Daily Archives: February 28, 2017

If you want to sell an idea an opponent is helpful, especially if what youre selling cannot stand on its own merit. For example, homeopathy creator Samuel Hahnemann had trouble proving his provings offered anything beyond a placebo response. Given his reservations against the medical industrymany complaints were crediblehe dubbed any treatment offered by the conventional system allopathic.

Unfortunately for Hahnemann his philosophythe less of an active ingredient remains the more powerful a remedy is (once you reach 13c on the homeopathic scale there is no longer any active ingredient left)is nonsense. While today homeopaths still use allopathic as a derogatory sleight against mainstream medicine, theyre only shadowboxing an invisible enemy.

Alternative medicine, which includes homeopathy as well as vitamin and supplement companies and a number of other therapeutic modalities, is a $34 billion a year industry. While these companies enjoy the fruits of loose, and in many cases non-existent, regulations, their argument against allopaths is not the cry of the oppressed, but the desperate pleas of businesses concerned with their bottom lines.

Medicine is medicine. As pediatrician Paul Offit writes,

Theres no such thing as conventional or alternative or complementary or integrative or holistic medicine. Theres only medicine that works and medicine that does not.

This does not stop the irrational stream of unproven (or disproven) therapies arising from the holistic and wellness sphere. While pharmaceuticals and the companies producing them have their own problems, the rigorous standards of multiple trials, years of development and research, and millions of dollars spent are absent in the vitamin aisle of Whole Foods.

Yet many pharmaceuticals are based on similar or even the same botanical substances. At a public hearing on homeopathic product regulation on April 20, 2015, Adriane Fugh-Berman, an associate professor in Georgetowns Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, points out that homeopathic remedies can contain snake venom, heavy metals, controlled substances, [and] glandular extracts that would be considered dangerous if subject to federal regulation.

She points out that Guna Interleukin 12 is labeled for usage as a pain reliever and anti-inflammatory agent for autoimmune disorders. The remedy contains ingredients usually placed under intense scrutiny when used by pharmaceutical companies, but since the producer, Guna Interleukin Remedies, sidesteps regulation by utilizing the homeopathic loophole, consumers are ingesting potentially dangerous dosages.

When I asked the FDA why this oversight exists, press officer Lyndsay Meyer referred me to her agencys regulations, which refer to the unique nature of these drug products. Thanks to an amendment in 1983, homeopathic drugs are exempt from the requirement for laboratory determination of identity and strength of each active ingredient prior to release for distribution.

Hahnemann believed the less of a substance in the remedy, the stronger it is. Thus a partially diluted proving is not that strong while one containing no active ingredients is very powerful. Problem is, active ingredients matter. A recent report notes that one homeopathic teething pill resulted in more than 370 adverse reactions in children over a ten-year period.

This supposedly weak remedy is labeled 6X, meaning some of the active ingredients remains. One ingredient, Belladonna, is diluted at 12X (still active in mixture), which has a series of side effects, including GI infections and blockage, increased high blood pressure, and increased fever.

As Offit reports, 50 percent of Americans use alternative medicines while 10 percent give it to their children. While the FTC stepped in last year to plug a regulatory hole in homeopathic labeling, the legalese used by vitamin and supplement makers is confusing to consumers who read the large type on bottles and think their flu symptoms will be alleviated or, worse, that chelation cures cancer.

As health and wellness are wrapped into the fitness industry the science is only getting more confused. Just yesterday I walked by a center in Santa Monica that offers aerial silk and yoga classes, massage therapy, and IV vitamin drips. For $175 an hour you can have high doses of vitamin C, zinc, and lysine pumped into your bloodstream after Pilates, even though elevated levels of all three of those substances can cause numerous gastro-intestinal problems. Distrust in one doctor should not imply blind faith in another.

While supplements, vitamins, and superfoods are touted as cancer-fighting, antioxidant-boosting wonder drugs, the science is less enthusiastic. Offit writes,

Studies have now shown that people who take large quantities of vitamins and dietary supplements with antioxidant activity are more likely to have cancer and heart disease and die sooner.

