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Alternative medicine.

The idea of people switching over from conventional medicine to alternative medicine is frightening. Hardly anything involving alternative medicine is tested adequatly. As a medical student it concerns me that people have displaced so much of their trust in licensed physicians who have graduated from medical school with people who are really just out to make a quick dollar. When put to the test, herbal remedies are almost always proven useless or ineffective. Alternative medicine works, at best, as a placebo and nothing more.

Before commenting, read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/health/03patient.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

• tested over millenia

  herbal medicine has been tested over millenia- not by scientists, but by trial and error. herbalists don't just pick a random plant and give it to people- remedies have been passed down for generations- that way only the stuff that works gets kept.

  only now is modern medicine starting to recognise the benefits herbal medicines can have - st johns wort was hailed as the new miracle cure not so long ago, used for all sorts of ailments. as you probably know, the active ingredient of aspirin is found in willow bark, which has been used for pain relief- well, who knows how long. when you think that our long-ago ancestors had to rely on plants for everything it makes sense. how could they not have recognised that some seemed to have medicinal affects?

  my view is that herbal medicines might not be as strong and immediately affective as conventional medicines, but are more gentle and better for you in the long-term, with less side affects. i myself dabble in herbalism a bit (only on myself! lol) and haven't been to the doctors since i had chicken pox aged 4 (don't even know my doctor's name). And i'm vegetarian.

  33%  Voted for by trashed, dewbee.

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  • trashed
    April 20, 2006
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    oh, and the placebo affect is cool, and may contribute in some cases to recovery, but herbal medicine is more than that.
  • DryIce808
    April 21, 2006
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    It would be silly to say that all modern medicines are synthesized in a lab. One of the most famous anti-biotics, Penicillin, is made from a fungus. I am happy that you have not needed to see a doctor, I hope your streak of good health continues. Unfortunatly a large portion of the U.S. has chronic health problems. Offering them untested herbal pills to treat cancer or heart disease is a disgrace. There is a huge profit to be made on herbal medicines because there is almost no regulation. I will agree, there are merits to some of these natural cures and the medical community is trying to understand them better. The problem with a lot of these products is that because people see the word "natural" they think, "can do no harm." A lot of these natural remedies have fairly nasty side effects. St. John's wart can interfere with birth control pills and lead to unwanted pregnancy. Grapefruit juice, considered by some to be a vitamin C reserve, can interfere with Statin heart medications, leading to several complications including sudden myocardial infarction (heart attack). Vitamin E, taken by many to supposedly improve their skin, is also a mild blood thinner. Taken in megadoses with Coumadin, a blood thinner used to treat cardiac patients, can cause blood to thin so much, that it is inable to clot. Then you have the small manufacturers who take a pile of soy and form them into pills, claiming they will cure cancer. People with cancer who are desperate, and who have no where left to turn will often see these so called "cures" and pay huge sums of money for them. They won't work and so the manufacturer says, "hey, you are not taking enough, you need more." So they take more. They may feel better, they may not. Either way, it has nothing to do with the medication. People who study cancer know that its symptoms can go up and down. Some people have a really bad week, then have a really good week, independent of what they take or do. They may die the next day, they may live for three more months. The pill manufacturer gives them false hope, strings them around till their inevitable death, and makes a quick fortune off of someone elses illness. Then you have the classic. A woman decided she was going to dabble with herble remedies. She knew that bean sprouts were healthy, why not grind up potato sprouts and start a booming health product industry. She ground them up, put them in a milk shake, and gave it to her family. An hour later, they were all dead. She killed her entire family. There is a similar story involving fruit seeds. What these unfortunate people did not know was that pits, seeds and sprouts contain small amounts of cyanide. While swallowing one or two may not kill you, drinking a whole milkshake is like a lethal injection.
  • trashed
    April 21, 2006
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    i wouldn't count vitamin E as a herbal medicine- it's a vitamin. a lot of herbal medicines can have side affects if you misuse them- obviously, as i said, you have to know what you are doing, and not just eat random plants. saying this, most of the dangerous plants run in families- for example i'd know not to use any of the buttercup family, as they are poisonous, and any time i collected plants, i would be extremely careful that the plant was what i thought it was- there are plants which look very similar to other useful plants but are deadly poisonous- hemlock and it's variants for one. for this reason i would never eat or use wild mushrooms for herbal uses- i simply don't know enough about them, and there are so many different varieties and harmful ones that i wouldn't even attempt it without an experienced teacher. i've found herbal medicine to be mostly harmless and innocuous, and a lot of people use it in simple ways without even realising. ever put lavender in your bath to relax? lavender is used a lot in herbal medicine for relaxation and also to help skin problems. medicine doesn't have to bring you from the brink of death to be effective. a lot of the old cures are getting recogniton now- such as using maggots on rotting flesh-gross but more effective than anything else in a lot of cases. i find it fascinating how what i used to call 'weeds' and think of as useless, actually can be used to help people- some can even be eaten. stinging nettles contain more iron than almost any other vegetable - though they have to be cooked before eating! anyway, modern medicine doesn't have such a shiny record. most new medicines are tested on animals, which in my view is pointless as well as inhumane- animals have different physical makeup to ours so how can we be sure medicines are going to react the same? eg. in the british news recently, those blokes in a medical trial whose heads swelled up 3x their usual size--those medicines had already been tested on anmials. modern medicine is all about money rather than trying to help people. this is obvious even in england where we have the nhs- you still have to pay for your prescription which is overpriced, even if you only need paracetamol. yes there are crooks swindling people with useless herbal medicines, but that's only because there is no regulating board over herbal medicine practicioners because modern medicine writes the whole thing off as rubbish. i would be more confident with my own remedies than going to the doctor, paying a bomb, and then finding out that antibiotics may actually do you more harm than good (is it true that antibiotics actually wipe out your good bacteria too?) i hope to continue learning about herbalism and plant remedies- medicine doesn't have to be a elite field.

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