If natural medicines are so safe and effective, why don’t we already know about them and use them?
Because of the rule of the game. Here is the rule of western medicine:
A product cannot be sold with any claims to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease without FDA approval, even if there are scientific studies supporting such claims. Any such claim makes the product an illegal (unapproved) drug, such as cherries sold with a reference to a scientific study showing they reduce inflammation. Because of the obvious stupidity of this law, the FDA has granted that certain products may use certain approved phrases, such as “heart healthy”. Here’s an example from their website:
Labeling that links a specific food to a statement such as "Heart Healthy" contains both the substance element (reference to a specific food) and the disease-condition element (implied reduction in risk of heart disease) of a health claim. Health claims may be used on the label or labeling of a food only if claims about the nutrient-disease relationship involved have been authorized by FDA in a regulation.
http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm053455.htm
Why don’t supplement manufacturers get their products approved by the FDA to make such claims?
Because it costs about a billion dollars to get a drug approved with the FDA. Then anyone can sell the supplement with the claim because natural substances are not patentable. Why would a company waste a billion dollars so their competition could benefit?
Actually, I think the question we should ask is why is western medicine so anti-natural medicine? Part of the answer may be greed. I think the industry leaders would rather create a solution that requires a lifetime of dependency than heal a patient and lose a customer.
Because of rule #1 in the above list, the FDA is actively involved in suppressing knowledge of natural cures.
Drugs heal. Poisons harm. Right?
Consider the difference between using nutrition to heal, and drugs. I did some research to find out how most drugs work. Most drugs work by inhibiting a certain enzyme reaction in the body. The dose is set to regulate how much of the reaction to inhibit. Compare the mechanism of how drugs work to how poisons work. I also researched how poisons work. They work by inhibiting a certain enzyme reaction in the body. Did you catch the difference between how drugs and poisons work? Drugs use a set dosage to limit how much of the enzyme reaction is inhibited. Inhibiting all of the enzyme reaction may result in death, depending on what enzyme it is.
Now, healing by nutrition takes a different approach. While drugs interfere with the body's chemistry, nutrition supports it. When someone is deficient in a nutrient, just getting that nutrient can heal them. Yes, even in America, we have people that are nutritionally deficient. It's not because of a lack of calories. There are plenty of calories in the standard American diet. But there is a definite lack of nutrients in the standard American diet.
I like to use the analogy of nutrition to building a house. You can give the workers a dumpster full of scrap (junk food) and they will work with what they have, but the house isn't going to be what you call a quality build. You can give them MDF (an analogy to processed food), or real wood. A variety of building materials are needed.
Aren't patent medicines safe and more effective than natural remedies because they have been studied with clinical trials that prove their safety and effectiveness?
Because of the enormous cost to get a drug approved, it limits the kind of drugs investigated for marketing to artificial (man-made) substances. Natural substances are studied, but only with the goal to isolate an effective compound that can be made synthetically. The studies of natural substances by pharmaceutical corporations are generally not published. The failed clinical trial results are also generally not published.
The so-called safety of a drug has a broad definition. Running across a freeway can be safe if you wait for a break in the cars. The side-effect list is necessary to read because these are the symptoms that happened to people during clinical trials. They may try to play games with the statistics, but I wonder why my son gets every side-effect listed on a drug. I don't think the side-effects are as rare as they claim.
Then there's the concept of active placebo. This basically invalidates every study in which one was used. An active placebo is designed to create side-effects. I think that invalidates the definition of placebo. I encourage you to research this topic.
Effectiveness is also stretched. If you can show a statistical improvement, compared to placebo, then the drug is considered effective. The problem with this approach is that you can design an experiment where you roll dice ten times with your left hand vs. ten times with your right hand. The hand that has a higher average is considered more effective. If you run enough trials, you are bound to get the results you want. That's why recent studies have shown than anti-depressants are no more effective than a placebo, except in cases of very severe depression. The most effective treatment for depression doesn't make money because it's not a patented formula or a trade secret, so it's not prescribed. It's exercise and proper nutrition.
What's better?
There are studies on using natural substances and nutrition for healing. They are not marketed because there's no money to be made. You need to do your own research to find them. Using food as medicine sounds ineffective to the lay person. Is this attitude because of marketing tactics? I contend that simply using proper nutrition is much more safe and effective (in the vast majority of cases) than drugs. But no drug can approach the safety of using food as medicine. I wonder if people knew the truth about modern medicine, would they consider that a drug is a poison? Would they choose poisons as their first method of treatment, rather than looking for what nutrient is missing in their diet? Rather than suppressing symptoms with poisons, consider healing the cause with nutrition.
