If the St. John’s Wort as natural SSRI is true, it makes Dr. Whitaker’s support for it even weirder. So all SSRIs are just like PCP, but St. John’s Wort is the good side of PCP? It makes me even more inclined to believe, as alleged above, that Whitaker is on the payroll of some herb-dealer.
My own anecdote. My wife was taking Prozac when I met her and she was more than a little weird. She asked me to help her so I recommended she read Talk Back to Prozac. She read it and stopped taking it, she normalized and three years later we were married. After about one year into the marriage, she started acting weird again, fits of paranoia, delusions of grandeur, and a greatly decreased sex drive. Within a couple of months she left, claiming that she had caught me in an affair, and other very strange ideas. She was completely wacko. She threatened violence and at that point I called my health insurance to see if she was taking any medication. Guess what I found? Yes, within a few weeks of her acting strange she had been taking Prozac and had been takin g it still. I know it may help some people but my wife was one of those that it didn’t.
Great link, Ex Tank Thanks!
Disclaimer Follows!
While I believe physicians are too ready to proscribe medications (for either altruistic reasons or reasearch purposes), and I don’t profess to have any knowledge of pharmacology or pharmaceuticals, I would like to say this much (since I covered my ass!ass!ass! with a disclaimer):
It seems to me from the info many of you provided) that many of these anti-depressant drugs may very well be the refined, concentrated forms of various natural herbal remedies.
But wouldn’t a natural remedy be milder, gentler? Maybe fewer detrimental side effects?
The body is largely a self-correcting mechanism, according to the physiology class I had in high school. Instead of dumping a very potent pharmaceutical on your unsuspecting neurons all at once, would it not be better to help your body a little less radically with a natural supplement?
My dad has long been a proponent of natural remedies and herbals, all the way back to the '60s.
He’s 70 years old, and in vigorous health. He regularly goes camping and hiking, rain or shine, hot or cold. Every spring and fall, he takes on another stretch of the Appalachian Trail, knocking out 100 to 120 miles at a time, packing all food, clothing and shelter on his back.
He’s never been to a hospital for any serious illness, getting maybe a mild case of the sniffles once a year. No flu shots. No vaccinations or innoculations.
I’ve followed his health and dietary advice for many years, and am in similar good health (my ex-smoking habit being the one exception).
From first-hand observation and personal experience of those who utilize sensible diet, regular exercise and natural/herbal remedies, I think these people enjoy overall better health and well-being, even whle suffering from maladies like diabetes, stress, hypertension, glaucoma.
On another note, has anyone seen these pharmaceutical commercils on T.V.? They show/tell you about how this wonder-drug can do so much for you, and then launch into a rapid, barely comprehensible disclaimer of all the side effects you may experience.
Some of these side effects sound worse that whatever malady the drug is supposed to cure!
What good is having your allergies disappear if you are experiencing nose-bleeds, dizzines, nausea, migraines and diahrrhea?
<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
<FONT COLOR=“BLUE”>“One pill make you larger; the other makes you small…”</FONT>
Gosh, I wish David were here. He’s really good at rebutting in arguments like this. However, I’ll do my meager best.
Maybe, but then again, maybe not. Natural does not mean milder. Some of the most lethal compounds we know of are derived from “natural” sources: ricin, strychnine, and digitalis are the first that spring to mind.
Then again, some of the “artificial” medicines that people get so down on were originally found in nature - acetacylic acid is the active ingrediant in aspirin and willow bark tea (an old herbal remedy for headaches), penicillin was first cultured from the lowly bread mold, quinine was isolated from a South American tree and then artificially produced, and a breakthrough chemotherapy chemical was discovered in yew trees.
Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Just because it’s “artificial” doesn’t mean it’s unhealthy.
First, it’s not dumping. Any doctor worth her degree keeps a patient on medication under supervision and prescribes only the dose necessary to treat the condition.
Second, yes, it would be lovely if all we had to do to treat or cure maladies would be to sip a relaxing herbal tea or inhale fragrant smoke, but the conditions SSRIs are meant to combat are far more debilitating than something like St. John’s Wort can efficiently treat. FTR, I like Wort. I’ve taken it before and found it to be helpful. BUT it is simply not as efficaceous as the “pharmaceutical” drug like Prozac or Effexor. If all you need to treat your condition is Wort, by all means go ahead, but please don’t deprive the rest of us of a valuable tool in battling clinical depression.
Hey, it’s your dad’s call. I’m not going to make him get any. However, I prefer to have some form of protection again the virulent epidemics that have been responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths during our species’ history. Smallpox killed more than its fair share as did polio. The reason they aren’t still doing so is because of mass vaccination.
