosphorus, will establish a cure. It will relieve any undue irritation, due to excess and exhaustion, that may be present in any part of the genito-urinary apparatus.'

'This agent is a remedy for sexual neurasthenia or sexual perversion with nerve exhaustion, a condition often overlooked in diagnosis, but quite common, one which follows onanism more often than any other habit. Its use should be persisted in for weeks, in the treatment of this form of nerve exhaustion, and if combined with avena sativa, the phosphates, strychnia, or the tonic gold salts, and abstinence enforced, a cure will result more readily than with all the rest without it.'

'An exceedingly important use for this remedy that I have not been able to find in the books, is its use for sterility. In simple cases where there is no organic lesion on the part of the patient, this agent has an excellent reputation for restoring the ovarian action properly and assisting in putting the patient into an excellent condition. One conscientious reliable lady physician assures me that in five definite cases, pregnancy has followed the use of this remedy where sterility was pronounced previously, and thought to be incurable.'

'In its influence upon the nasal and bronchial mucous membranes this agent has been given with excellent advantage in the treatment of acute catarrh, chronic bronchial coughs of all characters, including whooping-cough, laryngitis and the cough of phthisis. It is credited also with cures in the treatment of aphonia.'