Not to tail post here, but has the term "natural remedies" really been defined here?
It can mean many different things. Just saying.

That's the point. Some people hear those words and can't help but run screaming for the hills, desperate to wash off the dirty hippie cooties.

I'm all for the ones that have been tested and proven. Untested doesn't mean disproven, but it does mean unproven. And if you scroll back, you'll find that my initial post on this thread was in response to "untested home remedies".

Unfortunately, the FDA doesn't regulate them, so there are still some problems. There is no differentiation on the shelves between the ones that are tested and proven, the ones that are untested, and the ones that have been tested and proven useless. So unless you've got the NIH site up on your smartphone as you go down that aisle, you can't tell.
The economic reality is that the herbal supplement industry has deliberately avoided being treated as food or drug, despite being sold as something for people to ingest, in order to avoid the requirement that their products be tested. Happily, in 2007 the FDA was given the authority to check that the products at least contain the ingredients on the label. So that's a plus. I'm not sure how homeopathy fits into that, though, as they don't contain any of the ingredient.
It's my point too. There's no differentiation on the "natural remedies" shelves between tested and untested remedies, or even between effective and ineffective tested products.

The normal state of the alternative medicine industry is equivalent to when the FDA system fails.

It's also a question of severity. When an herbal supplement fails, the result is: nothing. When a drug fails, we discover it because people are suffering severe side effects and even death. Oh, and sometimes they suffer those when the drug is working too.

There is at least one differentiation: untested substances must put a disclaimer that the FDA has not tested it and it is "not intended to treat, diagnose, or prevent any disease."

Well. That's not entirely the case. There are some herbal remedies which can have a very serious impact on health if not taken carefully and under medical supervision. I can't remember the name of it now, but I know there's one that can cause quite serious liver and kidney problems, if they used where an underlying problem already exists (I think this is mainly a problem with undiagnosed existing conditions).

I don't know how you classify things over there, but if it's been tested and must be taken "under medical supervision" then it's not the kind of thing HM is talking about. The FDA does have authority over the safety of dietary supplements, BTW, they just have less-restrictive guidelines than full-blown "drugs."

...because people with a diagnosed existing condition such as heart disease or liver disease definitely wouldn't smoke or drink. Would they? :D

lol well yeah.

How do you know? That hasn't been tested either. "Natural" doesn't mean "harmless". The only way to be sure something has no side effects is if it has no effects.
"Wink wink, nudge nudge. But go ahead and use it for your disease anyway."
I won't speak for Dana, but she did say "can have a very serious impact on health if not taken carefully and under medical supervision", not "must be taken under medical supervision", which have different meanings, especially if we take "must" to mean by law.

I'm not sure how much authority the FDA has over dietary supplement safety. All I've seen is that they can verify that they actually contain the listed ingredients.

From here:

Actually a lot of alternative remedies work great. Ginger DOES help nausea. I don't know if it works for chemo, but in general, it works. Pot does work for chemo though. It's really stupid that it's illegal.

But apparently it works great on puffy eyes. At least that's what models say. :D

Chinese and Ayurvedic Medicine have been tested and proved for over 5000 years.

Are you talking about ephedra, maybe? I know a few people died from it when they didn't follow directions. Like, one guy took 20-something pills within a 24 hour period, and you aren't supposed to exceed 6 or 8 in a 24 hour period. Another guy took a bunch and then went to football (or maybe it was baseball) practice in the hot sun and died.

I think sometimes people do stupid shit, and they pay the price. Should a natural plant substance be banned because some people are idiots? I think not. But there should be a severe warning on the label.

Yes. And Chinese medicine offered for the relief of eczema can have a negative impact on kidneys. Also....define proved? The jury is still very much out on acupuncture...and really, I think the less said about ground up tiger penis and rhino horn the better.

There are othr facors though. I think it might have been St John's wort. A natural herbal remedy which can have devastating effects on undiagnosed kidney problems.

Yes, there are some flaws, especially the killing of endangered animals to provide ground up penis or horns, but a lot of the herbal stuff really works, and works well. I have been using different forms of alternative medicines for years, and so have many people I know. No one I know has ever had a bad effect. I'm not doubting you, I'm just saying. I have had acupuncture before, and it worked for me. I wish I could still afford it. it would be a hell of a lot better than having to take pain meds all the time. Ugh. The pain meds work well, but I know they are probably causing damage to my liver and my brain.