First hand observation and personal experience are wonderful tools to base your own personal decisions off of. But undocumented observation and anecdotal evidence mean nothing to the scientific method, which is what we owe modern medicine to.
Of your list of attributes, I’d say that sensible diet and regular excercize were the primary factors in your friends’ good health. Genetics play another big part. However they come by it, I congratulate them.
Here I’m in complete agreement with you. I think it’s incredibly irresponsible for pharmaceutical companies to pitch their medicines to the average layperson. While I don’t believe we should be uninformed, I think the information on what treatments are available for any particular condition should be primarily available through an objective party, not one motivated by profit.
Doctors should - and I hope they do - refuse to pander to a patient’s consumeristic need for the latest and greatest pharmaceutical. Medicines should only be proscribed when medically appropriate and only in the necessary dosage.
That being said, the end decision of what drug (and please don’t kid yourself: the herbs and “natural” medicines you refer to are just as much drugs as Prozac and other SSRIs are) to take lies with the patient.
I don’t so much object to Dr. Whittaker having a problem with SSRIs. I have a problem with the fact that he seems to want to deny their use to everyone. The “natural” remedies on the market simply DO NOT cure or treat every case of clinical depression - not by a long shot. SSRIs don’t either, but then, no one here is claiming that they should be used to the exclusion of other treatments.
Sola bona lingua est mortua lingua.
I dunno, Tank, you’d better hope Jill doesn’t see this one.
The short answer, that Jill can elaborate on, is that the “natural” stuff comes with its own set of potential toxins. The same leaf that carries good chemical X probably also carries bad chemical Y along with minerals G and D. The process that the pharmaceutical companies go through is intended to refine and extract the specific agent and eliminate the harmful stuff that comes with it.
Along with that is the whole idea of dosage. It might do you as much good to chew three pounds of willow bark (or drink a quart of willow tea) to relieve your headache instead of taking a pill of willow extract (aspirin). However, if you are trying to use Daturum to control your heart problems, there is the very good chance that too little will be worthless while too much will kill you (Jane Auel, notwithstanding) and the dosage in any given leaf can vary.
If you are taking enough “natural” products into your system to get a sufficient dose of medicine, how is this “gentler” than taking the same dosage without the extra chemicals that tag along in the bark/leaves/roots?
I am not arguing against the use of herbs and “natural” foods to maintain health. (Just as I would not have wanted anyone to read my original post as an endorsement for popping pills into anyone with a moody personality or for not testing both the drug and the patient to be sure that the correct drug was prescribed.)
My specific point, here, is that the concept that taking “natural” products to ingest the same medicines as those refined by pharmaceutical companies has quite a few problems that the “feel good” proponents at CNS don’t address.
Tom~
Phouka said:
Your wish is my command! 
ExTank said:
Nope. In fact, you’re probably more likely to get side effects 'cus you don’t know what the heck you’re actually taking. If you go buy a medicine, you know you’re getting X grams of the medicine. If you want to find it naturally, what do you do? Chew on a few leaves? How many? What else is in those leaves? While folks pushing the “natural is better” like to imply (or outright say) that natural is milder and gentler, one really has nothing to do with the other.
To some extent, sure. But next time I get an ear infection or strep, I’m going to take an antibiotic – not wait 'til the body maybe corrects it (or maybe doesn’t and it gets worse).
Why do you equate “natural” with “good”? Bird crap is natural, too, but I ain’t gonna eat it. Poison ivy is natural. Poisonous mushrooms are natural. Etc. If you want to try to help “less radically,” then you start with a low dosage – which you can only do if you refine the medication and know how much you’re actually taking. Then, if that doesn’t work, you can progress to higher doses; or if it’s too much, you back it down a bit. My brother has epilepsy, and he went through this numerous times as he went through puberty and his body chemistry changed. They had to keep moving the dosage around until it worked. Try doing that with a plant.
So what? My grandmost is healthy and in her 80s and smokes. Does that mean we should recommend smoking? My mother, on the other hand, is in her mid-50s and has chronic sinus problems, among other things. You can find a ton of “natural” medicines in her cabinet (which she started taking 'cus nothing else was working). She still has the problems. Some people are just naturally healthier than others.
And you don’t think maybe genetics has a part in that? Not to mention that if you both eat healthy, that definitely helps.
