fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2931 ]

[ SECRET POST #2931 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2931 ⌋

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On the other hand, I strongly judge people who dismiss anything that's not 100% in line with traditional Western medicine as "woo woo stuff." It would be nice if people realized most medicinal chemists are trying to synthesize compounds that occur naturally, and that those isolated, lab-created compounds lose much of the synergy achieved in their natural form.

I agree with this. A lot of traditional remedies can be dangerous but there are also a lot of things that were passed down because they actually worked and I think it's a good idea to actually look into each case to see which one it is so we can take advantage of anything that might help. I don't think we should accept or reject any of them without a closer examination.

You know that joke about how alternative medicine that works is simply called "medicine"? Yeah. It is true that lots of medication today is derived from things in nature. The reason why people take asprin instead of simply eating willow bark is so we can control the dosage and therefore the efficacy of a drug. Which is important, especially when it comes to drugs that are good only in controlled doses but potentially deadly in large ones. Digitalis is a good example of this.

Though to be honest, the fact that you seem to think "synergy" is something that can be measured empirically instead of some abstract concept is rather suspicious. I'm all in favor of alternative medicines that can pass repeated controlled tests in a lab. But very few of them can, and when they do, voila, it becomes Western medicine.

This very aptly puts what I feel on the subject. Thank you for writing this.

Thank you! I admit I get a little twitchy-eyed when people say things like "of course we should test all the natural remedies to see if it works and not dismiss them out of hand" because... well, that's what science has been doing all along. That's how we got so many of the medications that are currently on the market. I'm grateful for this, because it means that when I've eaten something that disagrees with me and have the runs, I can swallow a tiny, tasteless, non-addictive tablet of Imodium instead of eating a lump of all-natural opium derived from poppies to try and stop it.

There's still plenty of material for them to test, of course, but people have this weird idea that science and Big Pharmacy don't understand how many useful things can be derived from natural sources. I assume it's because they don't know the history of pharmaceuticals or how they're developed, but it's still kind of funny.

That's what science has been doing, yes. I'm talking about the irritating people I deal with in casual conversation who don't understand science but think they do.

Things that are called "medicine" are things that have had three stages of clinical trials, at least in the US. If you have a therapy that's unpatentable because it's naturally occurring, it's generally not possible to fund a clinical trial. "Medicine" is a business. "Medicine" is what drug reps can talk doctors into prescribing. Not that doctors don't do their best - they do - but the therapy of the day is likely something that is making a ton of money for a drug company.

Though to be honest, the fact that you seem to think "synergy" is something that can be measured empirically instead of some abstract concept is rather suspicious

That's putting words into my mouth - I don't think that synergy is necessarily emprically measured, but I do believe many compounds work better in the natural form. Vitamin C, for instance. There is such a thing as synergy; even your Western doctors will recommend things like taking Vitamin D along with something fatty to make it absorb better.

that are good only in controlled doses

What makes you think that natural compounds can't be or aren't made available in controlled doses?

Ah, the Big Pharm conspiracy theory. It's true that market forces drive pharmacy, but you know, I don't think the world is missing out on natural miracle cures for anything because Big Pharm is trying to keep it out of the peoples' hands.

I'm sorry, but the whole "losing synergy" thing still sounds very woo-woo. We have tests to measure the efficacy of medication. While most doctors agree that getting all your necessary vitamins from a well rounded diet is better than taking pills, that's a long step from saying that this is the case for everything derived from a natural source.

The natural compounds currently on the market in the U.S. purport to be controlled doses, but this isn't necessarily the case. There is no FDA testing to ensure that a pill that says it's 50mg of ______ is actually 50mg of ______. Natural substances and the amount of [insert designed substance] is difficult to predict because it's all dependent upon environmental factors. You'd have to test, re-test and mix each batch to be sure you're getting the same thing, every single time... which is important in many medications. It can be done, but it'd be very work intensive and very expensive. Which is why people started synthesizing drugs instead of relying solely upon natural remedies.

Uh... it's important to control the dosage of asprin as well. Reducing the acidity is certainly a bonus, but knowing how much of it you're actually ingesting is really, really important.

