8 ms·

I am someone totally open to the idea that there are herbs/food/whatever out there that have health benefits. What I never get about people into 'herbalism' is

by chez17 14y ago

I am someone totally open to the idea that there are herbs/food/whatever out there that have health benefits. What I never get about people into 'herbalism' is that they just say things and expect everyone to know them to be true. "X herb is good for digestion!" "X herb is good for relaxation!" How do they know this? Never once has one of them showed me a double blind study done that shows this to be true. In America, the process to get something approved by the FDA is long and expensive. If some common herb like basil cured cancer no drug company is going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to prove it just so you can grow it in your back yard and not pay them for their trouble. However, certainly there has to be people willing to do studies on these herbs and I've never been giving one. The most disturbing thing is that this doesn't ever bother these people. Not once have a friend who is into herbs voluntarily provide any study done on any one of these herbs to prove a point. It's always just, "X herb helps with stress!" How do you know that to be true?!?!?

amalag 14y ago
the FDA method of approving poisons like modern medicines may not be a relevant methodology for herbs. Before you get all upset I called your favorite prescription medicine a poison, think about what it really is. A poison if taken in high doses. Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons. Modern allopathy is only the third, poisons. It has very little information on how to cure through food and herbs.
- Nursie 14y ago
  Everything in 'high doses' is a poison, even pure, distilled water. Herbs either contain active chemicals or they're a placebo. If they're a placebo they're as good as taking a sugar pill. If they contain active chemicals they contain unstandardised amounts and probably in concert with all sorts of other things that may or may not be helpful or harmful. Ayurveda is bullshit. QED.
  - up_and_up 14y ago
    > Ayurveda is bullshit My wife is an Ayurvedic practitioner, so yes I am biased, but I dont believe in every aspect of it. I can definitely say it is not "bullshit" and it is indeed helping many of her clients. She has people who come to her, that conventional docs have literally given up on. "We cant figure out what is wrong with your digestion, theres nothing more we can try" she hears stories like that all the time. People ARE being helped. Whether it is all placebo I dont know for sure. but people who literally have no other options in conventional medicine are seeing real results. They are sleeping better w/o medication, they are not having anxiety attacks anymore, I could go on and on with her stories. My wife is pretty humble about it and not selling snake oil etc. People are seeing real results.
    - Nursie 14y ago
      If there is an effect that's measurable above placebo we should absolutely find out what it is and why it works. Otherwise it's just like the rest of these things. My statement, however, was not about whether your wife can make people feel better in ill-defined ways, it was about the ludicrous claims above on herbs and 'poison'.
    - amalag 14y ago
      It doesn't follow the western model of logic, which is why uninformed people who cannot understand subtleties insist on displaying their boarishness. For instance ayurveda says the stomach has digestive fire, it does not give you a list of chemicals which break down food. Rather it seeks to strengthen that digestive fire. If you want to peek in there with a catheter and say "Nope, there is no fire, ayurveda is bullshit" Well then, best of luck with your clinical trials trying to experiment on the newest medicines. There is value in that. It is not based on an inductive experimental approach so it does not fit with most western scientists. The idea is it is like an instruction manual, not reverse engineering. The human body was not evolved from some random processes for us to reverse engineer, rather there is an inherent design and ayurveda explains it. People may not agree with those depths of it, but that is the origin and philosophy.
      - 14y ago
- dalke 14y ago
  "Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons." That, of course, is wrong. There are additional way to cure a disease. Unless of course that you're using "poison" as a catch-all term to mean anything which isn't food or herbs, in which case it it's a rather useless redefinition to mean simply 'neither food nor herb.' For example, radiation therapy for cancer is neither a food nor herb, so by definition you place it into "poison", even though it doesn't act like any chemical poison. There's a certain logic to that assignment - radiation treatment is not something an otherwise healthy person would do - but it's a treatment that no traditional Ayurveda practitioner ever considered. UVB exposure (ie, sunlight or phototherapy) can be an effective treatment for some people who are vitamin B deficient because of malabsorption syndromes (like Cystic fibrosis and short bowel syndrome) which prevent them from absorbing vitamin D through their diet. Since UVB can cure a disease but is neither a food nor an herb, it must be a poison, right? But UVB is something that healthy people get all the time, so it wouldn't normally be considered a poison. In fact, it could be removed completely, so long as there were other source of vitamin B. Still, you might say that UVB is a food instead of a poison. The problem there is that too much exposure to UVB increases the risk of cancer. Is it both a food and a poison? Oxygen therapy is useful as part of many treatments, including aborting cluster headache attacks. Perhaps oxygen is also a food? Bu too much oxygen leads to oxygen toxicity. So it is definitely a poison, right? Interesting that we require poison in order to breath. The issue is, as Nursie stressed, that "the dose makes the poison". Paracelsus said that almost 500 years ago, and it's still true. Even in Ayurvedic assignments of different treatments. Ayurveda says that nutmeg is an herb, right? It's used as a medicine because of its sedative properties. But eat 10 or so of the seeds and there's a good chance you will die. So, an herb can also be a poison? Obviously then the three categories are not that distinct. I would argue that they are blurry enough as to be unusable. Life is not so simple as to classify treatments into three distinct groups. And I don't know what you mean by "Modern [medicine] ... has very little information on how to cure through food." Beriberi, rickets, scurvy, pellagra, kwashiorkor, Korsakoff's syndrome, and Wernicke's encephalopathy are just some of the diseases which modern medicine has cured through food. For several thousand years, beriberi was endemic in Asia, because polished white rice was a staple food. What is the Ayurveda treatment for handle that disease, and was it developed before or after modern medical researchers identified that it was nutrition deficiency? (Hint: it was after.) (PS: ultrasonic waves are used to break up kidney stones. That's cure for a disease, no? Are ultrasonic waves food, herb, or poison?)

by chez17 14y ago

amalag 14y ago

the FDA method of approving poisons like modern medicines may not be a relevant methodology for herbs. Before you get all upset I called your favorite prescription medicine a poison, think about what it really is. A poison if taken in high doses. Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons. Modern allopathy is only the third, poisons. It has very little information on how to cure through food and herbs.

