111–120 of 127 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there objective evidence that any element of naturopathic medicine has consistent, reproducible, positive value?
By element do you mean a specific plant or the broader principles of naturopathy?
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The hope, then, is that when taking something more "natural" as opposed to man-made is that that natural product will inherently contain a wider variety of compounds that taken together create a more potent, but gentle effect on the patient. And why would they? You are pretty much literally assuming an intelligent design behind the mate plant or Meadows's Montmorency cherry juice. But from an evolutionist perspective…
Aside from the fact that literally is not a gradable adjective, I don't see the grandparent suggesting any kind of intelligent design. Evolution implies getting adapted to your environment, this includes an oxygen level of roughly 20%, availability of nutrients, etc. But this also goes the other way: plants to some extend need animals to spread their seeds (you could go as far as to say it's the reason for our existe…
You should also consider that humans and the mate plant have coexisted for maybe 15 thousand years, which is not really a lot of time to come to a perfectly harmonized balance with the entire ecosystem; and that the average (US) American's ancestors have been around the mate plant for approximately zero generations, so, if they are to benefit from the short period of co-evolution of the plant with humans, it needs to be through changes in the plant (and it seems to me that an animal would evolve to maximize benefit from its food source faster than the food source would evolve to maximize benefit to it).
You may then say that the plant co-evolved with animals similar to us, but then, see the comment someone else made about lethal doses being quite different between species. I am not disputing the presence of beneficial compounds in some plants, but the claim that they would somehow contain the perfect blend that maximizes benefit to our particular species.
Also, "pretty much" is not a grading adverbial phrase.
"We are a chemophobic culture." I take great issue with this statement. We are most decidedly not a chemophobic culture. People are more than willing to take medicines that are artificially synthesized and, as the author mentions, with good reason. I, for one, am not chemophobic. I personally know an individual who developed one of the first total-syntheses (i.e. "artificial" chemical synthesis) of a very important a…
The hope, then, is that when taking something more "natural" as opposed to man-made is that that natural product will inherently contain a wider variety of compounds that taken together create a more potent, but gentle effect on the patient. And why would they? You are pretty much literally assuming an intelligent design behind the mate plant or Meadows's Montmorency cherry juice. But from an evolutionist perspective…
"We are a chemophobic culture." I take great issue with this statement. We are most decidedly not a chemophobic culture. People are more than willing to take medicines that are artificially synthesized and, as the author mentions, with good reason. I, for one, am not chemophobic. I personally know an individual who developed one of the first total-syntheses (i.e. "artificial" chemical synthesis) of a very important a…
"there are miraculous, mysterious things that we do not understand about natural products and the human body" "It lies in the fact that we are applying something very strong in a way that is not balanced or integrated." Magical thinking detected. There is no evidence that taking combinations is inherently a good thing. Some things work well on their own, some work well in combination, some combinations antagonise hor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By element do you mean a specific plant or the broader principles of naturopathy?
I guess I'm thinking specific interventions, whether botanical or otherwise.
http://blog.norml.org/2010/02/17/%E2%80%98gold-standard%E2%8...
The vast majority of commonly used plant medicines have undergone at least some scientific testing. The efficacy of specific drugs for specific conditions varies from extremely beneficial to completely useless or outright dangerous, the same as with any other medicine. And as with other medicines there are a lot of gaps and uncertainties in the research, although with plant medicines its usually because of lack of funding rather than because of bias stemming from the funding mechanisms.
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Some non-chemical things: Justice, beauty, truth, prime numbers, O(log n) insertion time of a binary tree, Beethoven's 5th. Just for the record.
Those aren't things, they are concepts.
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I guess I'm thinking specific interventions, whether botanical or otherwise.
Here is one example, marijuana for muscle spasticity: http://blog.norml.org/2010/02/17/%E2%80%98gold-standard%E2%8... The vast majority of commonly used plant medicines have undergone at least some scientific testing. The efficacy of specific drugs for specific conditions varies from extremely beneficial to completely useless or outright dangerous, the same as with any other medicine. And as with other medicines ther…
Do you have a source to support the concept that the problem with plant medicine is the lack of funding in the face of promising early studies?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is one example, marijuana for muscle spasticity: http://blog.norml.org/2010/02/17/%E2%80%98gold-standard%E2%8... The vast majority of commonly used plant medicines have undergone at least some scientific testing. The efficacy of specific drugs for specific conditions varies from extremely beneficial to completely useless or outright dangerous, the same as with any other medicine. And as with other medicines ther…
Interesting, but marijuana is used in standard modern medicine already. Any examples of things not used by modern medicine that are shown to have efficacy? Do you have a source to support the concept that the problem with plant medicine is the lack of funding in the face of promising early studies?
First, marijuana is still illegal for doctors to prescribe in all 50 states, so saying that it's already used in modern medicine is a bit dubious.
Any examples of things not used by modern medicine that are shown to have efficacy?"
This largely depends on how you define 'modern medicine' and 'have shown efficacy'. E.g. modern as in modernism, or modern just meaning anything that's currently widely used? Because if you're defining modern in terms of modernism, which would be the most natural use of the word, then by definition no plant medicine can ever be part of modern medicine since it goes against everything that modernity stands for. If on the other hand you're defining modernism as anything that's currently widely used as part of medicine, then you get into the issue of widely used by who? In any event I'm going to take a pass on answering that only because I think it's largely a moot point to begin with, as I was only arguing that naturopathy can be useful and not that it is never used by 'modern' medicine (however you define it).
"Do you have a source to support the concept that the problem with plant medicine is the lack of funding in the face of promising early studies?"
So lack of funding is only one of the problems. Another big problem is 'blobology', which Willoughby Britton explains here:
http://www.buddhistgeeks.com/2012/10/bg-266-mindful-binge-dr...
The basic concept is that every study is looking at something a little bit different, so even if there are hundreds of studies on some medicine and they are all positive, it still isn't necessarily conclusive. If you google for studies on the efficacy of, say, aloe vera for treating burns, you will see that pretty easily. And it shows up pretty widely, as it's just a problem that's inherent with science right now.
I haven't taken the time to find a great source for funding specific stuff, but just a quick Google search shows that total US biomedical research spending is about 94 billion as of 2003, and the total NIH grants for CAM research (so not just naturopathy) are 441 million. (And presumably the amount of commercial research done on naturopathy is almost zero since plants can't be patented.)
Don’t Take Medical Advice From the New York Times Magazine Don’t Take Medical Advice From the Slate Magazine either. Research all you want but call a doctor in the end.
Which is the point of this article.
Fear of chemicals in general? Silly, but that is a bit of a strawman. Fear of ingesting synthesized chemicals in quantities to which our species has not been exposed during its evolution? Count me in, with the obvious rational disclaimers.
This line of argument is a quasi-religious appeal to authority.
Evolution does not have our best interests at heart, and it did not design us to be optimal machines. It did not get rid of cancer, for example, and for that reason quite a few people are happy to ingest synthesized chemicals that help preserve their lives.