listen in South Africa a native herb seems to be saving lives so you're really saying that 50% of your patients previously would have died and now with Southerland ear they're going away that's exactly why I'm saying herbs are part of an ancient and sometimes unusual medical traditional it's all way beyond what we normally think of is medicine demand for her remedies is booming as more and more of us are convinced they work very well use remedy for toxic conditions skin disease joint problems some of the claims are dramatic some John's walk has changed my life because it enabled me to be me one plus one is not equal to two one plus one is equal to King sewed in herbs really work do they offer something special and could they even provide the key for medicines of the future I'm going to take a new look at these ancient medicines and find out if there's any evidence that they really have special healing powers a rainy day today we each a mystery was born with xml's she's got older it got worse today it covers most of her body it frequently makes her life a living hell the amount of distress is traumatic both for her or for ourselves and just takes so much out of you you don't realize it you just keep going on and on but what happens is you feel physically and mentally whacked out bottom line is you're looking for something that could cure to stop her scratching she wears special clothes that cover her entire body the mistress have tried conventional medicine but nothing has helped in desperation there now pinning their hopes on herbes we've tried homeopathic medicine but then her pitching got worse and worse and worse so we stopped that I hope helps doesn't go the same way I hope that getting the herb root I find long-term careful the mysteries are just one of hundreds and thousands of families who are turning to herbes in Britain today herbal remedies are the fastest-growing alternative therapy it's a 100 million pound a year business demand is so high there's a herbalist on almost every High Street in this one building there are herb lists from Japan China India and Tibet working alongside each other and in almost any town you'll find herb lists like these all ones from Africa the West Indies or Western Europe each one is using a different tradition with different herbs in slightly different ways what are you making I'm making a traditional decoction for their digestive system this is the famous juice thing which is look at the main verb one of the most popular herbal treatments is traditional Chinese medicine it looks like a fun guide fragant no now we're going to add the fungus practitioners claim to kill everything from acne to smoking there's a baffling array of doctors and an equally baffling array of herbs for instance saw palmetto which is for male urinary discomfort sage leaf that's for women during and after menopause and I've got here some ginseng which is supposed to keep your energy levels up and keep you staying sharp could do with some of that it's a hypochondriac stream and if all this sounds strange it gets even more intriguing this may not look like a medical treatment but this bouncing is a part of the era Vedic medical system that comes from sri lanka which uses herbes and oils to treat the body but dancing to treat the mind it's all way beyond what we normally think of is medicine yet some people claim herbs have transformed their lives one of these people is Michael Campbell for years he suffered from crippling leg pains I would walk for 400 yards and then I had to stop because the pain was so severe and then I could wait five minutes and then I could walk again for another four hundred yards and then I had to stop again Michael a central heating engineer was diagnosed with a dangerous circulation condition called intermittent claudication I would try and walk through the pain but the pain was so severe that I couldn't I had to stop the usual treatment is surgery but Michael has had bad experiences in the past there was no way that I was going to go and have surgery I just I was scared of it it frightened me so he visited a herbalist who gave him ginkgo to his astonishment it seemed to work but but no however I don't know how ice cream works either but I know that ginkgo is beneficial to me I can walk for four to five hours sometimes I have to slow down a bit these are things I couldn't do for me but I can now do it with ginkgo it sounds remarkable but one person's experience however powerful isn't scientific proof as hurdle medicines come flying from the shelves are any of them working can they cure people can they even provide something that conventional medicines can't in this program I'm going to put herbal medicines to the test herbalist scan point to thousands of years of accumulated knowledge the oldest texts date back 5,000 years today researchers are still collecting and recording how they were used traditionally it's a vast body of ancient knowledge that herbalists still drawn the wonders of an ordinary meadow in England is that you actually surrounded by medicines this is a classic one here this is the yarrow the milf oil with thousand leaves as it's called it was a very well used remedy in traditional European medicine we use it particularly as for fever management for many people the very naturalness of herbs is one of their big attractions here right next to it is the agrimony church spires it's sometimes call for obvious reasons the root of this is one of the best astringent remedies we have for children it quietly calms and almost lumps and agitated digestion you can see the long strap shaped leaf here this is the rib water or the plant I go lanceolata used very much as a mutilation as plant contains a mucus which when you chew it and swallow it lines that upper digestive tract and when you mulch it him as a wound dressing for example provides a nice soothing demulcent surface on it now it's well known that some plants contain medicinal compounds