Acupuncture didnt do a damn thing for me. Also, a lot of the success of alternative therapies seems difficult to replicate in scientific studies. How much of it is the medicine helping, and how much is people thinking themselves well because they believe the medicine will help?

Cite the studies please, there are plenty that disagree with your opinion.

Well of course some work. Aspirin is a herbal remedy whch has been tested and now reproduced in labs. Ginger does help nausea, and was given to astronauts to assist with weightlessness sickness.


But 'herbal stuff' is a pretty wide brief. Thats like saying yeah but a lot of plants are really edible. It doesnt stop some of them being poisonous.

Tested how? Do you mean used?

Or, perhaps Ayurvedic. I hadn't heard of it before, but the first thing that pops out when googling it is its frequent toxic heavy metal content.

I think that accupuncture or something like that would be better than the kind of back surgeries people have done, if only in that it doesn't ƒuck you up WORSE than before.

I am talking about MY OWN EXPERIENCE and the EXPERIENCES of people I KNOW. I am not talking about studies.

You know, the FDA came out and said weed had no medicinal benefits as well, but everyone knows that is a lie.

Why do you trust big pharma so much? I trust my own experiences. I know they don't all work, and some work for some people and not others, just like real medications. I will always try herbs and alternative things before I try medication.

Dana, I used to take a tincture that had St John's Wort in it, along with a few other ingredients, and it worked GREAT for me, better than any antidepressant I had ever taken. And there were no side effects. I'm not saying everyone should take it, but it certainly worked for me. I think pharmaceuticals have a much higher chance of doing harm than most herbals or homeopathics.

I've never heard of Ayurvedic medicine having heavy metal consequences, but here is a link to the NIH page on Ayurvedic Medicine.
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/ayurveda/

and here is a link to the NIH page on Chinese Medicine.
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/whatiscam/chinesemed.htm#

That quote is from your first link, sugarpop.

OK. I only said I had never heard of it. That's why I posted the link I found. I have never personally used Ayurvedic, except teas. I have used some Chinese herbs though, and they worked quite well. I imagine anything coming from Asia might be suspect, because they don't have the same regulations. If they contained heavy metals, it must be from all the pollution over there, don't you think? So I guess some Chinese herbs might also be suspect. I have never had a problem personally.

sugarpop! I've been wondering where you were!

Nice to see you back. :)

Yeah, like those zinc nasal sprays to fight a new cold.

Oh, wait.

Yeah....*tic* I have been *tic* using herbal remedies fo- *tic*-r years now...and *ungh* they ne - *fuck fuck fuck* -ver did me any *tic* harm!


(sorry Sug :p just kiddin')

On the other hand, that's a perfect example of the FDA stepping in to pull something herbal off the shelves after it had a negative effect. It's not a completely unregulated free-for-all over there in the vitamin aisle.

We have something of the opposite problem over here. There are a number of vitamin supplements (again can't recall exactly which, and cannot be arsed googling :P) which are about to be heavily regulated to the point that effective quantities won't be available over the counter at healthfood stores. One of them is particularly helpful for menopausal women and there's been a big campaign to save the supplements. They've been available for years, but new EU rules are starting to impact. Under British law they were absolutely fine and actually quite effectively regulated ( i think).

Sometimes. Sometimes it's the intended ingredient.

mercury was used for years as a medicine in the west. Until it became clear that it wasn't so much helping as poisoning the patents :P

To be fair, it did technically treat syphilis. The mercury killed you slower than the syphilis, that's all.

But there were also lots of folks drinking straight mercury for general health, which was of course not a wise plan. :)

I'm a fan of that "until".
That's a common issue with alternative medicine. Something may work in particular circumstances, and it becomes a cureall. Chiropracty may help certain back pain, and people use it for arthritis.

And leeches can be good to prevent clotting, but they're useless at best for... almost everything they used to be used for.

I reckon that ole practice of drillin into yer head to relieve a headachey wern't not none too wise neever, but hey its natural riggghhhttt.

Nonsense: just pop a couple under your tongue and allow them to dissolve slowly...

(prizes for anyone who gets that comedy reference).

