4 ms·

Yours is a very common response I get to this - I wonder why, since there is absolutely no evidence for it. You vastly underestimate the number of plants in exi

by stiff 14y ago

Yours is a very common response I get to this - I wonder why, since there is absolutely no evidence for it. You vastly underestimate the number of plants in existence and vastly overestimate the fraction we have been able to study rigorously. You also hugely simplify the chemistry of it all, the main advantage of plants over modern medicine in its typical form is that they contain complex compounds of chemical substances which show a synergy in a certain direction e.g. they interact with the body in a different way when they are administered together than if they would be ingested separately. Analyzing such compounds and the interactions between them is still often beyond the current state of science and is also not as well funded as traditional drug research, simply because traditional drugs are easier to sell. Please don't have the impression that I am somehow advocating herbs over traditional medicine, I don't, and there are surely problems with using herbs, but those are different problems that the one most often mentioned. The material you use has to be rather fresh because the concentration of active substances degenerates with time very quickly, the concentration also varies a lot from one area of growth to another so it might be difficult to come up with dosages, they can have serious side effects just like traditional medicine, they are inconvenient to store and use etc. You can find scientific references for most of what I said and anyway it would come to no surprise to a second-year biology undergraduate. Just reading the wikipedia page about herbalism would clarify a lot of misunderstanding on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalism

Nursie 14y ago
"the main advantage of plants over modern medicine in its typical form is that they contain complex compounds of chemical substances which show a synergy in a certain direction" This is such unutterable nonsense. Take Aspirin vs. Willow Bark. Aspirin is derived from substances found in willow bark. Aspirin will cure your headache with a known dose of a substance with a well documented harm profile. Willow bark will cure your headache with a slightly less effective form of the compound, and if used often enough will harm your liver and kidneys because of all the other stuff that's in there. Plants are not 'designed' to cure you, the 'spirit of the plant' does not lean in one way or other. This is animistic nonsense.
- stiff 14y ago
  You are very aggressive while you clearly do not know what I am talking about and doing a complete straw men. In fact the very same page referenced in this post confirms what I said: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/scientific-evidence-for-synergy-in-a-botanical-product/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/scientific-evi...
  - Nursie 14y ago
    Cool, you found one example where the compounds in plant potentiate each other in a useful way. I gave you an example of where this is absolutely not true, and there are likely many more on both sides. This absolutely does not support the statement "the main advantage of plants over modern medicine in its typical form is that they contain complex compounds of chemical substances which show a synergy in a certain direction ". In fact it doesn't support that there is an advantage at all, and it shows that by scientifically studying the plant we can figure out the substances responsible for the effect (if it's reproducible), purify them and make use of them in preparations that can be applied more effectively than a poultice. I'm not sure how you think this is a straw man either.
    - stiff 14y ago
      The "spirit of the plant" wasn't a straw man? What I mean is that _in cases where plants could have advantage over modern medicine_, they often do so because of their complex chemical constitution that can produce those kinds of synergies, where modern medicines are most often based on at most 2-3 active substances because we have trouble analyzing more complex interactions.
      - Nursie 14y ago
        No, it was a poke at magical thinking. It may also have been unwarranted snark... I'll agree that where it can be shown that a plant has an effect that modern medicine can't explain, complex interactions may well be at work. You gave me the impression that you think this is a general rule, where really it seems to be an exception.
saalweachter 14y ago
Following the reference through from the "clinical trials" section, the Wikipedia article is a little misleading. It makes it sound like only 356/1000 random plants have been studied, but in the paper [1] the breakdown is actually: 15.7% had been tested in clinical trials; 50.9% had been tested in vitro or in vivo; 20.8% had been subject to a phytochemical study; 12.1% had no studies found in the literature search; 0.5% were "dangerous". That's not saying only 1/3 of plants had been studied. That is saying that 87% of plants have been studied. [1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-2710.2009.01096.x/asset/j.1365-2710.2009.01096.x.pdf?v=1&t=hefpl605&s=faea8e390010801b9f75500688ff8692ba0852e3 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-2710.200...
- stiff 14y ago
  I was thinking we are talking about all plants in existence, this is a study of 1000 most commonly used herbs, still, I learned something new, so thanks. Still it doesn't prove your more bold claim that somehow all the potential benefits of using them are already available in a very safe to use pill.
  - saalweachter 14y ago
    My overconfidence is mostly coming from the long tail. Even if there are millions of distinct plant chemistries out there, a small number (say, 100) will account for 90% of the herbal remedies prescribed and taken. These will have been studied by scientific methods exhaustively. The next most common chunk will have received some cursory attention, and then you enter into the vast fields of the unknown. But the fields aren't unknown to just science: they're unknown to cultural practitioners as well. I'm willing to believe that, even without double-blind clinical trials, people were able to find effective treatments with enough trial and error. But "enough trial and error" means "not the long tail". So once you start talking the 1000th most common plant used for medicinal properties, the amount of experience pre-scientific practitioners have accumulated is negligible, and handful of anecdotes at best. Not even enough to ascribe correlation, let alone causation. So on the head of plants of potential value, I'm betting that they've all been studied exhaustively. On the tail, there are countless plants which could have countless benefits, but essentially no evidence to do anything but pick one at random and hope it cures what ails you. The middle, of enough evidence to suspect or know a plant does something, but not how, is going to be fairly small.

