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Herbalist


Frances144
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you could take an aspirin or lick the inside of willow bark. Same difference, but how will you know when you've licked enough willow bark?

 

your headache would disappear :?:

 

lol! Yeah, and you may just have a gastro-intestinal ulcer from the overdose you didn't know you were having, or your headache may have gone for placebo reasons, but you won't be able to tell. That's why we have science-based medicine to tell us these things.

 

I never subscribed to the "something is good because it natural and bad because it processed" theory.

Sorry, was responding to Paulb's point! :)

 

My Herbalist has a BSc Hons MNIMH (ie Member of the National Institute of Medical Herbalists) so I think she knows her stuff.

Yeah, but its a bit like theology. You can be an expert in "angels dancing on the heads of pins", but if angels don't exist then what is your expertise worth? I'm sure your herbalist has a great wealth of folk knowledge about herbs that have traditionally been judged to be useful, and no doubt some really are. However, until clinical trials can show a herb is useful then we have no evidence for its efficacy. Remember, anecdotes are not evidence, because humans are terrible judges of causes. Just consider the placebo effect. Thats why we need the scientific method.

 

On the clinical trial front it doesn't look great:

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/533968/?sc=rsmn

 

So, lets look at the herbal remedies, and see if they work. If they do, great, we have a winner! If they don't, lets move along and not waste people time, money and emotion.

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ok lets talk about st johns wort. in mild to modrate depression its as effective as the commercial medications. it has less drastic side effects as well. aloe vera(think that's spelt wrong) excellent for eczema. honey as an anti microbial works well. lots are safe and effective but like anything if its a life threatening condition then go to the doctor use alternative/natural remedies for longstanding conditions.

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compared to the normal anti depressants. from personal experiance over ten years its a lot nicer drug that that produced by the drug companies. now some of there side affects are very nasty.

 

from your ref

References to the use of Hypericum perforatum L. (St. John's wort) can be found in the last 2,000 years, dating back to the early Greeks. The most common modern-day application of St. John's wort is for the treatment of depressive disorders. Meta-analyses of small heterogeneous studies conducted over the past two decades and several subsequent randomized trials have found St. John's wort to be more effective than placebo and equally as effective as tricyclic antidepressants in the short-term management of mild to moderate depression. Comparisons to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have provided equivocal data. Recently, controversy has been raised by the negative results of two well-conducted trials. Overall, evidence supporting the efficacy of St. John's wort remains compelling.

 

St. John's wort is widely used in this country and abroad and has been generally considered a benign, well-tolerated herb in clinical use for depression. However, there is accumulating evidence of significant interactions with drugs, particularly when used with medications metabolized by the cytochrome P-450 system. This evidence-based presentation of the literature includes a brief review of pharmacodynamics and clinical application, followed by a systematic review of adverse effects, toxicity, and drug interactions.

as with all drugs tell your doctor/chemist and check its ok. the advantage for me is that i can self medicate. i treat the syptoms when it gets bad and then don't use it.

its not for everyone but it does work.

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Honey is the most amazing stuff. Manuka honey works miracles.

 

Sadly the NHS do not to use it in wound healing and management at all, to the best of my knowledge.

frances they do use it. not a lot but they do. its quite expensive when it gets to the ward. they are just relearning the older treatments for wounds.

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Herbal remedies have been studied by pharmacologists who have identified the active ingredients and turned them into a medicine you can take with a controlled dose.

 

Perhaps, but even scientists found out that often the isolated active ingredients don't work but the original plant does...

and the dose is something which differs for each individual.

 

Herbal medicines have not been studied to an extent one would wish.

Probably because many of the strongest herbs grow somewhere in remote places where there is not much to earn for the pharma business.

Tests with rats and mice to find out how a herbal medicine works with human beings are in many cases no use because every species might react completely different. Some herbal remedies you can use for goats are poisonous for men and horses, some other herbs you can feed horses but you should never give them to your dog.

 

In some countries people are dependant on herbal remedies and in Europe we have problems with resistance... think about antibiotics... and not many people know that there are natural antibiotics in different plants with no resistance (yet, because luckily GPs have not had the chance to prescribe them en masse).

 

In Germany (probably the same in Britain) most physicians and vets do not learn anything about herbal remedies while they are at university.

(This is probably why they still recommend camomile for eye sores :wink:)

To get deep into herbal medicine you need at least 5 years fulltime studying and even then you will never know everything.

 

I know what I am talking about - I deal with this subject now for more than 9 years. At the moment I am working together in a study with a Swiss and a German university about the use of herbal medicines (compared with mainstream medicine) for the treatment of horses with cushing's syndrome and laminitis... so far one can say that the results of the horses treated with the herbs are more than promising and the side effects are far less.

 

Nobody needs to use herbal remedies if he doesn't want to.

But past times show that many mainstream remedies had to be taken of the market due to very adverse side effects and risks (phenylbutazon for example which was a very often used medicine but is now considered not to be prescribed for humans anymore).

I don't want to be a test person for the pharmacy and prefer the way thousands of years people cured their maladies.

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In Germany (probably the same in Britain) most physicians and vets do not learn anything about herbal remedies while they are at university.

(This is probably why they still recommend camomile for eye sores )

To get deep into herbal medicine you need at least 5 years fulltime studying and even then you will never know everything.

 

Well I know they do in Manchester as we used to get a few medical students up in the Camphill Medical Practice, the partners though were Dutch and German, and the other doctor was Oxford educated, but from an era where "alternative" therapies were frowned upon.

It always frightens me when doctors with no experiance advise about alternative theropies, had a female friend with low blood pressure advised by her GP to use lavender oil for stress. She even got sent for a MRI to find out why she was fainting, luckily someone at the hospital noticed the oil in her bag, how much NHS time was wasted by a GP giving out dangerous advice in something he knew nothing about. Thinking about it that practice also put her on st Johns Wort, but thats a whole other story of medical eff ups.

Being allergic to camomile you have no idea how that makes my eyes smart.

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