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Even the animals know that plants are medicine. Such a wierd thing that lebel these as alternative.

monetus 2y ago
My uninformed opinion is that anything which hasn't been distilled into a single compound won't be called medicine by the medical industry. How they manage to study those that are only beneficial when converging with other compounds, I have no idea.
- greenish_shores 2y ago
  I have some background in pharmacology, particularly psychopharmacology and I can tell you that it's not even remotely true. There's so much studies out there... so, what kind of studies were you reading? For example - Rapamycin/sirolimus, ephedrine, morphine, antibiotics (e.g. penicillins, cephalosporins), psilocin and psilocybin, are the first naturally occuring (in significant quantities) that came to my mind when thinking about some. Neither of these were studied only in any combination drugs (FDCs). And a lot of close derivatives of naturally occuring substances, like aspirin. This could be really a huge list (of both).
  - F-Lexx 2y ago
    How about referencing (with links) a bunch of concrete relevant studies from psychopharmacology then, to back up your claims?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - gwbas1c 2y ago
      This is a casual message board; there's no requirement to put that kind of effort into a post here. You can also do the legwork yourself.
      - sevagh 2y ago
        >You can also do the legwork yourself. The person who makes the claim must justify it, not the readers.
        greenish_shores 2y ago
        Was the claim I was responding to justified anyhow, though? It's literally one query to https://scholar.google.com https://scholar.google.com or any other search engine of choice, should I link to search results? Okay, so append ?q=[substance name] at the end of the URL. I don't mean to come off as rude, though. But it's really simple to do so, and it won't really serve any purpose to link to particular studies, either, as this could in turn add a potentially huge selection bias. By the way, for more "obscure" in terms of scientific interest compounds see: beberine, theanine (aka l-theanine), vinpocetine. Particularly the last one. Same. These ones don't even have any synthetic counterparts which will share same or similar mechanism of action (there are other synthetic compounds targeting the same receptors, but they still represent very unique combinations of targets and also often have unique pharmacodynamics in relation to these targets).
        gwbas1c 2y ago
        This is not a scholarly journal. Get a life if you think casual conversation works that way.
        RoyalHenOil 2y ago
        >My uninformed opinion is that anything which hasn't been distilled into a single compound won't be called medicine by the medical industry. So are you going to insist on the same for the original claim made here, too, or is this an isolated demand for rigor?
tombert 2y ago
I don't think people label plants as inherently alternative medicine. Plenty of non-alternative (aka regular) medicine was originally derived from plants (e.g. aspirin). Things typically become labeled "medicine" when they've been work and have been tested. "Alternative" kind of works like a logical `not`, so applying de Morgan's law that implies that alternative medicine either has not been tested or doesn't work. Obviously that's a kind of reductive take, but I don't think it's fair to say that scientists label all things from "plants" as "alternative".
- TylerE 2y ago
  I like throwing those types o. Their ear by asking them if they want alternative medicine or actual medicine.
- Camus134 2y ago
  >Things typically become labeled "medicine" when they've been work and have been tested Eh, sometimes. But often things labeled "medicine" are things that companies can get FDA approval for, patent, manufacture, ensure shelf stability, label with a brand, and sell to customers at a high margin. There are lots of plants that are proven to work but aren't sold to customers because they can't meet some of those criteria. They aren't necessarily worse, just can't be be sold at scale profitably.
  - user_7832 2y ago
    I don't know why your comment was dead/flagged, what you're saying isn't a new thing at all. If anyone's interested in similar things look up patent evergreening. As someone using life-saving drugs that are patented despite the creators of the said drug selling the rights for a dollar to prevent pharmaceutical capture, this stuff is irritating at best and deadly at worst.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  It's not about what people or scientists say. It's the wrong frame to think about it in. Pharmaceuticals these days run as businesses, and its not financially beneficial for them to even quantify the medicinal qualities of chemically unprocessed plants. Because you can't build a competitive advantage around something like that. So, while they often take inspiration taken from plant based compounds, usually the essential compounds are extracted, a synthetic process developed to manufacture them, and only the medical properties of the resultant product studied via trials. It would do well for publicly funded medicine to reserve some funding for quantifying the medicinal properties of plants used directly.