Nursie 14y ago
Everything in 'high doses' is a poison, even pure, distilled water. Herbs either contain active chemicals or they're a placebo. If they're a placebo they're as good as taking a sugar pill. If they contain active chemicals they contain unstandardised amounts and probably in concert with all sorts of other things that may or may not be helpful or harmful. Ayurveda is bullshit. QED.
- up_and_up 14y ago
  > Ayurveda is bullshit My wife is an Ayurvedic practitioner, so yes I am biased, but I dont believe in every aspect of it. I can definitely say it is not "bullshit" and it is indeed helping many of her clients. She has people who come to her, that conventional docs have literally given up on. "We cant figure out what is wrong with your digestion, theres nothing more we can try" she hears stories like that all the time. People ARE being helped. Whether it is all placebo I dont know for sure. but people who literally have no other options in conventional medicine are seeing real results. They are sleeping better w/o medication, they are not having anxiety attacks anymore, I could go on and on with her stories. My wife is pretty humble about it and not selling snake oil etc. People are seeing real results.
  - Nursie 14y ago
    If there is an effect that's measurable above placebo we should absolutely find out what it is and why it works. Otherwise it's just like the rest of these things. My statement, however, was not about whether your wife can make people feel better in ill-defined ways, it was about the ludicrous claims above on herbs and 'poison'.
  - amalag 14y ago
    It doesn't follow the western model of logic, which is why uninformed people who cannot understand subtleties insist on displaying their boarishness. For instance ayurveda says the stomach has digestive fire, it does not give you a list of chemicals which break down food. Rather it seeks to strengthen that digestive fire. If you want to peek in there with a catheter and say "Nope, there is no fire, ayurveda is bullshit" Well then, best of luck with your clinical trials trying to experiment on the newest medicines. There is value in that. It is not based on an inductive experimental approach so it does not fit with most western scientists. The idea is it is like an instruction manual, not reverse engineering. The human body was not evolved from some random processes for us to reverse engineer, rather there is an inherent design and ayurveda explains it. People may not agree with those depths of it, but that is the origin and philosophy.
    - 14y ago
dalke 14y ago
"Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons." That, of course, is wrong. There are additional way to cure a disease. Unless of course that you're using "poison" as a catch-all term to mean anything which isn't food or herbs, in which case it it's a rather useless redefinition to mean simply 'neither food nor herb.' For example, radiation therapy for cancer is neither a food nor herb, so by definition you place it into "poison", even though it doesn't act like any chemical poison. There's a certain logic to that assignment - radiation treatment is not something an otherwise healthy person would do - but it's a treatment that no traditional Ayurveda practitioner ever considered. UVB exposure (ie, sunlight or phototherapy) can be an effective treatment for some people who are vitamin B deficient because of malabsorption syndromes (like Cystic fibrosis and short bowel syndrome) which prevent them from absorbing vitamin D through their diet. Since UVB can cure a disease but is neither a food nor an herb, it must be a poison, right? But UVB is something that healthy people get all the time, so it wouldn't normally be considered a poison. In fact, it could be removed completely, so long as there were other source of vitamin B. Still, you might say that UVB is a food instead of a poison. The problem there is that too much exposure to UVB increases the risk of cancer. Is it both a food and a poison? Oxygen therapy is useful as part of many treatments, including aborting cluster headache attacks. Perhaps oxygen is also a food? Bu too much oxygen leads to oxygen toxicity. So it is definitely a poison, right? Interesting that we require poison in order to breath. The issue is, as Nursie stressed, that "the dose makes the poison". Paracelsus said that almost 500 years ago, and it's still true. Even in Ayurvedic assignments of different treatments. Ayurveda says that nutmeg is an herb, right? It's used as a medicine because of its sedative properties. But eat 10 or so of the seeds and there's a good chance you will die. So, an herb can also be a poison? Obviously then the three categories are not that distinct. I would argue that they are blurry enough as to be unusable. Life is not so simple as to classify treatments into three distinct groups. And I don't know what you mean by "Modern [medicine] ... has very little information on how to cure through food." Beriberi, rickets, scurvy, pellagra, kwashiorkor, Korsakoff's syndrome, and Wernicke's encephalopathy are just some of the diseases which modern medicine has cured through food. For several thousand years, beriberi was endemic in Asia, because polished white rice was a staple food. What is the Ayurveda treatment for handle that disease, and was it developed before or after modern medical researchers identified that it was nutrition deficiency? (Hint: it was after.) (PS: ultrasonic waves are used to break up kidney stones. That's cure for a disease, no? Are ultrasonic waves food, herb, or poison?)