326
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
326 points (97.7% liked)
Technology
59381 readers
976 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisinin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digoxin
there are probably more, starting with aspirin (salicin), modern opioids (opium) and modern anticholinergics (atropine). there's also plenty of stuff in traditional medicine that maybe does nothing beneficial or even kinda works but it's way too toxic for modern regulatory agencies, like all heavy metals and aconitine
Taking these medicines in the forms they are found in nature is a horrible idea. Most of the plants they come from are poisonous because the therapeutic index of most of the drugs here are low, meaning the line between medicine and poison is very fine. Purifying the ingredient and allowing tight control of the dosage is the reason any of these are able to be used safely. Please don't go around eating bits of foxglove or belladonna.
As you've seen, modern medicine is not shy about taking ingredients found in nature when they actually have a useful purpose in medicine, and enabling them to be actually used safely instead of taking some random unknown dosage of a potentially deadly drug and hoping for the best.
Except for fixing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, supplements are ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. They're in desperate need of better regulation in the United States. They scam tons of people and get away with ridiculous claims like fighting dementia based on no evidence that would be totally illegal for any actual pharmaceutical company to claim, all while selling bottles of stuff with "proprietary formulas" or claiming to have plants that aren't even in there when independent researchers look at them. All totally legal by the way, no requirement for ingredients listed on a supplement to reflect reality. Stay away if you value your health or your money. Not saying pharmaceutical companies are always shining beacons of beneficence here, obviously I have many problems with them as well, but they at least have some sort of regulated evidence base for the most part.
i'm with you, i'm just saying that the bits of "traditional medicine" that work (as in, have active compounds) become medicine without adjectives
not really, if you know how much of the active compound is out there. but this limits applicability heavily (can't put herbal extract in iv bag). pure compounds are much better (better stability, higher degree of quality control etc)