Put this in your pipe and smoke it

These trials, which had the lowest risk of erroneous results and a combined total of 180,938 participants, showed the following increases in mortality per antioxidant: 7% for beta carotene; 16% for vitamin A; and 4% for vitamin E ( the trials tested a wide range of doses; for example, Vitamin A doses ranged from 2,000 IU/day to 200,000 IU/day). The Cochrane reviewers concluded that ongoing trials looking at vitamin C and selenium should continue.

St John's wort (Hypericum perforatum)

Could make you pregant

plus other complimentary medication problems

Drugs Vitamins Supplements Herbs

Look them up here.

Fish oil

Fish consumption may not reduce heart attacks, but it can improve the chance of surviving one substantially. It doesn't matter what sort of fish, and eating more than one portion a week confers no extra benefit. The mechanism, hypothetically, is some anti-arrhythmic effect of fish fatty acids.

Go here

More on Fish oil here

Herbs

Some herbal remedies which have some supportive evidence.

Andrographis: Upper respiratory tract infection
Cranberry:Urinary tract infection
Devil’s claw: Osteoarthritis, back pain
Ginkgo: Intermittent claudication, dementia
Ginger: Morning sickness
Hawthorn: Chronic heart failure
Horse chestnut: Chronic venous insufficiency
Kava: Anxiety, menopausal symptoms
Nettle: Benign prostatic hyperplasia
Peppermint: Abdominal pain, non ulcer dyspepsia, IBS
Saw palmetto: Benign prostatic hyperplasia
St John’s Wort:Depression
Yohimbe: Erectile dysfunction

Over view of alternatives - integrated medicine

Courageous or not, it is definitely timely to put the spotlight on CM (complementary medicine) . Patients love it, the media and many people in power promote it, yet few people seem to understand it. In the following discussion I will try to highlight some of those aspects of CM which, I feel, are currently plagued by confusion, lack of transparency and sometimes even wilful deceit. Using the headings ‘good, bad and ugly’ inevitably requires a degree of simplification. In reality things are rarely black or white but different shades of gray.

Complementary medicine: the good the bad and the ugly

Health, Alternatives

To what extent are people in positions of authority free of their personal agendas about what is best for the rest of us? Does it matter?




Riddled as the modern world is with craziness we do at least have the model of scientific thinking - that is, have a theory, test it, refine it and one day replace it with a theory that coheres better with the latest findings. The final arbiter is beyond the human mind. Well as beyond as one can get. The findings of science are available to all to check out and verfiy. Verification isn't easy. With regards to the human body/mind verification is tricky indeed.

As managers take over the medical world, will it be more or less objectively based than it is now - will the agendas they bring be better or worse?

Homeopathy has not survived, as far as I know, the rigors of double blind cross over trials and yet we go on using it - well some of us do.

"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities also has the power to make you commit atrocities." --Voltaire (1694-1778)

We need to value objectivity more than we do - we need to stop the corporate take over of the medical world. There is enough absurdity already.

The everybody take statin madness is so patently nuts but........!! Well for me it is. Maybe it's more nuts than homeopathy. The latter is at least harmless. That's why it did so well originally back when Haneman (sp) invented it. Back then my colleagues were poisoning folk with mercury and arsenic.

Greed, power, control and status - these are always polluting the waters. But so is agenda pumping - here particular attitudes and beliefs are valued more than what is so. Agenda pumping is all over the show in the 'health' world as is blind and dogged support for the status quo, orthodoxy, even when the evidence is against it.

>

There is a demand from people for objective knowledge - what works doc? Prove it. There is also a demand for the mysterious, the healer, the unorthodox remedies, even the slighly 'weird' seems to have appeal. Proof isn't the issue here - procalmation and an unquestioning acquiesence are.

How is any human being to know what is best in the above strange world?