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Why is there less talk about medicinal herbs, herbal medicines , herbs , mushrooms in west today


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Posted
12 hours ago, Genady said:

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that every new medicine is an older medicine in a new form, combination, or synthesis.

52 minutes ago, Peterkin said:

You're really stuck on that phrase.

But that phrase is the only point I have been discussing here. I've stated it way back:

19 hours ago, Genady said:

My point is that a new medicine is not necessarily "the same medicines in new forms and combinations, or else their synthetic counterparts."

The rest was not interesting to me, sorry.

Posted
28 minutes ago, Genady said:

My point is that a new medicine is not necessarily "the same medicines in new forms and combinations, or else their synthetic counterparts."

My thoughts go back to the pre anaesthetic era, and the obvious excrutiating pain, sufferrings, and mental torture of both the poor patient (if he survived) and the surgeon, if he ever operated again. It goes without saying that the advent and discovery of anaesthetic, had the most profound effects on medicine in general, that probably any newly discovered medical procedure ever has. In the beginnings of those discoveries, the introduction of ether and chloroform was not simply a technical development, it reshaped the whole social, political and emotional relations of the operating theatre, the surgeons and the patients. 

Posted
3 hours ago, Peterkin said:

the chemistry of the human body [has] not changed in the past 5000 years?

I tend to think that it has. 5000 years is enough time for changes in genetic make up of populations. Only 10,000 years ago we did not have lactose tolerance, for example. Plus, we certainly grow up and live in a changing environment. Our diet, life style, immunity have changed. Being a product of our genes and environment, our bodies and chemistry perhaps have changed.

Posted

Well, all right then. I'm out of arguments to support a casual comment that I made without realizing how much people have invested in modernity. Yes, I concede and agree that the present is unlike the past in many ways. 

But at least, now, there has been a little more talk about medicine and herbs, if not mushrooms.

Posted
10 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Okay, so what medical knowledge did every western industrial nation eradicate between  1760 and 1840?

I don’t see the relevance. I didn’t claim that anything was eradicated. I didn’t claim that all modern medicine is new knowledge, only that some of it is.

Can we dispense with the straw man now?

Posted
On 3/18/2022 at 5:02 PM, ScienceNostalgia101 said:

As if on cue, I've since found this article further reinforcing my point about this pandemic casting the appeal to nature fallacy in an even worse light than usual.

Some of the problems we had with "nature" is the tendency of fruits and vegetables to be covered in insects as they quickly rot in the outdoor markets. So we developed canning technology to make them safer and last longer, and it was a complete game-changer. Now though, we turn to "nature" to save us from technology, and I'm not sure it's wise in many instances.

Posted

I've had difficulty explaining to some family members that e.g. a water molecule doesn't know if it was released in a "natural" or a synthetic process. It's just a water molecule.

Posted

I have significant experience working in research that is adjacent to clinical trials. I think the big thing preventing many folk/herbal/alternative therapies from being prescriptible medical products is that one of the first steps in evaluating a potential therapeutic agent is determining HOW and WHY it works. 

So if you have Grandma's bubbleberry bush tea that helps with her asthma, we can use that as a starting point. But we're going to stick it through a GCMS to determine exactly what molecules are in it. We are then going to determine which components of the tea are those that are active, and isolate them. We then test in vitro to see how they alleviate asthma. We may then bring in the biochemistry people, and they may determine that by adding an acetyl group to the enzyme we isolated from the tea makes it 5 times more effective. 

Then you synthesize it, and take it to clinical trial. By the time it's in a pharmacy, it's called Dilexapropha, its side effects include diarrhea and gastrointestinal upset (which you'd get if you drank 7 pots of bubbleberry bush tea as well), and shouldn't be taken by breastfeeding mothers. And the same people who only take herbal remedies who wanted bubbleberry tea to be a legit medicine won't touch it. 

  • 6 months later...
Posted
On 3/12/2022 at 6:12 PM, nec209 said:

Why so many people in west view medicinal herbs, herbal medicines , herbs , mushrooms less these days than in the past or other countries?

It seems today medicinal herbs, herbal medicines , herbs , mushrooms are viewed has snake oil medicine or mixed results today.

And medicinal herbs, herbal medicines , herbs , mushrooms are viewed less science than say chiropractic in the west where chiropractic is more popular there.

 

 

Supplements claiming to contain essential oils have become increasingly fraudulent over time. Causing people see less benefit and decreased positive health effects from taking them. 

Herbs like garlic are grown in less healthy conditions, using more toxic chemicals and farming methods. To where they're more likely to cause than improve negative health conditions.

There are a long series of these trends which contribute to modern people failing recognize the medicinal contributions of plants.

Posted
17 hours ago, Doctor Derp said:

Herbs like garlic are grown in less healthy conditions, using more toxic chemicals and farming methods. To where they're more likely to cause than improve negative health conditions.

If you're going to make blanket assertions like this, you definitely need to back them up with some evidence. Nothing I see on the webs supports this, unless you're talking about specific regions or countries, in which case you need to be specific. Science discussion, remember?

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