Dec 29, 2008
How Alternative Medicine Fails Us
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I’m forever fending off the alternative medicine brigade who seem to clump around this website and email me all kinds of supposed miracle cures that will spell the end of all health ills. One herbal remedy I recently focused on is Rhodiola rosea, in which I critiqued a promotional email from a vested interest in the product. They made all kinds of claims for this material on the back of very limited clinical trials. Needless to say advocates of alternative medicine commented aplenty.
As a chemist, I take a healthy and skeptical view of all the biochemical and physiological claims these people make for their products. I’m just worried that there are so many people who are perhaps desperate to fix their lives that they become easy prey for such marketing. Anyway, for those who feel a chemist has no place criticising their beloved remedy, I turned to a pharmaceutical expert in Sheryl Torr-Brown of the Future Trends in Health blog to provide some additional support for my argument. She has many years experience in pharmaceutical science and has no axe to grind and offers an honest appraisal of my original post and some of the comments left by Sciencebase readers.
A glance at the scientific literature covering this herb seems to be minimal and biased in the main, she told me, and as such she agrees with my argument.
“When dealing with alternative medicine,” she says, “it is not enough to be right if you want to avoid the attacks. You also have to be sensitive to the highly personal views of those who find benefit in the drug albeit most likely due to placebo effect.”
This is perhaps an important point. Yes, the placebo effect is valid, but these remedies are usually very expensive and people are often spending their hard-earned money on what amounts to sugar pills, something that should be avoided perhaps especially in the current economic climate when every penny counts.
“A major point that most of the non-scientific public do not understand is that there is no such thing as a safe drug, natural or not,” adds Torr-Brown, “The dose is the poison, as the father of modern toxicology, Paracelsus said in the fifteenth century. Anything and everything will be toxic if you have enough of it or it gets into the wrong place. Unfortunately, people are tired of Big Pharma advertising and the media frenzy around drug withdrawals.”
She points out that ‘natural’ is sounding better and better to many folks, despite the existence of natural belladonna, natural cobra venom, oh, and natural background radiation. In the age of the Internet, it is now very easy to get positive anecdotes about anything. “Basically, one can decide what one wants to believe and then go find the evidence to support it,” Torr-Brown adds, “For scientists, we look for controlled studies to prove a point, whereas the general public are happy with a personal story or two of success.”
Many people, including several of the original, negative commenters on my R rosea post, are grasping to find something that works for them. “You cannot discount [some of these views] from a human perspective, but it makes
no
sense scientificallyit makes no sense scientifically, adds Torr-Brown, “I am shocked by the number of people I know who pay huge amounts of money for the latest panacea only to give it up after a couple of months, usually due to lack of interest.”
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David Bradley
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Sciencebase 
May 14th, 2009 at 9:01 am
Yes, Steve, I’ve written about that radiation hook previously – http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/ip-rfh061708.php
May 13th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Regarding the natural ionizing radation background: studies of populations in areas of differing background radiation levels show that the curve of mortality rate / exposure has a hook at the bottom. That is, there is a certain (low) level of ionizing radiation that is better for you than none at all. This flies in the face of the “linear no-threshold” assumption that is enshrined in hundreds of laws and regulations. In retrospect, it’s not that surprising. The Earth has always been slightly radioactive, so ionizing radiation is one of the things that life has adapted to from the beginning.
The first axiom of toxicology is “The dose makes the poison.” Too much oxygen will kill you almost as fast as too much chlorine. There are several compounds that are deadly in gram quantities, but are essential nutrients in microgram quantities.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am
How does one consume Reiki therapy in the raw state? Reiki is like homeopathic massage, the so-called therapist doesn’t even need to be in the same room (ditto Bowen technique). I presume you’re talking about herbal remedies. Yes, there is some evidence of synergistic effects of different active components in herbal products for some symptoms and also some anti-synergistic effects that inhibit toxicity. However, more often than not a herbal product that works can be stripped down to the single primarily active ingredient and prescribed in a much more controlled way than any random botanical extract. Moreover, fine-tuning of the chemical structure of an active ingredient can reduce side-effects and lead to a better remedy. Viz, ephedra extract used for breathing problems and asthma was redesigned as the bronchodilator salbutamol which has a far less detrimental effect on the heart than its botanically-derived predecessor ephedrine.
April 21st, 2009 at 10:05 am
Lots of people are there who are switching towards Alternative Medicines.I think that they are most effective when consumed in raw state insted of altered forms.
February 17th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Bridget, I think you’ve missed the point of this post totally! Thankfully, most doctors can see through the smoke, mirrors, and snake oil, that underlies much of alternative medicine and recommend only those practices that have some evidence-based validity unlike homeopathy, for instance.
February 15th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
It’s great to see Doctors realizing the benefits of alternative medicines. Most doctors won’t even bother to do the research because their practice requires them to help patients with modern health procedures and prescribe only FDA approved prescription drugs. Legally a doctor is not allowed to inform a patient of an alternative to treatment if it has not been approved by the FDA. The use of essential oils and carrier oils may benefit people as well, along with taking the proper vitamins on a daily basis. Keep it up doctors, we are heading towards a healthier tomorrow.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:44 am
And conversely, life is a fact of death. I’m not for or against any form of medicine either. I’m writing a blog, trying to point out the failings of various forms and discussing the issues surrounding the marketing and selling of practices and placebos that often exploit the vulnerabilities of the sick, dying and desperate.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Death is a fact of life.
Coming to medicine i’m not for or against a form of medicine.
And no one can really guarantee which form of medicine works well. But there are a few practitioners who are on constant research on medicine coupled with his experience in dealing with medicine for a particular symptom/ disease / patient situations.
January 19th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
David,
I’m an active 68 year old retired airline captain who has been taking supplements for over 30 years. I play tennis four to six hours a day with many talented younger people and hold my own. I’ve been taking rhodiola for two years and definitely notice the difference in my energy level and my competitive results. I often give it to my 65 year old girlfriend when she needs some extra energy. At first I just put it in with her other vitamins without telling her specifically that she was getting something extra. She finally asked me if I had gotten some new vitamins because she was feeling incredibly well. I confessed- and now she insists on taking it every day. So much for the placebo effect. Legally prescribed pharmaceuticals are responsible for about 100,000 American deaths a year. Supplements do not harm anyone- and I believe are responsible for getting me through a 45 year career in aviation. Linus Pauling lived to be 93 after being diagnosed with heart disease in his early 60’s. He started taking large doses of supplements and outlived his critics by decades. I don’t believe that your interest is in saving people’s money. I believe that you are an active promoter of big Pharma. Let people be responsible for their own health instead of trying to debunk natural supplements because they haven’t been “tested” by so called “scientific” methods that have brought us many hundreds of toxic “medicines.”
The scientists that I have known, including many physicians, are some of the most unhealthy people on the planet. If you want to look at some valid studies on the benefits of many supplements go to http://www.lef.org It’s free and is maintained by the Life Extension Foundation.
January 10th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Tom, Tom, Tom…who’s counting, eh? Long-term health failures are common on both sides, but let’s look at the arsenic, mercury, and other toxic elements deliberately added to certain TCM remedies, shall we?