Once again, trepanning does have a legitimate medical use. There was a news article just recently about how it saved a little girl's life when she had pressure building up in her skull from a brain hemmorhage after getting hit in the head with a baseball in her backyard. Her only symptom was a severe headache. (It was news because the parents only bothered to take her to the ER after they saw a news program about Natasha Richardson. Had they let the girl just go to bed with some Tylenol, she would have died.)

You have to have a certain baseline of respect for the empirical evidence that any group of people collects, even if no one knows or remembers the why behind it. There was, for example, a tribe in Africa which became quite worshipped by the locals for awhile, because they had discovered a magical shamanistic cure for disease. Anthropologists visited, and watched the entire ritual, which involved hours of dancing, chanting, taking certain sacred fruits from special trees, praying over them, hoisting the fruit in a basket over a sacred river, spending another full week or two dancing, singing, etc. etc. etc... then the gods had "blessed" the sacred fruit, the sick person ate it, and they got better. Well of course what the anthropologists realized was the fruit got moldy while it sat out there for two weeks, and the tribe was growing freaking penecillin right there in the basket. Their belief in why it worked was misguided, but the fact remained that this tribe had discovered a cure for these sick people after all. They were not lying, they were not imagining the results. They could have saved a lot of time and energy if they had used the scientific method to further pinpoint the results they were seeing, but they were nonetheless producing results.

Iwas joking about them thar olden days ya cloddy

I can't find any evidence on the internets of an African tribe accidentally discovering penicillin.

No....but there have been plenty of societies who have accidentally discovered aspirin.

:notworthy Man, I cannot even imagine how to look for such a thing nor how long I would last searching for it.

Don't know what to tell you. In the old days, shit was in books, and this was in a book on my dad's shelf that I read when I was about 17. I'll ask him if he remembers which one I'm talking about. If everything were available online, Dana would never have to go to the University library.

actual real statistics I just made up:
 

The internet gives us quick access to 1% of the information in the world. Library sciences are still needed for the remaining 99%.

And...I wouldn't have had to spend $40 (incl postage) for a book about 18th C Infantry ...which I just did.

god, I hate the 18th C fucking infantry! I really hate them and I don't hate anyone!


(Ok. that was for attention. I admit that)

hahahahahah. That made me laugh so hard I startled Pilau.

FDA: Indian drug co lied about test results for generic drugs. (also CNN)

"Nobody" spots problems with study published in JAMA

Did Astra Zeneca's research chief bias science with Sex-for-Studies/Drugs scandal?

Depressed Doc fabricated (not botched) research

Thanks! It's good to be back. :D

They tried to do that here too, but fortunately, there is a champion in Congress who uses vitamins and supplements and believes in them. He has fought hard against having them be like drugs, where you can't get them over the counter.

If something is dangerous, it obviously shouldn't be sold over the counter. But most of that stuff is relatively safe, if used as directed. I guess they should test it and make sure it doesn't have heavy metals in it though. As I said, that's the first I heard of that.

Memory returns a 93% match.
And adds that the fruit had to have been chewed by a cross-eyed child.

I think the source was a book by Lyall Watson; either Supernature or Lifetide.
I read these boooks ages ago, they teeter between cutting edge science - with all the correct references etc - and some questionable extrapolation.

It was where I first learned about the grex, though. Amazing little thing. or 10,000 things, I'm still not sure.

Natural remedies that work, and I use:
Cranberry extract (anything, but concentrate is best for 'problem times')
Yogurt or Acidophelius or Lactobacillius (when you're on antibiotics)
Green Tea (more benefits being discovered frequently)
Tea Tree Oil (I use for acne, but good for fungus ect)
Chamomile (calming or soothing)
Honey (sore throat, other things i don't use it for so I don't know)
Peppermint (see honey)

The list goes on and on. These are just a few I use fairly frequently, which none of my doctors has ever suggested TO me. I have asked my doctor about using them, and I have yet to hear them say they don't work or are a bad idea. The cranberry btw, saved my life when I got a UTI and could not get to the doc until the next day.

