Paraherbalism is a branch of herbalism based on pseudoscience. Although they try to back up their truths based on clinical trials and scientific knowledge, it's often illogical or flawed.
These are the statements that they believe in and if you see a similar statement to this, know that this is paraherbalism
1. A conspiracy by the medical establishment discourages the use of herb
Truth: not many health practitioners are knowledgeable in this area. That's where the skepticism comes from. If we actually learned about them, then we could actually know what to tell people. Herbs have become unprofitable in the pharmaceutical industry a while back and is the reason why there's not much more interest into it.
2. Herbs cannot harm, only cure
Truth: Just because a herb is natural, does not mean that it is safe. There's actually a lot of herbs that have toxins in there. So, before you use a herb, make sure that you do complete research to make sure that there's no harmful toxins!
3. Whole herbs are more effective than their isolated active constituents
Truth: For some drugs that originate from herbs, those herbs contain toxins that's dangerous to ingest. Again, do full research and look at everything that a herb can have. The isolated active constituents (what we know as drugs) have gone through FDA approval. If you don't like the side effects that the drug has, ask your doctor for a similar one, there's usually a drug that has less harsh side effects.
4. "Natural" and "organic" herbs are superior to synthetic drugs
Truth: Friedric Wohler disproved the "natural" part in 1828. What's put into the synthetic drug is excipients that are safe for humans to consume (like glucose). FDA wouldn't go through such a hassle if they knew all the harm that would come from the drugs.
5. The Doctrine of Signatures is meaningful.
Truth: This is a belief that form of a plant determines its therapeutic virtue. If kidney beans could cure all types of kidney diseases, then this statement would be true.
6. Reducing the dose of a medicine increases its therapeutic activity
Truth: This statement hasn't been proven because most homeopathic remedies do not taken into consideration the placebo effect.
7. Astrological influences are significant
Truth: Synthetic drugs don't rely on this, so you don't have to spend time looking at it. I would also like to see actual papers backing this up.
8. Physiological test in animals are not applicable to human beings
Truth: The only reason why we do it on animals before testing it on humans is because certain animals are similar to use. Also, if we could see a toxicity in mice, then we could stop there and not continue to humans.
9. Anecdotal evidence is highly significant
Truth: One of the ways to help prove the therapeutic use for the herb but not good enough on its own.
10. Herbs were created by God specifically to cure disease
Truth: Science can't test that God actually did this, and therefore cannot be used as scientific evidence. This could be the same reasoning for synthetic drug for certain people.
Trying not to disprove God or anything, but in the science realm, religion doesn't play a factor for this field.
This type of hebalism should be proceed with caution since they use proof from well-known herbalist but do not use clinical evidence that proves toxicity in herbals.
Sources
Refer back to the Sources post to see the exact books that I used!
Tyler's Herb of Choice
No comments:
Post a Comment