you know the bark of a willow tree contains a compound that helps to relieve pain and scientists copied it and that way we got aspirin morphine used to be made from opium poppies but herbalist are claiming that herbs aren't just there to provide raw materials for drugs they can be powerful medicines in their own right but is there any evidence for these claims to find out more I've come to Exeter to consult Simon Mills I'm interested in understanding the differences in the way a herbalist would treat somebody from a conventional medic so if I tell you some of the kind of symptoms I have then maybe you could treat me in the way you normally would of course well I have been feeling really rundown and I've had a cold sore and conjunctivitis just in the last two weeks Simon started with a routine check-up comethis check a couple things under this check your pulse please and can I see a tongue just open wide yeah shake it out that's great thank you very much that was great for instant because the tongue as a tool for assessing the body is largely dropped out of fashion but it used to be one of the best ways of seeing what was going on and there and what does my tongue tell you about me how the diagnosis came is a bit of a surprise and your case is a little bit of heat damp heats down I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing human might be the best way of describing that in common language combination of hot which is excessive activity metabolic activity as well as others you know running the furnace is quite high and dampness which is a metaphor of infection contagion and marshy boggy you know not cleaned down this is the old hot damp marshy boggy not clean now herb lists claim it's a useful way of putting people into categories because it helps them get behind the symptoms to the whole person but it sounds bizarre to me if you mean by hot that I'm very active and by damn that I'm quite prone to illness well yeah of course those two things are quite right about me so I can see why they might be valuable in talking about my health even if they're not terms that I might have used originally he also told me that characterizing people by personality type tells him which herbs to prescribe and so there are herbs which are cooling and drying for example they're hers for the heating and drying they tend to be these hot spices like KN or ginger they're herv's which are all other forms of combinations as everybody has an individual story an individual face an individual life history inevitably that means they will have an individual treatment plan I left Simon with mixed feelings the notion of personality types isn't based on any science but I can see the attraction of an approach that focuses on the individual if there's one criticism I have with Western medical approaches it's that the body can be seen as a machine that goes wrong sometimes we just try to fix the bit that goes wrong I like the idea of individualized medicines to treat each of us because of course all of our bodies are extremely different so having suitable things that are tailored right for us makes sense but could it be this individual attention that's actually making people better how do I know the IRB's are doing anything at all to get another view I'm going to visit a country where herbs are claimed to have an astonishing effect in South Africa there's a long and vibrant tradition of herbal medicine in the local villages conventional drugs are beyond most people's reach and herbs or all they've got so we have all these herds laid out before us what do they all do yeah this one is piller live long this one quality flop it released asthma and TB again is good for pregnant women and Swanson okay and how about this one here this is african potato it relieves us also but one herb stands out it's called sutherland ear I'm driving up the east coast to South Africa through kazoo Luna town just about to meet a woman who claims in the 70's and intriguing properties an Hutchings is a medical researcher an herbal practitioner several years ago she started using Sutherlin dia to treat people suffering from hiv/aids to her astonishment she claims it appears to help still gotta see you've got something yes okay have you been coughing no / la has had AIDS for 11 years and Hutchings started treating her six years ago ah have a look alright it closed at night or gates to this all here is it getting better oh yeah it's better now alright what difference has Sutherland Zia made to you give me the power I've got the power if I'm loss of appetite the Sun Burlando make me eat makes you hungry does it displease and the pain who are we pain goes away go and without Sutherland here how do you think you'd be now that's a dilemma rule I'm going to – I think I'm going to die for heaven's God's other line this is not an isolated case and it's treated more than 800 patients in local clinics over 50% have improved she even claimed subtle and ear boosts the immune system by increasing white blood cells recently we've had some blood counts on the patients which indicates that it is working really as an immune stimulant and it can be seen in the blood tests her figures appear to suggest that in some cases the white blood cell count has doubled to near normality so you're saying that the Southerland iya helps to increase people's license though white blood cells which improves their hair and their resistance to infection Anne's work is controversial and not documented yet but she's not claiming Sutherlin D is a solution to AIDS merely that it's helping some people I mean I've been told to try to let it would probably boost the immune system but I didn't think anybody knew quite what it would do a lot of my patients swear it's saved their lives and I think it has it improves the quality of life and I believe it does extend people's worth I think it's actually very exciting I think it's one of the most exciting things that is happened some