There is scientific support for alot of herbs treating certain ailments. What do most physicians think about using herbs and their effecttiveness?
There is no easy answer for “herbs in general”. Some herbs are simply sources of medication that happen to have been made by nature as opposed to synthesized in a lab. Digitalis alkaloids, aspirin, penicillin, nicotine, and lots of other bioactive molecules were first found in plants (or fungi, in the case of penicillin).
There are also herbs which clearly have therapeutic properties, even if it is not yet clearly linked to a single molecule made by the plant. St John’s Wort comes to mind, for instance. There’s something in the plant that’s acting like the artificially synthesized serotonin reuptake inhibitors (someone correct me please if the identity of the molecule has been nailed down, and I missed the news). The only warning about these herbs is that standardizing the dosage is much harder that it would be with a synthesized molecule, and there are some unscrupulous people out there who use the lack of rigorous controls over these “dietary supplements” to sell crappy stuff or stuff that isn’t what it’s labeled to be.
Then there are herbs which people claim have various medicinal qualities, but have not been shown to do anything beyond what one believes they are doing (placebo effect).
There’s isn’t one answer for all herbs. IMNSHO, any treatment, whether it’s offered by a spiritual healer or by Pfizer, needs to meet the same standards of proof before sick people pin their hopes of recovery on it.
IANAP, but from what I’ve read they think this:
- Lots of medicines come from herbs
- Lots of herbs can be used as medication
Those are the positive thoughts, then come these. - Lots of herbs are thought to be healing, but aren’t.
- Those who can be used as medication don’t give you an accurate dose, which can be dangerous.
- When buying herbal remedies there is much less care to avoid bad interactions. Not all medicines should be taken together.
- The people praising and/or selling herbal remedies rarely base their claims on sound science, and often ignore scientific findings when they arrive.
This is in the news here today.
I think some doctors feel not enough research has been carried out in some cases.
IANAD
One problem with taking herbs directly for medical purposes as upposed to using the refined product extracted from herbs is quality and purity control.
Anyone who has eaten chillis knows that even in the same type there can be large differences in how hot they are, ie the dose of capsaicin varies from chilli fruit to chilli fruit even if picked from the same plant.
Another problem is that herbs will also contain many other chemicals, many of unknown properties, which may have adverse or benifitial effects or no effect at all.
Another problem is that the production of herbal suppliments is not subject to the strict quality control that is required of more conventional medicine.
From these problems, it seems most physicians would dissuade reliance on herbal treatment, and generally consider them little better than placebos.
A doctor suggested a certain herb to help my grandmother with the onset of glaucoma. She was shocked, and did not follow that advice.
I think the answer to the OP is: it depends. I’ve had several doctors suggest I try some herbal supplements when no traditional medicines fixed my medical issues. (Had one actually suggest accupuncture, though that’s not herbal.) I’ve also seen doctors who were extremely hostile to any OTC herbal medicines-- one told my grandmother that taking any sort of herbal supplement or vitamin was pointless.*
Most doctors, in my experience, seem to go by the guideline that most anything in moderation can’t hurt. (Unless, of course, it counter-acts with one of your prescription meds, which is why you should always tell your doctor every OTC med you consume.) Many doctors also recognize the power of the placebo effect, and if you tell them that taking an herbal supplement cured your knee pain, they’re likely just to smile and tell you to keep on doing what you’re doing if it works for you.
- He said that vitamins are worthless because they’re not as potent as those you can get from foods naturally and the body can’t absorb them in pill form. He also said that herbs, when dried and processed, lose almost all of their potency.
I’m not even in the medical field but I would assume that before you take anything as a curative you have a diagnosis of what is the problem, if any. That and advice as to the proper doseage. Even the best, most effective products should’nt be taken willy-nilly.
Maybe multivitamins would be an exception but I read an article in the Los Angeles Times just recently to the effect that they might really not be useful in most cases.
The benefits of arthroscopic knee surgery for arthritis, where the surgeon flushes out the joint and tidies up the cartilage using only a couple of small incisions, have been shown in studies to be entirely based on the placebo effect. Sham surgery controls* reacted equally as well as the actual patients who had the full surgery.
*The control surgeries had the incisions and then no other active treatment. They were however detained in the operating theatre under general anaesthetic for the same period of time a full surgery would have been so that no one but the surgical team knew whether the patient was a control or not.
The placebo effect is quite powerful, however, I think it’s entirely unethical for it to be used as ‘treatment’ in it’s own right. Infact, administering any treatment without the corresponding evidence of benefit is unethical, except within the context of a properly run clinical trial. Evidence-based medicine seems to be the way forward.
This doesn’t mean that there are’t problems with the way in which clinical trials are designed and run. Inadequate comparison drugs, misdosing of comparison drugs (whether that be overdosing to exaggerate side effects, or under dosing to limit effectivity) and the inappropriate use of placebos have all been and are being done regularly. But that’s a discussion for another time.
I say, if you as a ‘Complementary Therapist’ want to have your ‘treatments’ taken seriously then you have to stump up the cash and runa proper clinical trial, and then publish the results, good or bad.
This is true for many herbs. Like the spices in your kitchen, once ground up and exposed to air, they react to oxygen and stale pretty quickly. There’s no way of knowing how long that capsule or tea has been sitting on the shelf or in transit, if it’s been in sunlight or heat (which makes it worse) and the quality of the herb to begin with. I won’t keep a (home-grown and self-dried) herb leaf around for more than 3 months. Dried roots may last up to a year.
The rest of the information in this threads is pretty much in line with my experience. I have a couple of doctors who call me with herb questions a few times a month. They’re open to the idea and want to verify information that their patient brings to them.
