http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/1538749...915773?GT1=8618

Interesting article, I was somewhat saddened to see them drag Andrew Weil through the mud but if he doesn't have the data to support his claims then he deserves it. He does talk a good game though.

Really? He always struck me as a tool, parroting back whatever the mainstream thinks of diet, etc.

i think the article misses one key point, and it's something all of us on this board know very, very well...

Your
Mileage
May
Vary

no treatment is going to work on everyone. doesn't matter what the treatment is or what the problem is, no two human bodies are going to react the same way to the same things. i've never thought that anecdotal data should be completely discounted... i think it should be taken with a pillar of salt, yes, and correlated to the statistical data to ensure that the patient's account of what happened is truly related to the experiment in question.

modern medicine also needs to understand that the so-called "alternative" methods have been around for thousands of years, and just because a powder or infused tea doesn't have the logo of a massive pharmaceutical company stamped on it doesn't mean it doesn't work.

If the National Institutes of Health Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine were to test most FDA approved drugs in the same manner that they test suppliments, they would find that most don't work either.

Here is a researcy article that implies that following the approved medical advice on reducing risk factors for heart health doesn't work.

YMMV gets blown way out of proportion. We're all the same species, have the same basic biochemistry going on. In my opinion, the placebo effect accounts for a large part of YMMV, as well as attitude.

Just because something has been around for thousands of years, does not necessarily make it effective. I don't think critical thinking has predominated in many cultures. Tradition, on the other hand, is given great weight. We do many things because we were taught to do them a certain way. There are many memes out there, with mechanisms that are buiilt in to ensure propogation. I see no reason to think medicinal remedy memes would be any different. True, efficacy would tend to reinforce the meme, but it isn't the only wya for a meme to endure.

The problem is that both the pharmaceuticalists and the supplementarians accept the disease management paradigm for health care. But as long as you're intent is to treat symptoms by disrupting metabolic pathways, what difference does it make whether you cause that disruption with a designer molecule or a supposedly natural herb? Except that, as the article points out, pharmaceuticals are more effective in disrupting metabolic pathways.

Let's see
St Johns Wort - rigged - study participants had moderate to severe depression; the herb works best on those with mild to moderate depression. It was effective on those with moderate symptoms and had much fewer side effects than the drugs. http://counsellingresource.com/feat.../st-johns-wort/

saw palmetto - rigged - saw palmetto is for treatment of mild to moderate prostate problems; they tested treatment on moderate to severe. http://www.naturalproductsinsider.c...631study01.html

glucosamine plus chondroitin sulphate - rigged - they used Glucosamine Hydrochloride and not Glucosamine Sulfate http://altmedicine.about.com/od/alt...ritis_study.htm

echinacea - alleged rigging - too low a dose and delivery method of cold virus http://www.nowfoods.com/?action=ite...l&item_id=46739

Shark cartilage and cancer - I don't know - I don't know anything about it's form or delivery system. http://www.healthy.net/scr/intervie...nterview&ID=182

basic biochemistry, yes... but it's the individual tweaks in each of our genetic makeups that have brought about the need for all the medicines out today. for example, aspirin, a derivative of willow bark, is a blood thinner. for most people, it's also a pain reliever. aspirin will thin my blood, yes, but it has no effect on me for pain. i need ibuprofen for that.


you mean like acupuncture?

traditon alone cannot account for all of the old ways. something had to be effective in the first place for the tradition to be set. keep in mind something else... we laugh now at the medieval practices of using leeches, but doctors started using them again when they realized leeches keep wounds free of infection while stimulating new skin growth.

i definetely agree that attitude has a lot to do with YMMV, but it can't account for all of it. no matter how badly i want to be able to eat foods that claim to be sugar free by using sugar alcohols instead, my body not only can't handle them, it treats them EXACTLY like sugars and even makes me hypsersensitive to aspartame and saccharin... to the point of even the taste of something sweet will trigger an insulin response. there is a point where mind over matter has to stop and matter has to do its own thing.

