Ugh I popped over to get an updated count of clinical trials on curcumin/diferuloylmethane/turmeric and it’s over 200 now. Still no hits. I wonder how much of that is taxpayer-funded
I’m okay funding trials of the efficacy of traditional medicines. That’s certainly a good place to look for new drugs. (Not the only good place, but one good place.) The fact the curcumin seems pretty harmless even rather large doses makes it seem a less likely candidate, honestly. But there are enough plausible claims for it that I’m glad it’s been tested.
Not only that, but pangolins are currently suspected to be the source of the spillover of SARS-CoV-2 to humans. That would mean “traditional Chinese medicine” is the cause of this pandemic. (Pangolins are primarily trafficked for use in “traditional Chinese medicine.”)
If a drug like Remdesivir is found to be effective, I’m assuming/guessing that nations all over the world (India, Brazil, China, etc) with pharmaceutical infrastructure will overrule the patent and make large amounts of it cheaply since we’re in an emergency situation.
I wanna believe what I wanna believe! Yes, I wanna!
There’s a lot of talky-talk in the news about ACE-2 Inhibitors maybe having some beneficial anti-coronavirus effect, and apparently this is under investigation too. (Google it yourself – you’ll find plenty.)
It’s a common blood-pressure med. Common examples are losartan (Cozaar) and valsartan (Diovan). Being a long-time user already, I really wanna believe, yes I do!
I like M&M’s too. I haven’t actually seen any studies or urban legends on the beneficial anti-coronavirus effects of M&M’s, so I guess I’ll just have to fabricate my own urban legend right here on the spot: I heard (or maybe just dreamed) that M&M’s have been shown to reduce viral loads in coronavirus patients! So hit the grocery stores and stock up while you still can! (Buy some Mars stock too if you still can.)
OK, I actually DID read the reviews you linked to. But the articles themselves don’t provide information on any of those “numerous studies” that were supposedly performed. One shouldn’t be impressed by claims that are not substantiated. For instance, I could claim that numerous studies have shown that yak milk has antimicrobial properties, but unless I cite those studies, why would you believe me? (And please don’t believe me. I just made that up.)
Yes, people in some countries have believed for centuries that turmeric has antimicrobial properties. Yet nobody in the long years since has been able to prove scientifically that it does. The allure of traditional medicine is that people from some romanticized ancient time believed something worked. Sometimes they really were onto something, like the indigenous peoples who found that a willow bark decoction relieved pain. This effect was verified by scientific experiments, and voilá, aspirin. When something can’t be scientifically established, we should disregard it and move on.
If you’re dying in the next two weeks, a doctor pulled your respirator, and three months from now we’ll have cheaply available remdesivir, I suspect that you’ll be rather ambivalent about its efficacy.
If you’re over 60 and there are some safe, OTC things that you can have at the ready, then it’s reasonable to do so. At the worst, you have expensive pee.