of the most striking results appeared to come from a local AIDS hospice here people considered beyond treatment by the local hospital come to die this patient arrived in a coma for days ago she's been having daily doses of several andia and is already improved significantly she looks much better than when she came ready yeah we only take those patients who are dying or I've been rejected by the hospitals maybe times by the families and they come here just to die but since we started with châtelet Nia we were able to decide 50% of our patients and they will go back to work and it becomes so strong I mean depending what stage they come in to us so you're really saying that 50% of your patients previously would have died and now with Sutherland ear they're going away that's exactly what I'm saying yeah I suspect that's amazing and and what happens then after they've almost died they've come here they started settling do how much longer do your patients usually live for I've seen the patients living for three years of service provided they come back and then they they take one day on in southern India coming to a place like this makes you realize that for most people on the planet herbs aren't just a fad or a fashion if Anne Hutchings is right they may make the difference between life and death the stories are really moving but I'm a Western trained scientist and to convince me and other scientists in the West that herbs really work I need to find evidence that's more solid than this one group that's been following the boom in herbes with particular interest is the medical profession so what did doctors make of them it's very difficult to actually pin down exactly how much we know about different herbs what we've really got is some anecdotal evidence some stories from individuals sometimes over centuries but relatively speaking compared to modern drugs manufacture drugs we have much less evidence much less robust evidence that's really what we need we need that kind of information and evidence because quite simply if something is effective it's also potentially dangerous so what worries doctors just as it were as me is that much of the case for herbes appears to rest on anecdotes and it seems to me that the problem is that here in Britain herbs a route outside the mainstream of science so there's very little will and almost no money to really investigate them prickly yet aging through the medical data there's one country where they seem to take it all much more seriously that country is Germany where four particular historic reasons there's never been a sharp division between science and herbalism here all GPS are trained in at least a little bit of herbal medicine and a large majority of them treat people with herbs just as a part of their common practice in fact in Germany the second most popular drug after aspirin is ginkgo in the UK that would be unheard of this has made Germany one of the world's leading centers in scientific research on herbal remedies Germany's commitment to herbes goes back to the 19th century but it was given an unexpected modern spin in the 1930s the Nazis in the search for a uniquely German health system saw in homes the medicine of the common people they pushed herbalism into the medical mainstream and jacked up production and research today the non-si contribution to herbalism in germany is controversial yet there's no doubt that this fascination with herbs still lives on and part of that legacy is this the Commission a monographs it's probably one of the most comprehensive dossiers ever put together in the world on the safety and effectiveness of IRB's the monographs are the result of 20 years work by researchers and manufacturers during the 1980s and 90s of the 300 different IRB's that were tested 191 were approved so from annika to yarrow and this is used as the basis for any new registration of a horrible product in Germany the monographs represent the first systematic attempt to put her already on a rigorous footing yet looking through them I have problems if you take a closer look there are very few references so you can't check out any of the evidence and if you speak to the people who created this they say that it's based partly on anecdotal and partly on historical uses of a herb so though it's extremely comprehensive from a scientist point of view it's not quite the horrible Bible some people say it is what I need is a technology that can show what herbs are really made up that's why I'm gonna go visit a research center me in state-of-the-art labs like these scientists have discovered in recent years that it's possible to analyze plants in sort of detail the Commission ear researchers could only have jumped off nowadays we have access to techniques like thin layer chromatography which is just an approach that separates out the different chemical compounds from within a herb so for instance I take of the essence of a herb gingko and put a thin line of that on this extremely thin plate and I put the whole thing into a liquid which soaks up this thin plate and carries up the different chemical compounds by different amounts now you can't see much on this yet but I'm going to do some things to it this should reveal what chemicals are inside the ginkgo and I just have a supply of nitrogen here there we go and I love the spraying you can see some little yellow lines that have gone up the plate now you still can't see that much so I'm going to go try something else because I've sprayed the plate we're going to be able to see the chemical fingerprint of Ginkgo by putting this underneath these ultraviolet lights and look at that it's just amazing that different lines each represents a different chemical compound from the herb taking herbs apart like this means we can see exactly what they're made of so if you look at the fingerprint from the ginkgo leaf and you know how to read it it's separated out into lots of different chemicals some of which are gingko