My uninformed opinion is that anything which hasn't been distilled into a single compound won't be called medicine by the medical industry. How they manage to study those that are only beneficial when converging with other compounds, I have no idea.

greenish_shores 2y ago
I have some background in pharmacology, particularly psychopharmacology and I can tell you that it's not even remotely true. There's so much studies out there... so, what kind of studies were you reading? For example - Rapamycin/sirolimus, ephedrine, morphine, antibiotics (e.g. penicillins, cephalosporins), psilocin and psilocybin, are the first naturally occuring (in significant quantities) that came to my mind when thinking about some. Neither of these were studied only in any combination drugs (FDCs). And a lot of close derivatives of naturally occuring substances, like aspirin. This could be really a huge list (of both).
- F-Lexx 2y ago
  How about referencing (with links) a bunch of concrete relevant studies from psychopharmacology then, to back up your claims?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - gwbas1c 2y ago
    This is a casual message board; there's no requirement to put that kind of effort into a post here. You can also do the legwork yourself.
    - sevagh 2y ago
      >You can also do the legwork yourself. The person who makes the claim must justify it, not the readers.
      - greenish_shores 2y ago
        Was the claim I was responding to justified anyhow, though? It's literally one query to https://scholar.google.com https://scholar.google.com or any other search engine of choice, should I link to search results? Okay, so append ?q=[substance name] at the end of the URL. I don't mean to come off as rude, though. But it's really simple to do so, and it won't really serve any purpose to link to particular studies, either, as this could in turn add a potentially huge selection bias. By the way, for more "obscure" in terms of scientific interest compounds see: beberine, theanine (aka l-theanine), vinpocetine. Particularly the last one. Same. These ones don't even have any synthetic counterparts which will share same or similar mechanism of action (there are other synthetic compounds targeting the same receptors, but they still represent very unique combinations of targets and also often have unique pharmacodynamics in relation to these targets).
      - gwbas1c 2y ago
        This is not a scholarly journal. Get a life if you think casual conversation works that way.
      - RoyalHenOil 2y ago
        >My uninformed opinion is that anything which hasn't been distilled into a single compound won't be called medicine by the medical industry. So are you going to insist on the same for the original claim made here, too, or is this an isolated demand for rigor?

tombert 2y ago

I don't think people label plants as inherently alternative medicine. Plenty of non-alternative (aka regular) medicine was originally derived from plants (e.g. aspirin). Things typically become labeled "medicine" when they've been work and have been tested. "Alternative" kind of works like a logical `not`, so applying de Morgan's law that implies that alternative medicine either has not been tested or doesn't work. Obviously that's a kind of reductive take, but I don't think it's fair to say that scientists label all things from "plants" as "alternative".

TylerE 2y ago
I like throwing those types o. Their ear by asking them if they want alternative medicine or actual medicine.
Camus134 2y ago
>Things typically become labeled "medicine" when they've been work and have been tested Eh, sometimes. But often things labeled "medicine" are things that companies can get FDA approval for, patent, manufacture, ensure shelf stability, label with a brand, and sell to customers at a high margin. There are lots of plants that are proven to work but aren't sold to customers because they can't meet some of those criteria. They aren't necessarily worse, just can't be be sold at scale profitably.
- user_7832 2y ago
  I don't know why your comment was dead/flagged, what you're saying isn't a new thing at all. If anyone's interested in similar things look up patent evergreening. As someone using life-saving drugs that are patented despite the creators of the said drug selling the rights for a dollar to prevent pharmaceutical capture, this stuff is irritating at best and deadly at worst.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
It's not about what people or scientists say. It's the wrong frame to think about it in. Pharmaceuticals these days run as businesses, and its not financially beneficial for them to even quantify the medicinal qualities of chemically unprocessed plants. Because you can't build a competitive advantage around something like that. So, while they often take inspiration taken from plant based compounds, usually the essential compounds are extracted, a synthetic process developed to manufacture them, and only the medical properties of the resultant product studied via trials. It would do well for publicly funded medicine to reserve some funding for quantifying the medicinal properties of plants used directly.