by stiff 14y ago

Nursie 14y ago

"the main advantage of plants over modern medicine in its typical form is that they contain complex compounds of chemical substances which show a synergy in a certain direction" This is such unutterable nonsense. Take Aspirin vs. Willow Bark. Aspirin is derived from substances found in willow bark. Aspirin will cure your headache with a known dose of a substance with a well documented harm profile. Willow bark will cure your headache with a slightly less effective form of the compound, and if used often enough will harm your liver and kidneys because of all the other stuff that's in there. Plants are not 'designed' to cure you, the 'spirit of the plant' does not lean in one way or other. This is animistic nonsense.

stiff 14y ago
You are very aggressive while you clearly do not know what I am talking about and doing a complete straw men. In fact the very same page referenced in this post confirms what I said: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/scientific-evidence-for-synergy-in-a-botanical-product/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/scientific-evi...
- Nursie 14y ago
  Cool, you found one example where the compounds in plant potentiate each other in a useful way. I gave you an example of where this is absolutely not true, and there are likely many more on both sides. This absolutely does not support the statement "the main advantage of plants over modern medicine in its typical form is that they contain complex compounds of chemical substances which show a synergy in a certain direction ". In fact it doesn't support that there is an advantage at all, and it shows that by scientifically studying the plant we can figure out the substances responsible for the effect (if it's reproducible), purify them and make use of them in preparations that can be applied more effectively than a poultice. I'm not sure how you think this is a straw man either.
  - stiff 14y ago
    The "spirit of the plant" wasn't a straw man? What I mean is that _in cases where plants could have advantage over modern medicine_, they often do so because of their complex chemical constitution that can produce those kinds of synergies, where modern medicines are most often based on at most 2-3 active substances because we have trouble analyzing more complex interactions.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      No, it was a poke at magical thinking. It may also have been unwarranted snark... I'll agree that where it can be shown that a plant has an effect that modern medicine can't explain, complex interactions may well be at work. You gave me the impression that you think this is a general rule, where really it seems to be an exception.

saalweachter 14y ago

Following the reference through from the "clinical trials" section, the Wikipedia article is a little misleading. It makes it sound like only 356/1000 random plants have been studied, but in the paper [1] the breakdown is actually: 15.7% had been tested in clinical trials; 50.9% had been tested in vitro or in vivo; 20.8% had been subject to a phytochemical study; 12.1% had no studies found in the literature search; 0.5% were "dangerous". That's not saying only 1/3 of plants had been studied. That is saying that 87% of plants have been studied. [1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-2710.2009.01096.x/asset/j.1365-2710.2009.01096.x.pdf?v=1&t=hefpl605&s=faea8e390010801b9f75500688ff8692ba0852e3 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1111/j.1365-2710.200...

stiff 14y ago
I was thinking we are talking about all plants in existence, this is a study of 1000 most commonly used herbs, still, I learned something new, so thanks. Still it doesn't prove your more bold claim that somehow all the potential benefits of using them are already available in a very safe to use pill.
- saalweachter 14y ago
  My overconfidence is mostly coming from the long tail. Even if there are millions of distinct plant chemistries out there, a small number (say, 100) will account for 90% of the herbal remedies prescribed and taken. These will have been studied by scientific methods exhaustively. The next most common chunk will have received some cursory attention, and then you enter into the vast fields of the unknown. But the fields aren't unknown to just science: they're unknown to cultural practitioners as well. I'm willing to believe that, even without double-blind clinical trials, people were able to find effective treatments with enough trial and error. But "enough trial and error" means "not the long tail". So once you start talking the 1000th most common plant used for medicinal properties, the amount of experience pre-scientific practitioners have accumulated is negligible, and handful of anecdotes at best. Not even enough to ascribe correlation, let alone causation. So on the head of plants of potential value, I'm betting that they've all been studied exhaustively. On the tail, there are countless plants which could have countless benefits, but essentially no evidence to do anything but pick one at random and hope it cures what ails you. The middle, of enough evidence to suspect or know a plant does something, but not how, is going to be fairly small.