leaves and they can help prevent blood clots Ginkel IDEs are a family of chemicals with known medicinal properties that are only found in ginkgo this one here is from the Hawthorn leaf which is supposed to be good for the cardiovascular system this contains some polyphenols and these were able to make your heart beat stronger so there's no question that herbs contain some useful chemicals but it's not clear that they're actually in a form that the human body can absorb in short herbs have the potential to work but that doesn't mean they do to answer that question they need to be tested on people one of the most thoroughly investigated is a herb believed to relieve depression Jenny miles has suffered from it much of her life I remember when I took my GCSEs at school when I was only 15 that I I felt so useless and so worthless with myself that I literally wanted to take a shitload of paracetamol and just end it all Jenny has continued to struggle with these black moons as a young mother depression just takes your heart and soul away from you you don't want to continue there's no light at the end of the tunnel as soon as you've dealt with one problem there's going to be another one and you're never really going to get over it Jenny took antidepressants but she didn't like the effect though it just blankets out everything you're feeling it doesn't just take away the lows it takes away the highs it takes away the very essence of you and you're literally walking around like a zombie as a last resort she took a herb called st.
John's wort the benefit she says were almost immediate I was able to control my depression so so much better than I've ever been able to do before I could hear myself about to snap at my husband for not having done anything wrong whatsoever and being able to stop it before I said it it was so thrilling to be given something that worked so phenomenally well experiences like this have encouraged scientists to look more closely at sin John's words one of the Centers of research is Germany here a manufacturer of herbal products has conducted rigorous clinical trials into the plant when did you do your trials innocent John's words we started clinical trials in San John's word about ten years ago and we knew it was traditionally used in people with health sad depressed or dejected so what we wanted to know was whether we could both stop this experience based knowledge by modern clinical trials some John's words contains a chemical called hyper furan which is believed to reduce depression but is it in a form that can be used by the human body the researchers recruited nearly 2000 volunteers suffering from mild to moderate depression trouble getting to sleep yes do you find yourself getting restless have you considered waves once took seem perfect or not number have you ever deliberately Hajis some volunteers were then given a standardized extract of some John's words the rest got a conventional antidepressant or a dummy pill I don't know which one these pills are and you won't know until the end of the trial is that okay over the course of the trials researchers carefully monitor the mental state of each volunteer then they analyzed the data what's in John's work be effective the results were unequivocal we found that there's a considerable amount of people who get completely cured and what is very amazing is that many of these people don't get another episode again so it prevents them from relapses that's amazing in the most recent trial 50% of those who took st.
John's words improved against just 33% who took a standard antidepressant moreover twice as many of those on conventional drugs reported side effects then John's war has changed my life because it's enabled me to be me I'm blessed with two wonderful beautiful children and some John's wort has given me the power to be able to see that and I can family enjoy being their mum here at last is solid proof that a herb not only works but works better than conventional drugs yes and johnswort is only one of dozens of remedies commonly used by herbalist s– in Leicester the mystery family have been prescribed a cocktail of herbs to help with Aisha's eczema it's good to see you all again and Asia this is now their third consultation with herbalist Saran froster progress is painfully slow how's she been getting on that skin seemed pretty slightly you know but it's like a very slow improvement kind of thing but her itchiness her personal Machinist yeah ability to control her hands it sometimes it feels like happiness offices you know and it's just like you can't do nothing about it right um at the moment he sure has eczema on her neck all her front I assume she's she's got it on her back as well and she's got it on her legs and her feet so it's pretty general the skin is very lettering her face looks a lot better than it was when we first met which is it's good that seems to have calmed down a little bit how is she getting on with her sleeping varies lastly is are they down a counseling I think if we focus on the treatment day to cool her down a bit more and also to try and prevent or help the itch serene brews up a new cocktail of six herbs to soothe and heal eyes your skin it includes calendula balota ephedra humilis chamomile and marshmallow although she is still obviously troubled by etching she has calmed down just so much she also makes a couple of creams to help with the skin for Aisha and her parents the jury's still out on whether hopes will help them crack this most difficult medical condition those have helped but it's a slow process why we just hope rather sooner than later than she gets better today we know more about herbes than ever before dozens of remedies have been analyzed but how good are the tests and what do they prove to find out I consulted professor exiled Ernst the UK's first professor of complementary medicine the science inherent medicine is as good as any science in alternative medicine I know of