And that’s why alternative medicine continues – because people would rather look subjectively at a few folks they know instead of doing proper scientific tests. Certainly, I have nothing against eating well. While I don’t do it, I know that I would be healthier if I did. Same with exercise. These things aren’t alternative medicine or natural remedies, though. That is a totally different subject and you need to separate the two if you’re going to compare it reasonably to anything.
Yes, they do. But that’s up to the person taking the medication, I guess.
For one, not every side-effect sufferer was subject to all of those effects. Those are listed as the most common effects (which still aren’t very common). I’m sure there are people out there who would trade allergies for occasional nose-bleeds. Who knows. The other thing is that a person can try the drug, find out if it causes those effects, and drop it if it does.
“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”
– William Kingdon Clifford
David B.:
Man, it’s all-or-nothing with you, isn’t it?
Extreme examples are pretty poor excuses for an argument, as much so as anectdotal evidence. The difference being thus:
I wasn’t advocating heading out into the woods with a pair of shears and a basket the next time you felt ill; I was speaking of refined herbals/roots commonly available at retail outlets, mail order and even the internet. These have consistent purity, and dosage clearly printed on the label.
I also wasn’t advocating magnets, crystals or copper bracelets. These are dubious at best, with little, if any, clinical reasearch done to support their efficacy (if any).
Neither was I advocating that people not see a physician when sick or injured, or partaking any treatment regimen without first consulting a physician.
Nor was I advocating that people be deprived of modern pharmacueticals and treatment programs for chronic or debilitating illness.
Nor is Dr. Whitaker advocating the shelving of all modern pharmaceuticals; he seems to me to be calling for the shelving or cutback in the use of SSRI’s until further research and refinement of the medicine itself and its application can be conducted.
In the article I linked, he seemed to be trying to establish a cause/effect relationship between widespread and/or irresponsible prescription of SSRIs and violent, disassociative behavior patterns in some mass shootings and extremely violent crimes. He cited some supporting research; you may take it or leave it as you please or as your scientific background/training dictates.
While I agree that he does seem to have an agenda towards SSRI’s, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a point; you just have to sort the pearls from the dross, or trust your respective regulatory agencies to do that for you.
Even a casual search of his website shows many manufactured medications on his “recommend” list; but he seems to like to try diet, vitamin supplements and herbal/root remedies before or along with a written prescription for a manufactured medicine.
His reasoning echoes closely what a Dr. told me once when ill.
I was asking what medication(s) could be prescribed, as I was in considerable discomfort (I could hardly sit still, or keep from scratching) from a raging, head-to-toe case of poison ivy. The Dr. seemed reluctant to prescribe any medication (steroids being common), and said:
“Prescription medicines quite often supplant your natural defenses, usurping your immune system. Let’s stick with topical solutions and let your body heal itself.”
Which is what my Dad has been saying for years; he has had Tetanus shots from time to time (being a very near-sighted machinist), and major “scourge” disease innoculations when he was younger and during his time in the Navy during WWII. Other than that, he avoids them like they were the very malady he’s supposed to be innoculated against.
Considering the way I’ve felt after some of the innoculations I received in the Army, I’m sympathetic to his attitude.
Instead, he bolsters his immune system with not only healthy habits, but additional vitamin supplements and herbal/root supplements. He does this as a preventative measure, not an exclusionary curative one, knowing full well that the best herbal/root/vitamin combo won’t help all that much if he were to get cancer.
As far as genetics go, our family are not super-people. We have recurring health problems that have pre-maturely claimed several aunts, uncles and cousins. That my Dad and us kids are fairly healthy is unaccoutable to healthy habits (diet/exercise) alone; we (you’re right: no scientific studies done to support this, as it’s beyond our wherewithal) believe it’s a combination of routine physical checkups by a licensed physician, healthy habits and vitamin/herbal/root supplements.
Yes, maybe the gene skipped us for whatever reason; maybe it didn’t. But our pro-active regimen certainly doesn’t seem to have hurt us any, considering my Dad’s siblings were basically sedentary with illness before 50, while Pops is like the energizer bunny.
But whenever I get ill (like the case of pharyngitis I fought with last summer), a doctor and the local pharmacy is not the first place I look to for relief or a cure; but I also don’t rule it out as a possibilty.
In closing, I would like you to consider this:
In America alone, pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical research is a highly speculative, multi-billion dollar a year business, with profit and profitability being at least a major concern; internationally, I would credibly guess it’s a multi-trillion dollar business.
I look with healthy skepticism at any new drug being pushed by clinicians and profit-oriented hospitals and health organizations.
<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
<FONT COLOR=“BLUE”>"…and 'ware the medicine-man, lest he cover thee in bird-shit."</FONT>
ExTank said:
Nope.