I agree ceberizen. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Dodger, no argument there either. In a hundred years they'll look at our disease maintenance system and equate it to leaches and bloodletting. Though its actually more despicable since this is done for profit.

but leeches and bloodletting are back - at least for specific treatments of specific disorders

Yeah don't knock leeches. In certain situations they work better than any modern alternatives. http://www.um-jmh.org/body.cfm?id=1557.

And I think Kvon was mixing leech therapy with Maggot Debridement Therapy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggot_therapy

I suspect we might hear more of the latter in the future, considering how antibiotics are becoming more and more ineffective.

I know, I almost mentioned that leeches have certain therapeutic uses even today. Sorry, leeches.

Kvon, note that I didn't say that ALL traditional therapies are bogus. One way that a treatment meme would survive, is through actual results. And its possible that there is some small benefit, that is better than nothing. But there are other aspects that could ensure survival even when results are not there. And as such, if you can't prove that it DOES work in a clinical setting, then "its been around for 1000 years" won't satisfy the question of the efficacy of the treatment. Not only that, but say that an herb has a mild positive effect, if you don't do the study then how do you know it is better than an alternative?

And as for differences in biochemistry bringing about the need for all the medicines we have today, how do you prove that? I think it is the companies and their advertizing, that have brought about the multitudes of products. And our gullibility and the ease with which we are influenced, that let them get away with it. So aspirin doesn't ease your headache that well, that is a genetic difference? Where is your proof? Is it a dominant or recessive trait in your family? Or a multi-gene deal? Or is it all in your head? Hehe that was a joke, not an attack. Aspirin only works so-so for me too. As for sugar-alcohols and sweeteners causing insulin spikes, I don't think it is impossible that your mind IS causing the insulin reaction. Again, not necessarily genetic and certainly a result of a lifetime of carb abuse. But I'm probably just genetically grumpy today.

Zuleikaa, so these things are effective only when you barely have anything wrong? And have no effect if you have actual symptoms? Another interpretation is that is the very early stages of a problem, you might simply have a good day and think it was the herb working. If it works on mild symptoms, why would it not have at least some effect on more severe symptoms? The underlying processes are the same. Rigged? I think they were simply trying to see some results in patients that actually needed help. As a researcher, I know I wouldnt' want to be in charge of determining whether compound X changed some pateints' moods from "sort of OK" to "pretty decent".

actually, no, what i was referring to was much like the link you gave on leeches. i saw a documentary some time ago that showed a kid who needed his ear reattached to his head (or a completely new ear, i can't remember which), and the doctors used leeches to help stimulate the incisions to heal and new, healthy skin (not scar tissue) to grow.

Interesting. I wasn't aware of that application. I thought leeches were mostly used to keep the blood flowing during a re-attachement procedure

i'm not trying to say that alternative medicines are necessarily better than pharmaceuticals. obviously modern technology has allowed us to isolate, concentrate, and sometimes recreate the effective components of the natural herbs. but with that isolation and concentration comes side effects that AREN'T prevalent in the alternative methods. all i'm saying is that medicine has been around far longer than the founders of the pharmaceutical companies have been... and sometimes, SOMETIMES, the old ways are the best ways.


allergies and reactions come to mind right off the top of my head. there are multitudes of people out there who are allergic to pennicillin, aspirin, ibuprofen, birth control pills, any number of different medicines that will inadvertently kill someone far faster than the original problem would have.


i'm not saying it's necessarily genetic... allergies aren't usually genetically traceable either. my mother and i have allergic reactions to completely unrelated things. i'm saying it's more a case of personal biochemistry. aspirin works just fine for my mother, excedrin worked better for my father. i can't do either of them, ibuprofen works best for me.

as far as the multitude of products goes, yes some of it is marketing (viagra, cialis, etc... all doing the same thing), some of it really is a need to cover people who can't handle certain medications.


while i won't comment on the "lifetime of carb abuse" bit, i CAN tell you that after several months of lowcarbing using aspartame and saccharine, and later splenda, with no ill effects, i approached sugar alcohols with the same attitude of "these are fine, they won't affect me because they're not sugar." i was wrong, my body treated them as if they WERE sugar, to the point of having MORE of a reaction than real sugar would have. it sensitized my body chemistry to the point where the taste of something sweet would send a signal for my body to release insulin, regardless of what chemical derivative was used as the sweetener.