From within the industry, it seems pretty clear that integrative or complementary medicine - using the best of allopathic and “alternative” medicine - is becoming more and more mainstream. This will only increase as more studies are done. Traditionally, herbalists don’t have the money or resources to perform large scale, double-blind placebo controlled studies. We’ve had to use personal and anecdotal experience, as well as case studies and historical texts to determine what works. These obviously do not control for the placebo effect. Now that the big guys are getting more interested and can actually fund things, more rigorous testing is being done.
While I’m glad to see herbs becoming more mainstream, I do have two contradictory concerns: yes, there is a quality control issue. When someone hands you a bit of chopped up green leaves, you have no way of telling if it’s nettles or foxglove. You don’t know how old the plant was, what season it was harvested, or how it was prepared - all things that affect potentcy. For this reason, it would be better if more stringent regulations and standardizations were in place.
OTOH, as mentioned above, we don’t know how some of these things work. To expand on the Saint John’s Wort issue: for years, we thought it was the hypericin that was the “active ingredient”. Everything was standardized to the content of the hypericin. Then it appeared that hyperforin might be important as well, so that was standardized for too. But the stupid pills still don’t work as well as the plant extract in studies. Why not? Who knows. There may be dozens of chemicals in there that, in the exact porportion in the plant, work better than hypericin, hyperforin or the combination. For this reason, I support whole plant extracts as opposed to standardized for some plants.
Issues like this are virtually unknown by doctors. It’s simply not part of their training. The big hospital system near us now hires acupuncturists and herbalists on staff to work in conjunction with the MD’s. I suspect that’s the wave of the future.
Here’s an article about the integrative medicine department at ENH. There’s some physician viewpoints in there.
But the excerpt you quoted mentions homeopathy. Homeopathy and herbal medicine are entirely different; in short, homeopathy is a complete load, and no insurance company should be paying for it. Herbal medicines are sometimes (as mentioned above) well-proven treatments.
But isn’t that herb known to have certain analgesic effects? Are you suggesting that the doctor was prescribing based on insufficient evidence of effectiveness?
“Most physicians”? In my experience, you will find huge variation among any group. Even physicians.
When were herbs ever not mainstream? So far as I know, the most common painkiller is still willow bark extract. It’s just that now, we understand well enough what component of the willow bark has the painkilling effect, so we turn that component into little white pills and sell it in controlled dosages. The difference between an herbal medicine and a “conventional” one is just how well it’s understood. We don’t understand St. John’s Wort very well yet, so it’s still administered as an herb. Someday, we will understand exactly what, if anything, it is in St. John’s Wort that’s effective (which may be a combination of chemicals), and we’ll sell that exact combination of chemicals in a controlled dosage pill. At that point, St. John’s Wort will cease to be treated as an “herbal” medicine, just like aspirin is no longer considered “herbal”.
The article was about complementary medicines which are considered to encompass:
The information came from another BBC article which is why I quoted the original item.
Your grandmother was probably right. According to one of the ophthalmologists I work for, you have to smoke much more than a daily joint to get any kind of effect anywhere near comparable to what you could get from some prescription eyedrops once a day. He doesn’t discourage responsible pot smoking but tells patients it’s not a miracle drug, either.
And actually, acsenray, it reduces intraocular pressure (scroll down). Glaucoma is often painless and even symptomless until it gets very bad - another ophthalmologist I work for has called it a “silent blinder” to patients who don’t see a need for concern over something that doesn’t bother them yet - at which point you wouldn’t want to mess with not-as-effective remedies like that anyway.
OK, let’s define “herbs”, first.
I propose that an herb is a minimally processed plant used for medicinal purposes.
Ok, now we have to define minimally processed.
I propose that any remedy that can be made from a plant in a private home without specialized equipment is minimally processed. This would include washing, cutting, drying, macerating in alcohol, honey or vinegar, steeping in hot water or being applied as a poultice.
If you are prepared to accept these as working definitions, then aspirin is not an herb. White willow bark extract contains the active ingredient salicylic acid. Aspirin contains acetylsalicylic acid derived from a synthetic source. I cannot make acetylsalicylic acid in my kitchen. While white willow bark “inspired” aspirin, aspirin has not been produced from or identical to white willow bark for years.
Roughly two-thirds of the common drugs used come from plant sources. But I maintain, using my definitions for the moment, that they are processed and extracted by such complex or expensive means that the finished products can no longer be properly called herbs.
That’s what I meant to say. 
Anyway, my point was that the effectiveness of cannabis in treating glaucoma is not without scientific basis, as seemed to be suggested.
I was not suggesting the treatment was without merit. I was just saying my sweet little old granny was shocked at the very notion of “using drugs” regardless of what legitimate medical benefits it may have.
:smack: Sorry, I forgot to finish actually answering the question.
So, if we’re talking about minimally processed plant remedies that you can make in your kitchen, I’d have to say that herbalism has not been mainstream in America for at least 100 years. Tha American Medical Association was founded in 1847 and immediately began establishing requirements for MD training which excluded lay herbalists and herbal training. The last King’s American Dispensatory was published in 1898. By the time Mrs. Grieves wrote “A Modern Herbal” in 1931, she was writing of a bygone era in medicine. Of course various groups have kept herbalism quietly going, Native American herbalism and granola cruchy hippie types. But we didn’t really start seeing an upswing in widescale book publications or schools until Bastyr and Southwest School of Botanical Medicine were founded in 1978 and 1979, respectively, and then quite limited to those “weird” west coast types. I never saw herbs in large grocery stores here in the midwest until the year before I started herb school, which was 2001.