HM- your article barely pointed out any specific natural remedies that they tested. Although not all natural remedies work, a great deal do. A great deal that have not made it through FDA approval, neither do doctors tell you about them. Why? Because the real money is in big pharm. They get samples and other incentives to push pills.
Ex: why were anti-depressants pressed on me for 2 yrs in my teens? I was overweight, if the doc had asked it would have been clear I didn't exercise and I ate poorly. Instead of giving me the natural remedy, or even SUGGESTING it along with the pills. What did they do (2 dif docs)? They put me on pills and tried to keep me on them. Starting at the age of 13 i believe. That is wrong.

Oh, and "diet and exercise" is a natural remedy. Its not in the list because I don't use it.

I think the point isn't that there aren't any good herbal remedies; but rather, there are also many that aren't efficacious and whose effects cannot be replicated in empirical studies.

Tea Tree is a fine substance. I use it a lot. Green tea is proven to be high in anti-oxidants and the effects of anti-oxidants can and have been proved in medical studies (they form the basis of the only currently effective treatment of age related macular degeneration - lutin).

Different doctors have different attitudes to this stuff. My GP is quite happy to suggest to me natural remedies that might help alongside prescription medications. But she's also good for telling me which ones are proven and tested and which ones are just taking my money.

The cranberry extract probably would have been a fine remedy for my UTI, but I had to go to the doc to get it diagnosed, so she gave me antibiotics just to really kill it. At that point though it was my 3rd or 4th month in a row that I had to take antibiotics...I prob shoulda turned 'em down. I think part of the problem with herbal remedies used by the general population is that they are also "self-diagnosing" and don't have a professional opinion as to what is their issue is. Of course, the pro's don't always do that good of a job either which I know first hand.

About the studies, I just don't trust that all or even most natural remedies have been effectively tested. Especially in this country where big pharm runs the show. I don't want big pharm to take over that aspect of medicine whatsoever, it would drive up the costs and then some might require a prescription. Or they would fuck up the medicine in order to 'imrove' it. Remember the coca plant? Now used to make cocaine...yeah cocaine was the 'improvement' of the effects of the coca plant.
HP can say there is more money in herbal remedies all he wants, truth is, big pharm gets the money for research, patents their meds, and pushes it to the public through doctors who are under/mis-informed. Our FDA is mostly in their pocket, and they have lobbyist to keep the effective natural remedies from succeeding.
Yes there are alot of scam 'natural remedies' that is part of the issue with it. There are really good ones as well that no one seems to know about, or possible we haven't ran an effective trial. Just like jinx was posting about fraud trials for big pharm meds, don't you think the same is possible for trials of natural remedies?

Yes, they are out to get me...

Oh word up on the cranberry for UTIs. I had chronic recurring infections that got me referred all the way up to a urologist, and the only thing that stopped them was when I began taking daily cranberry concentrate pills (recommended by the urologist.)

Nailed it.

So...not all bad then :P


[eta]
I don't have complete trust in the Pharm companies either. But...speaking as someone whose family was fleeced for £££££s during my childhood follwing various homecure blind alleys (homeopathy, healthfood diets, allergy regimes, even fucking faith healers) I can say that I don't much trust them either. There are natural remedies which are effective. Of ocurse there are, else we'd never have developed modern medicine. But sometimes an effective natural remedy isn;t as effective as the equivalent prescribed drug. And of course vice versa.

Pharm companies may not be the best people to trust ... but y'know there are a lot of universities researching this stuff as well. If it's effective and can be proved empirically then I am happy. But I've been stung by both...and of the two I'd say I have had waay more success with prescribed medicines.

Just a few herbs and supplements I have used that have worked for me:

Valarian, Scullcap, Mugwort help me sleep, as does melatonin.

Chamomile and Kava Kava calm the nerves. Kava Kava should not be taken all the time though, because it can be dangerous if taken over long periods of time. Rescue Remedy (Bach flowers) works too.

St John's Wort helps with depression.

Goldenseal and Echinacea help colds and flu go away (or help you to not get sick) when taken at the first signs of illness. Should not be taken long term.

Ginko, Ginsing and DMAE help with memory and brain function.

Ginsing also helps with energy. So do B vitamins.

NAC, Malic Acid, Magnesium help with pain and sleep in people with fibromyalgia.

Black Cohash and Dong Quai help with perimenopause and menopause symptoms.

Probiotics help keep your gut healthy and keep you regular.

These are just few, that I can think of off the top of my head.