Hahnemann helped inspire a holism movement championing Hippocratic philosophy during an important transition in medical history. The emergence of biochemistry, neuroscience, germ theory, disease specification, and molecular genetics made the invisible world visible. Widespread usage of antibiotics and vaccines offered humans an evolutionary thrust forward in biological knowledge. Suddenly a hostile planet became that much less daunting.

Yet a growing suspicion of corporate and political interests in the sixties inspired a new wave of holism thats gaining strength a half-century later. Were right to be wary of corporate agendas and political mismanagement when it comes to healthcare. Still, this does not excuse an entire industry pimping products with little to no scientific backing thats taking advantage of regulatory loopholes.

The reality is the most basic advicemove often and diversely; eat a balanced, whole foods dietis boring in an age of immediate gratification. People would rather sprint with a wonder-pill than put their head down for a marathon, and too many charlatans are stepping in to pretend theyve developed that pill.

As Offit concludes, theres a problem when we celebrate Suzanne Somersa saleswoman and industry unto herselfwhile only occasionally acknowledging the groundbreaking work of Siddhartha Mukherjee, a biological scientist, physician, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. There are many incredible men and woman devoted to finding medicine that works. The alternative is suffering, something many companies and hucksters willfully champion at a time when we can all use less of it.

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Derek's next book,Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health, will be published on 7/4/17 by Carrel/Skyhorse Publishing. He is based in Los Angeles. Stay in touch onFacebookandTwitter.

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There Is No Such Thing as Alternative Medicine - Big Think

Anyone who uses homeopathy, acupuncture or other alternative over-the-counter therapies particularly if they use them on their children needs to read two recently published articles on the topic.

One of the articles, published last week in the Boston Globes health website STAT, takes an in-depth look at the incredibly troubling story behind a popular homeopathic teething product that harmed hundreds of children in the United States before it was finally pulled from the market last fall.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently reviewing the cases of eight babies who died after taking the product.

The other article, published earlier this year on the Science-Based Medicine website, describes the rise of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in both China and Western countries. It describes how TCM began as the dream of Chairman Mao Zedong back in the 1940s, but is receiving a renewed global push this year by the current Chinese government, in part to cover up major failings in Chinas medical system, but also to protect the profits of the countrys multibillion-dollar traditional pharmaceutical industry.

Both articles underscore how people often abandon their skepticism and their reason to embrace bogus alternative-medicine practices that are not only a waste of time and money, but also potentially harmful.

The articles also rip apart the prevalent David-and-Goliath myth regarding alternative therapies: the idea that alternative-medicine manufactures are small, noble companies who only want to bring inexpensive, natural remedies to people in need, but who find themselves battling the big, bad profit-driven pharmaceutical industry.

The truth is much less attractive: Alternative medicine is now a huge profit-driven, multibillion-dollar industry, too. And parts of it are owned by the pharmaceutical industry.

For the STAT article, reporter Sheila Kaplan used the Freedom of Information Act to seek and review FDA records for homeopathic teething pills marketed by Hylands, a 114-year-old private, Los-Angeles-based company that sells more homeopathic products than any other company in the U.S.

A review of those records revealed that during the 10-year period 2006-2016 the FDA received reports of 370 children who had experienced adverse health events after using Hylands homeopathic teething tablets or gel. The reports are grim, says Kaplan:

Babies who were given Hylands teething products turned blue and died. Babies had repeated seizures. Babies became delirious. Babies were airlifted to the hospital, where emergency room staff tried to figure out what had caused their legs and arms to start twitching.

Medical experts believe toxic levels of the teething tablets main ingredient the herb belladonna may have poisoned the children.

Despite those reports, it took four years until the FDA pushed Hylands to reformulate its remedies, writes Kaplan. And even after that reformulation, there was a steady stream of reports of adverse events tied to Hylands homeopathic teething products, she adds.

The Hylands teething tablet saga raises issues that most consumers of homeopathic and other alternative therapies are unaware of, as Kaplan explains:

Homeopathy has become a multibillion-dollar industry. Its products are big sellers around the world, and popular with adherents from Cher to Prince Charles. The industry also has political clout: It has been able to exempt itself from many rules proposed by Congress and the FDA over the years.

