OUR HEALTH AND FREEDOM OF CHOICE IS THREATENED…
An alarming development in the health industry has seen the spread of fear among the public regarding natural therapies. So much so, that the US, Australian, UK and Canadian governments are suggesting new legislation designed to remove natural health products from our shelves or to brutally regulate access.
The question is, are Natural Supplements a Safe Form of Medicine? Only three recorded deaths have ever been associated to vitamins, two of which are debatable and one which was a known overdose of vitamin A, taken to intentionally kill. Although on the other hand, doctors have admitted to around 18000 fatalities per annum in Australia that are caused by pharmaceutical drugs. Herbal remedies were used safely by all ancient civilizations for thousands of years, and proved to have beneficial effects. Historically, pharmaceutical drugs are the (very profitable) newcomers on the scene.
In reaction to the PAN Pharmaceutical fiasco, there has been wide spread hysteria amongst the Australian community. In May 2003, PAN was served with a “class one” removal of all products from shelves after products caused death. 1600 products with no adverse reactions reported were eliminated from the shelves of all pharmacies around the country, most of these being natural supplements. How this logically follows the problems caused by one purely synthetic, chemical, pharmaceutical product (there was nothing natural about “Travacalm”) has yet to be explained.
Following the humiliation that PAN Pharmaceuticals endured, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has assembled a Close Door Committee made up of representatives and pharmaceutical industry peoples from the TGA. This group will release new proposals for the Australian community and the health industry and these suggestions don’t look good. A key member in the TGA, Prof. Alistair McLennan, is famous for his comment on the subject: “We shouldn’t support the complementary medicine (industry) or subsidise it. It’s a bit like subsidising the tobacco industry or the gambling industry.”
Australia aren’t the only ones coming down on natural supplements like a tonne of bricks, but England and the majority of Europe are doing the same. A law on all conventional medicines is being initiated. Continuing to be on the market is getting harder and harder, all herbal and natural products must have been on the legitimate market for 30 years or more (15 of which must have been in Europe). Of course the end product is no more independent producers and retailers but most importantly no new movements in the herbal industry.
Is there a correlation between a booming pharmacy markets’ cohort and the unreliability notion of natural medicine?
Ventola, C. L. (2010, August). Current Issues Regarding Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in the United States. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, pp. 461-468.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is becoming a more and more accepted form of complementary medicine in the UK. It is thought that about one million adults in Britain have had acupuncture and that a million herbal prescriptions are written every year. Even as little as ten years ago, TCM was still thought of as a border treatment and one would have been hard pressed to find a practitioner outside of London. Since then, complementary or alternative medicine has been flourishing, and Chinese medical centers have been opening on streets all around the country. “The Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine (RCHM), the self-regulating body which embodies practitioners of Chinese herbal medicine, has seen its membership grow by on average 30% per year to about 350 members at present” (Chinese Cures for British Ills, n.d.).
Although, it can also brings social challenges as well. The availability of strictly gluten free foods have increased dramatically over the last few years. But, a struggle that many people face is the difference in taste in some of the foods. Since these foods don’t contain gluten, it lacks the texture gluten gives it and does not bind as well as foods do with gluten. Foods often taste bland and do not carry the same flavors as expected. Hoyt explains that the foods she tried were “dry, crumbly, tasted like cardboard, and had absolutely no positive nutritional value” (Hoyt 3). To compromise, a person can modify their own recipes or find foods that have always been gluten free. Another “common strategy for maintaining the gluten free diet is reading product ingredients” (Bacigalupe, Plocha 1). In order to be sure that every food that is being consumed does not contain gluten, reading food labels is necessary. Learning how to read labels is crucial to living gluten free. A person has to be conscience of what ingredients they can and cannot have. To name a few; wheat, barley, rye and malt. If not, a person can buy and eat a food that they cannot have, contaminate themselves, and become
Nowadays, complementary alternative medicine is very popular in the United States. It is widely used by adults and children. National health statistic reports done in 2007 shows that 38.3% of adults and 11.8% of children use some form of alternative medicine (U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). But why is this happening? Why is it becoming so popular? Why are more people turning to it? Many times, this is because conventional medicine has not work and they want to try an alternative. That is the case of the author of this paper.
Xue, C. C. L., Zhang, A. L., Lin, V., Costa, C. D., & Story, D. F. (2007). Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use in Australia: A National Population-Based Survey. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 13(6), 643-650. doi: 10.1089/acm.2006.6355.
Easthope, G., 2005. Alternative Medicines. In: Germov, ed. An Introduction to Health Sociology. Melbourne :Oxford University Press, pp. 332-348.
I think that this new era of using natural herbal medicine is great and I support it greatly. Trying something new for a change is good. Even though some kinds of herbal medicine can produce harmful effects, many of the others are good. The only problem I see is that the Food and Drug Administration didn’t make it a requirement for the makers to submit studies on the drugs. Therefore, maybe sellers can make specific claims about preventing a disease even though it isn’t true. So if the FDA starts testing the medicines and helps separate the good from the bad then everything will be great.
For many centuries, humanity has been on an eternal quest for cures and treatments for many chronic conditions. At the present time, conventional medicine is mostly performed by doctors and other health care professionals, with the extensive use of pharmaceutical drugs, surgery or radiation treatments for disease treatment. Conversely, even though not as popular, complementary and alternative medicine and treatment options are slowly gaining popularity and becoming an addition to traditional medicine.
Alternative medicine can also be defined as the result of a series of important changes occurring within the American health care system today. For example, health care practitioners are coming to the realization that conventional biomedicine cannot solve many of America’s health problems. Therefore many doctors have begun to accept the idea that Holistic Medicine is based on, that is, that health involves more than just the physical body. They have also found many alternative medical treat...
Trudeau, Kevin. Natural Cures "they" Don't Want You to Know about. Elk Grove Village, IL: Alliance Pub. Group, 2004. Print.
Herbal medicines are sold in different ways from tablets, teas, extracts, capsules, powders, and fresh or dried plants. Many consumers believe that these products are safe and free of harm due to the labeling of the product with words such as “all natural.” The downside of taking these “natural” medicines are some ingredients can cause harm to a consumer’s health. According to the U.S .National Library of Medicine, some herbs, such as comfrey and ephedra, can cause serious harm. It is also reported that herbal
Many think Alternative medicine is not new to society. It actually started long before conventional medicine was founded. Before there was an FDA and is still used today all over the world it is still used by many people all over the world. Everyone has their own beliefs as to which are more dangerous Alternative or Conventional Medicine. I feel both have their own set of side effects and that both can be useful. However at times it would seem that Alternative medicine is the way to go because it does not include all
Frequently a person believes that herbal medicine is more naturally safe and soothing than drugs. Nevertheless, there’s no reasonable defense about this. Though many consumers trusted herbal medicine much more than the synthetic medicine because it’s safe and effective, but like anything else, it has its own limitations too. There are several hostile issues related to herbal medicine that has been quite alarming. Notwithstanding, majority of the most popular herbs are at least nearly safe.
Modern medicine mixes chemicals and does extensive testing, while herbal remedies come from naturally grown herbs. For every argument there is two sides, herbal remedies lack dosage instructions, regulations, and may interact with current medication, as well as modern medicines also have improved treatments. With improvements made on information and studies of herbal remedies, they would prevail over modern