Also FYI - your example of aspirin is incorrect. It was not formulated to control dosage, it was derivatized to reduce its acidity. Willow bark tea is still a relatively common treatment for minor ailments; tea is itself a way of controlling dosage.

NAYRT--Yeah, I have a coworker who's chiropractor told her not to trust her regular doctor "because he just wants your money," and I kind of boggled and asked "So they work for free, then?" This same coworker has made herself sick taking alternative treatments that interact badly, or thinking that more=better and disregarding dosage information/being unaware that it's even possible to OD on herbal meds, and in at least one case, taking supplements of something she's allergic to because obviously swallowing something that makes her swell up and get a rash when she touches it is perfectly safe.

Basically, herbal/alternative does not equal safe, a medicine in the wrong dose becomes poison, even if you picked, dried, and made a tisane of something from your own garden. And people who don't research drug interactions/mention herbal supplements they're taking to their doctor are asking for trouble.

That's so sad, and I'm sorry. But yes, this sort of thing happens a lot because people think that natural = better, even if they don't have any evidence to support this theory.

It's kind of ridiculous how people think if it's "natural"/herbal, not only must it be safe, but also you must not need any training to use it. Before modern medicine, you still went to people who'd studied this stuff for most of their lives. They weren't always right themselves, but Mabel the Herbalist was still considered to have a better chance of getting it right than Mildred Who Found A Plant in the Woods and Thinks it Looks Like that Thing Mabel Gave Her that One Time.

This! And I had the same reaction to the "synergy" thing. What exactly is "synergy" and how is it scientifically measured? Why is a compound derived from a natural source any different from an IDENTICAL compound that's lab-synthesized?

I honestly thought synergy was PURELY a middle-management buzzword until now. Thanks, F!S!

(That said, I still don't actually know what synergy means.)

Super-late to the party, but synergistic affects are actually real things that can be measured!

One of the projects I've worked on involved testing a variety of natural compounds for their effects of mast cell degranulation (a cellular response related to allergic reactions). We would test each compound for effectiveness by itself and then combine the two together and test them.

Most of the time, the combined compounds would at best have an additive effect, where the total reduction in degranulation was equal to the reduction from compound A added to the reduction in compound B.

However! If you combined two compounds and degranulation was reduced by more than the effects of each compound separately added together, then a synergistic effect was present.

Like, mathematically:
Compound A = 2 units of reduction
Compound B = 1 unit of reduction

Additive: Compound A + Compound B = 3 units
Synergistic: Compound A + Compound B = 6 units

Basically, synergy is things interacting together to create a result that is greater than the sum of their parts or whatever.

(If any of the compounds were good, we'd send them up to the chemistry department to isolate all the chemical components.)

Thank you! That makes a lot of sense, and now I know something I didn't know before!

Okay, no, hang on. Let's not pretend that "science" is some unified, sober-minded, wholly-empirical outfit that's somehow immune to creepy externalities. If that were true, we wouldn't have had to be fighting for decades to get medical marijuana (and we still can't get medical acid), and drugs wouldn't be overprescribed in proportion to how much their companies spend on pharmaceutical reps. However, in the real world, both those things are true.

That doesn't mean homeopathy isn't bullshit, I just take issue with the notion that the pure pursuit of fact is something that exists. There are a lot of blind spots in scientific and medical practice, some of them because they've been paid for.

I don't think anyone in this thread has said science is infallible. Where have you seen that? But do I trust science and research more than vague, unsubstantiated claims about natural remedies having more "synergy" than the same drugs manufactured? Yes. I absolutely do.

You know that joke about how alternative medicine that works is simply called "medicine"? Yeah.

The only way that joke WORKS is if it assumes that science is infallible, so that's where I've seen it. I trust scientific results more than crystal energy and flower frequencies (not a made-up example, alas) myself, but sometimes alternative medicine works and is still considered alternative for stupid reasons.

But the non-legality of marijuana isn't because science isn't empirical, it's because there are people who actively reject science.

The argument here is whether home remedies are compatible with science. And I think they only are if they can be supported with scientific reasoning.

Scientists do disagree on things to be sure - but they do tend to rely on the same basic principles in research and observation, and I think it's actually impressively unified for something with so many participants from so many places and walks of life.

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[ SECRET POST #2931 ]

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