Unlike pharmaceutical company-produced drugs, homeopathic products dont have to prove that they are effective at treating anything in particular before going on the market. It is left to the FDAs drug division to determine whether they are unsafe after they are on the market a difficult task since the adverse event reports are generally considered to represent only a fraction of the actual incidents and may lack sufficient information to allow for thorough investigations.

In some cases, parents assume that products described as natural remedies, as is the case with Hylands tablets and gels, could not possibly result in complications, and never mention their use to a doctor. Without sufficient evidence of a problem, the FDA lacks what it needs to use the enforcement tools it does have.

Hylands has stopped making its teething tablets, but only after the FDA recommended last September that consumers not use the product (or other homeopathic teething products) while the agency investigates more cases of possible serious reactions among babies.

Kaplan tells a harrowing story in her article one all users of homeopathic medicines would be wise to read.

The Science-Based Medicine article also contains background information that is likely to surprise most consumers of another arm of alternative medicine TCM. Acupuncture is by far the most popular TCM therapy, at least in Western countries, but TCM includes many other treatments, include herbal medicines.

As Dr. David Gorski, a columnist for Science-Based Medicine and a surgical oncologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, explains in the article, acupuncture has been appropriately described as a theatrical placebo, with no detectable difference in effect compared to sham or placebo acupuncture.

Furthermore, acupuncture is not even ancient, as Gorski explains:

The technology to make such thin needles didnt exist two thousand years ago, [and], as recently as a century ago, acupuncture was brutal and primitive, using nothing like the thin, shiny needles acupuncturists use today.

But the problem with TCM, he says, is not just acupuncture, its the whole ancient, prescientific system of medicine.

Take Chinese herbal medicines. Even if the herb itself is innocuous (and not all are), medicines imported from China have been found to contain undeclared ingredients, including pesticides, heavy metals (such as lead and arsenic), antibiotics, decongestants and the DNA of endangered snow leopards. (Animal parts, including those of endangered animals, are often used in traditional Chinese medicines, says Gorski.)

The presence of toxic materials in these medicines is not a minor matter. Recent studies have suggested that herbal medicines are the leading cause of drug-induced liver failure in China and other countries where TCM is rapidly becoming popular, such as South Korea and Singapore, Gorski points out.

Like other forms of alternative medicine, TCM is built on a myth. Gorski explains:

[T]he exportation of TCM to the world was quite deliberate, as part of a strategy [by the former Communist leader of China, Mao Zedong] to popularize it among the Chinese. There was a problem, however. There was no such thing as traditional Chinese medicine per se. Rather, there were traditional Chinese medicines. For many centuries, healing practices in China had been highly variable. Attempts at institutionalizing medical education were mostly unsuccessful and most practitioners drew at will on a mixture of demonology, astrology, yin-yang five phases theory, classic texts, folk wisdom, and personal experience.

Mao realized that TCM would be unappealing to foreigners, as even many Chinese, particularly those with an education, understood that TCM was mostly quackery. For instance, in 1923, [the Chinese writer] Lu Xun realized that Chinese doctors are no more than a type of swindler, either intentional or unintentional, and I sympathize with deceived sick people and their families. Such sentiments were common among the upper classes and the educated. Indeed, Mao himself didnt use TCM practitioners. He wanted scientific Western medicine. The same was true of educated Chinese. It still is. TCM is far less popular among educated middle class and affluent Chinese than conventional medicine.

Yet that hasnt stopped the current Chinese government from passing a new law, which goes into effect in July, that mandates the integration of Chinese and Western medicine throughout their country.

The purpose of the law, says Gorski, is to elevate the status of TCM to the equivalent of Western medicine and thus provide a cheaper way of delivering medicine to Chinas overrun medical system.

One also cant help but notice that a lot of this new law goes towards protecting the business interests of the TCM industry in a manner that, if it were done for the pharmaceutical company, would provoke howls of outrage from [alternative medicine] proponents and rightly so, writes Gorski.

FMI: You can read Gorskis article on the Science-Based Medicine website. Kaplans can be found at the STAT website.

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Potential dangers and dubious history of alternative medicine are often unknown to its consumers - MinnPost