Well, if you were clear about that, I certainly didn’t see it. In any case, while you may think they have consistent purity, dosage, etc., you may be wrong. The FDA is not allowed to regulate them, so you can’t really know how the purity and dosage are unless you test 'em yourself. When some folks have done that, they have found that they are, in fact, not terribly consistent. (No, I don’t have any references handy – you can either choose to believe me or not.)
You’ll certainly get no argument from me on that!
As far as your several “Nor was I” statements – good. I don’t think I said anything to indicate that you had said any of those things.
The problem is that we don’t know what all was taken into account. I mean, let’s face it, people given drugs for psychiatric problems may actually have, well, psychiatric problems. So it’s kind of rough to blame the drug. That said, I do think some psych. drugs are overprescribed. But that wasn’t the part of the thread I was responding to. I was just talking about your most recent message relating to “natural” remedies.
Um, doesn’t this contradict what you claimed earlier: “He’s never been to a hospital for any serious illness, getting maybe a mild case of the sniffles once a year. No flu shots. No vaccinations or innoculations.”
As I said before, this really proves nothing. If he wants to take supplements, good for him. Maybe they’ll help him a bit; maybe not. A sample of one just doesn’t tell us anything.
You said it yourself – there’s no way to prove this. But you keep generally healthy and see a doctor regularly. That is most of the battle. While some aunts, uncles, and cousins may have gone, that doesn’t really mean anything necessarily. I have two brothers; one has epilepsy, two of us don’t; one has very weak teeth, two of us don’t; two were athletic, one wasn’t; one is thin, one is medium, one is overweight. I’m not saying everything can be determined genetically, but there can certainly be benefits passed down, just as there can be harmful genes passed down.
As do I. My skepticism does not end at the doors of the first major pharmeceutical manufacturer I run into. But nor does it end when I walk into a health food store.
For what it’s worth, my experiences:
I’m not a “natural foods” or herbal-health fan, by any means. But like the majority of post-cardiac-incident people I am slightly bipolar. For the first 18 months after heart attack (which killed between 5% and 10% of heart tissue) and bypass surgery, I experienced near-adolescent-level mood swings. I hypothesize that they resulted from the lysis and removal of the dead cardiac muscle, but have no proof of that. In the ensuing eight years I have had mild depressions and exhilarated feelings that were not the obvious results of situations I was in at the time.
I found that the depressions could be easily alleviated by ingestion of a little chocolate. Again hypothesizing, I think that the immediate and sustained elevation of blood sugar level combined with a mild energizing effect from the alkaloids in the chocolate. Last year, I tried using St. John’s Wort pills. They were quite effective in stabilizing and elevating my moods. My wife also took them, said that they seemed to have a similar effect on her, but at the cost of substantial stomach upset, so she discontinued them. I haven’t used them in about five months, and the moodswings are back in full force.
I realize this proves nothing. But it seems to me to be a case of “very unlikely to hurt, and appears to be some help.”
Dad came to his health-craze (Mom’s term for it) in the '60s, long after he was out of the Navy (where such things are mandatory, preferences or no!). Since then he hasn’t had any vaccinations/innoculations other than the occasional tetanus booster (I had forgotten about them :o until he reminded me).
He has modified his position to say that if he were to travel to a foreign country where some nasty bug was endemic, he wouldn’t hesitate for an instant to get the recommended program of shots. But being that his immune system has been exposed to the local nasties, he prefers to let his immune system, bolstered by various natural over-the-counter (or off-the-shelf, or whatever the retail term is) supplements, do its own work.
The original intent of my post was a shot-across-the-bow to resident anti-gunners who simply want to blame just the availability of guns for the spate of mass shootings.
I hold to my position that the reason may be a little more complicated than just that one factor, and cited Dr. Whitaker as an example of another possible cause.
I didn’t want to get into a debate about the various or dubious benefits of natural supplements .vs. manufactured pharmaceuticals.
<FONT COLOR=“GREEN”>ExTank</FONT>
<FONT COLOR=“BLUE”>"…and 'ware the gun dealer that doth speak of magazine capacity and rate-of-fire."</FONT>
ExTank said:
I certainly don’t disagree with you there. In fact, I didn’t even bother to really pay attention to this thread because I thought it was just about the anti-gunners (as the mod, of course, I skimmed it looking for insults and other rule violations, but didn’t really pay attention to the contents 'til near the end).
Again, I agree that it’s certainly more complicated – and while I haven’t really gone into anything about Whitaker, I don’t happen to agree it’s as simple as he is making it out to be either.
Too late!