clinical trials in Hobart medicine which compare favorably with clinical trials in pharmacology or any other area of medicine ernst told me that there had been hundreds of trials on dozens of commonly used herbal remedies so for instance to my surprise there's no real scientific evidence that ginseng helps with mental alertness all that evening primrose oil helps with menstrual problems they've been through clinical trials and they just don't work there isn't even any solid proof that echinacea helps to boost the immune system or fight off colds yet using the most rigorous criteria Ernst has found overwhelming evidence that some herbs do work as jolly good evidence for at least a dozen different herbal medicines to help in specific diseases these are what have been called the super herbs so this in John word for mild to moderate depression black cohosh that helps with the effects of menopause devil's claw and that helps to act as an anti-inflammatory and helps with joint pains garlic can reduce cholesterol and decrease your blood pressure as well saw palmetto that one could help men with enlarged prostates to urinate that Hawthorne can help with heart conditions and horse-chestnut can help some of the symptoms associated with varicose veins these herbs have been proven to work they've been through clinical trials that have just as rigorous as those used for conventional drugs and there's the amazing ginkgo ernst Ernestina found the solid proof that it really can help people like Michael Campbell suffering from cramping conditions in the legs but it may also help with tinnitus it may even reduce memory loss in some people of course none of this means these are the only herbs the work they're merely the ones that have been tested I'm sure that out there there dozens hundreds perhaps of treasures to be found and within the plant kingdom I'm absolutely convinced that this is not the end we will continue to find very effective treatments from plants but there's something more what's causing real excitement is not that herbs work but how they work unraveling this could just provide answers to some of the most difficult medical conditions of the 21st century come down Ella one place to start this inquiry is back in South Africa where scientists have been looking very closely at how herbes work I'm at the University Johannesburg and here they're doing research into how subtle andia works and they're coming up with some amazing things that could have huge implications for how other herbs work now Carl I know that even studying Southerland eeeh what exactly you're doing here trying to isolate certain molecules from southern India trying to separate them mm-hmm he said one group of chemicals had particularly caught his attention they're known as flavonoids they contain molecules that have been shown to be active on cancer cells and also an HIV infection so they're not trivial molecules but is a mystery here what's puzzling is that flavonoids are very large molecules so large they don't easily pass through a cell membrane so they should be impossible for the human body to absorb so although we know that the flavonoid Fontaine's chemical structures that have got proven highly relevant pharmacological activity the mystery is how do they get into cells the mystery caused Albrecht – think again could it be that Sutherland is apparent efficacy was a myth and that the human body can't absorb the active part of the plant our breath wondered if he missed something then he had another thought the interesting thought that has arisen in our research is that is another family of molecules called the saponins or the detergents a soap like just to give you an idea of got some of the plant material here in water there we go shake it up you'll see that's what you get with hot water not a warning about this and early on but look at that is forming a SAP layer and the idea that arose couldn't it be that these happenings are acting on the membranes of the cells to allow the membranes to take up the flavonoids okay so flavonoids might be able to help with something like hiv/aids the flavonoids can't get through the cell membrane in human beings so they shouldn't really be having an effect just by eating the herb however there's another substance which is like a detergent and that can change the structure of the flavonoid and mean that it caused the sudden change in structure of the flavonoid we change the structure of the membrane to lift the flavonoid a3 okay in short what makes a herb like Southerland is special is the unlike most conventional drugs it's not a single chemical it's a cocktail of chemicals that react together so the Sun is greater than the parts the simple but powerful thought here this is a hypothesis is that if you take the one and you take the other and you put them together you get activity so it's like one plus one is not equal to two one plus one is equal to ten that is a powerful idea it's a process called synergy you might think of it as an orchestra with each of the different instruments working together unfortunately symphonies of chemicals like this are still too complicated for scientists to reproduce yet there's tantalizing evidence that it's precisely this cocktail that gives herbes their special healing powers one place they're testing the idea is London's Imperial College here they're examining whether a herbal cocktail can be exploited to treat one of the most puzzling chronic conditions of the 21st century Alzheimer's the research is being led by dr.
