Is stupidity "All Natural"???

[Glaucus]

We all know how controversial "big pharma" is, always accused of selling us "snake oil" that costs an arm and a leg and is probably overall worse then the disease. That's why so many people turn to alternative medicine which is of course all natural, and we all know that "all natural" is all good for us. No need at all to ever stop and think about what you're doing because, hey, it's natural so just shut up and toss those filthy pills you bought at the "big pharmacy" because what you really need is this:

Urine Injections

Sheryl Paloni lost 43 pounds and more than 30 inches just since June. That's when she heard about a very unorthodox weight loss program.

"Physically I feel better. I feel light on my feet," said Paloni. "For me, the proof is in the pudding," she said.

The urine comes from pregnant women. Sheryl injected herself with it daily.

I'm sold! I just hope I don't need to knock someone up to get me some! Hmmm... On second thought, that's kinda gross. Disgusting even! :shock:

 

[metalman]

Another "ALL NATURAL"

THe Tapeworm Diet

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Wizz injections certainly seem like a poor idea yet it is not without precedent. In fact urine therapy has a history going back a long way. In China old men have drunk the urine of young boys as a tonic and I think in India too. Also in India, I believe, cow urine is believed to be curative. These practices seem to be thousands of years old. That doesn't make them good or effective but it shows that urine injections may be tapping into something culturally deep and intrinsic in the human psyche and therefore may have a powerful placebo effect. For the most part it seems like just a way to make money.

That, the love of money, is the root of all evil. While people waste money on urine injections and subject themselves to risk the same thing is true of most pharmaceuticals in (over)use today - and the cause of so many ineffective and dangerous medications being prescribed to people who don't need or won't benefit from them is the same - the love of money.

It is right to be skeptical of "natural" medicine but one should be exactly as skeptical of "scientific" medicine because to a large degree the "scientific" part of scientific medicine never leaves academia. Most of what gets prescribed is snakeoil.

Medicines tend to only work up to the point when their patents expire at which time they are replaced by other medications. Even things that really do work get buried after their patents expire by more profitable concoctions.

In the US about thirty thousand people a year die from adverse prescription drug reactions which is slightly more than those who die from firearms and those who die from motor vehicles. It is ten thousand higher than those who die from illegal drugs (both directly and indirectly).

On the other hand the figure is only a tenth that of the number of people who die each year from crappy food that makes them fat.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Sometimes after a drug has been on the market for a long time (having been approved of course) you find out that it isn't safe. For example commonly used anti-depressants cause heart failure. Ooops. But that's OK because they are the older anti-depressants so their patents aren't paying any more. Furthermore the implication is that newer anti-depressants (i.e. patent protected ones) don't have this problem.

The news could be true. It could be that these older meds have problems that weren't acknowledged at the time. It could also be that they are perfectly fine (hence the "needs more study" wiggle room) but are unprofitable because they are being made by the generic manufacturers now. It would be nice at least to be able to take the article at face value but even there we don't know what's really being sold to us when we read.

Sometimes the pharma companies get PR companies to write the articles and then go looking for academics to sign them.

 

[metalman]

Man finds extreme healing eating parasitic worms

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Man finds extreme healing eating parasitic worms

Hmm. That's a somewhat alarming story but given the man's predicament, trapped between 15 bloody stools a day and a poop bag I can see how he might see this as a reasonable alternative.

On the other hand it also isn't completely surprising to me. Other modern diseases such as asthma have been linked to a lack of parasites. It isn't that parasites are intrinsically beneficial but rather that a body adapted for constant war with parasites might go badly off kilter if it isn't kept busy fighting those parasites.

 

[Glaucus]

This "parasite" seems to have some kind of symbiotic benefit to the man. Not much is said about the parasite itself or what it's effects are on otherwise healthy people. In many cases people don't know they have worms until they look in the toilet, and that's probably the worst effect they'll get - which is still pretty bad even if it is psychological, it would probably make me puke right away. Still, the man did get the idea from a doctor who submitted an observation to a medical journal, it wasn't some crazy stuff he just read on a random internet site.

But reading up on the particular worm, I can see why other doctors would discourage him:

Symptoms and pathology
* Light infestations (<100 worms) are frequently asymptomatic.
* Heavy infestations may have bloody diarrhea.
* Long-standing blood loss may lead to iron-deficiency anemia.
* Rectal prolapse is possible in severe cases.
* Vitamin A deficiency may also result due to infection.

As it seems, to healthy people it causes the exact symptoms that this person was suffering.

EDIT:
In the same article it states:

The hygiene hypothesis suggests that various immunological disorders that have been observed in humans only within the last 100 years, such as Crohn's disease, or that have become more common during that period as hygienic practices have become more widespread, may result from a lack of exposure to parasitic worms (also called helminths) during childhood. The use of Trichuris suis ova (TSO, or pig whipworm eggs) by Weinstock, et al., as a therapy for treating Crohn's disease[6][7][8] and to a lesser extent ulcerative colitis[citation needed] are two examples that support this hypothesis.[citation needed] There is also anecdotal evidence that treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) with TSO decreases the incidence of asthma,[9] allergy,[10] and other inflammatory disorders.[citation needed] Some scientific evidence suggests that the course of multiple sclerosis may be very favorably altered by helminth infection;[11] TSO is being studied as a treatment for this disease.