What’s the harm? Plenty:
Researchers found that the most common mistake users of herbal remedies make is believing that the substances they take actually work. An earlier National Institutes of Health study showed that about 19% of Americans take herbal supplements and more than half the time they’re using the substances to treat a specific health condition instead of just for general well-being. That’s fine, provided the supplements treat those conditions, but in more than two-thirds of cases, the preparations have never been clinically proved to be effective for those uses. And as any scientist will tell you, clinical proof–a randomized, controlled trial–is the gold standard for establishing a drug’s usefulness and safety. So a lot of dollars–not to mention medical faith–are being spent on potentially useless treatments.
(via Medrants)
Related posts:
- Black cohosh: Another herbal med shot down
- Cheap Viagra can kill, or, the dangers of counterfeit erectile dysfunction drugs
- Is Cheerios really a drug, and why is the FDA targeting the cereal?
- Cross-covering prescription refills
- The dangers of quality
- Fallout from the Zelnorm recall
- Treating chronic pain with narcotics and avoiding the risk of addiction
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 3 comments }
What about the placebo effect? Isn’t there something to be said for feeling better because you think something works? Personally, I’d be willing to pay for a good deception if it gave me results.
If that’s the case, then I’ve got something to sell you.
It has become imperative to read the fine print on every research study published (forget relying on journalists’ reporting), and to find out such things as who funded the research, who benefits financially, etc. Given that ’scientific’ research findings are too often politically or financially biased, how is that to be seen by the public as very different from unproven benefits of herbal supplements? There is a sense that it’s a crapshoot whether herbs or prescriptions will help.
Comments on this entry are closed.