James Warner this is a magnetic resonance image scan of a 62 year old person without Simon disease the scan shows abnormally large black areas where brain cells have died they also show an increase in fluid the problem for doctors is that there's no clear understanding of what causes this multiple degeneration there are a number of different theories one of which is that there may be chemicals called free radicals attacking the brain tissue there's another possibility which is that the blood vessels in people with Alzheimer's disease begin to narrow this causes an interruption to the blood supply to the brain and as a result brain cells die so it seems that several different things are all contributing to Alzheimer's and is this very complexity that has made attempts to treat it using conventional drugs relatively unsuccessful the difficulty is that creating medicine that can tackle several causes at one time is extremely difficult yet according to Warner there's a herb or cocktail that might be capable of doing just that it's that remarkable plant ginkgo it's an extraordinarily complex mixture of up to 200 chemicals this means that unlike conventional drugs it may be able to have several different effects simultaneously first thing that we'll be doing is dilating the blood vessels increasing the blood flow to the brain and therefore improving the delivery of oxygen to nerve cells it also probably scavenges those free radicals those toxic chemicals that the body produces that attack nerve cells and by scavenging those free radicals it might help to reduce the development of Alzheimer's disease attempts to do this synthetically have so far had limited success so the great advantage of ginkgo is that we can't make anything as clever as this or as complicated as this nearly all conventional medicines are a single chemical entity they usually only have one action for as ginkgo has many actions in other words it's the herbal shotgun that can hit a range of targets versus the conventional single bullet that can only hit one but is Warner right to find out he's running what he hopes will be the definitive clinical trial into whether ginkgo can help without signers what I'm gonna do now Arnold is show you some everyday objects and I I just want you to tell me what each one's called okay nearly 200 volunteers suffering from various degrees about timers have been recruited so first of all could you tell me what that's called the flower each is assessed and then given ginkgo or a dummy pill they're then revisited six months later and reassessed to see if there's been any change well the doctor uses it to measure it might be heart beat I'm not sure he would use it to listen to your heart yeah I I don't know the name of it now ah no no the results of Warner's trial aren't you until spring 2006 although earlier trials have strongly suggested that ginkgo works but the trial could have a much wider implications it may just be but like Alzheimer's many of the chronic diseases of the 21st century require a more complex chemical cocktail that we can currently make in which case herbs in all their complexity may just be the answer back in Leicester the mysteries are continuing to battle with exactly this kind of complex condition Aisha has now been taking herbs for her eczema for six months the change is quite extraordinary look at that ah that is fantastic and these hands the skin is just marvelous there's much more moisture on on a skin than previously before it used to be very wrinkly yeah as you can see I have faced it's very very good very very good indeed but I can see that there's a little patch isn't there underneath which indeed a lot comes up all right a bit like little small patches of bread she's tired okay and Exner is notoriously fickle and it could well flare up again mmm oh that's lovely that is just so much better than it was money only first yeah the oven is what it really is very very much better there are no clinical trials that prove herbs can cure expired thing every now and then you might see like there's some claw marks on it because once you get scratchy or tired but it tends to hear much better than what it used to skin is yeah we could just be getting closer to understanding why herbes may work for complex conditions like this that continue to outwit conventional drugs at this moment um we're all on the upward trend around and I'm just concerned that we don't just take a step backwards now the issues skin has stopped seeping like it was and weeping like it was we can confidently use other halves that help to heal it's helping my daughter whether it's going to help anybody else's daughter I can't guarantee that myself but for my child I believe it's been a right choice today it recognized that some herbs at least can be powerful effective medicines but that also means that they can be dangerous just like drugs herbs can have side effects they can even contain dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals but because they've never been thought of as medicines until recently there have been very few controls over their safety or quality in an attempt to address some of these issues new legislation now requires four herbs that make any claims to have medicinal properties now have to go through rigorous quality standards perhaps this is the first step in breaking the division between conventional drugs and the proven medicinal herbs a recognition that these herbs might have something special and unique to offer during my journey of course we began knowing that an ingredient taken from a particular herb could have a medicinal effect but what really impressed me has been the way that different ingredients from a particular herb could combine together and have really powerful effects on us humans so I believe that herbes are going to play a key role in medicines of the future what started as an ancient wisdom just might provide new medicines that will help us all live longer fuller night Jane Horrocks discovers her family history rooted in the cotton mills of Lancashire tomorrow night who do you think you are is at 9:00 well back to tonight and a past gem Jane Leeves was in the chair for have I got news for you next for a free Open University leaflet about alternative medicine and details of all Open University programs call Oh 8 seven hundred one hundred eight seven eight all log on to open to net