CFI and Alt Med update

Alternative Medicine
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Now let me start by saying, I do take a multivitamin and extra vitamin D3 (doctor’s recommendation, as well as Echinacea, Turmeric/Curcumin, Flaxseed oil, and garlic. So I am not anti-supplements, but I do have issues with taking alt meds as medicine and refusing to see a doctor to get real medicine for one’s ailment. Want to use aloe vera for a wound? Fine. Want to use it to treat your cancer, instead of what a doctor recommends? That’s where we part ways. So please don’t take this CFI update as me attacking someone who uses supplements.

CFI is taking both Walmart and CVS to court- either still or again. The article is April 2022.

I have to admit, Walmart and other places sell this eye drop for dry eye that has Belladonna in it. Belladonna can cause miscarriages, for starters. At higher doses it can kill. I would hate to see what it does to the eye.

Back to the Alt Med baby pain meds. I don’t know what the alt med is, but if it doesn’t kill the baby’s pain, why insist on giving it the baby?

CFI is also suing Boiron Manufacturer for selling “snake oil”. I do not know what the alleged [missing] ingredient is or what it is suppose to treat.

Blockquote Adherents of homeopathy claim, without evidence, that a substance which causes harm to a healthy person will cure anyone else suffering the same type of harm. In homeopathic products, the “active” ingredients are highly diluted mixtures of the so-called cures; the ingredient ends up so diluted, often literally no trace of the original substance remains. Manufacturers like Boiron then sell miniscule amounts of the already incredibly diluted ingredients and promise astounding results.

Reading the complaint, I believe the bark in question is cinchona. According to WebMD, it can cause ringing of the ears, deafness, and visual disturbances. It also contains quinine. Large amounts of cinchona, can cause death. It also interacts with a lot of other meds, including Tums. So if it isn’t deluded to non-existence, it could be a problem.

Now back to Turmeric/curcumin. In food, there’s nothing wrong with turmeric, but in a pill, it is thought to be an anti-inflammatory and it can’t be used with NSAIDs or blood thinners, because it could cause bleeding.

Bottom line, alt meds aren’t exactly safe, thus why one needs to talk to their doctor if they use anything as a supplement or take it thinking you might be treating something. It could help for what you think it does or it might not. Or it could cause damage or worse death- like belladonna or quinine could. That eye drop with belladonna scares me.

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"Laws " of homeopathy are the same laws as “laws” of magic !

Law of similarity and law of contagion.

Now don’t underestimate the placebo effect…

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Actually, there are no laws for homeopathy. It’s not regulated at all. Currently, there are people who hear this herbal supplement cures this or that and they go for it without talking to their doctor, if they have one, about it or educating themselves at all about it. They think, “Oh it’s an herb” or “it’s natural”, so therefore “it can’t hurt me”. The fact is, some can do harm, especially if they don’t educate themselves. There are some people who use homeopathy in lieu of actual medicine. They don’t go to a doctor and ask, “Can I test this to see if what they say works?” I already knew that I couldn’t take Advil or my arthritis Rx if I took Curcumin, but I still asked my doctor about it. She won’t say no if there is no medical reason for me not to take it, but she did add what I already knew. If I have joint pain, I can always quit curcumin and go back to my usual pain meds after a day or two. Most people don’t do that. They just think, “Oh St. John Wort helps depression” and sometimes take their anti-depression meds with it, without talking to their doctor and end up in BIG trouble physically. Or worse, they might find themselves, without scientifically proven meds in the hospital because they attempted suicide. Homeopath isn’t entirely placebo. It can kill at worse and at best do nothing. Some people believe it’s completely harmless, but it’s not- as I pointed out with some supplements, such as Belladonna. Everytime I see someone buy that eyedrop, I want to warn them about it, but would they listen or would I end up getting fired?

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Yes and no.

Homeopathic products are sold in a legal system and their manufacture and sale must respect the law.

Beyond that, the homeopaths think that they work in the frame of scientific laws as the magician do, similarity and contagion.

I agree it is BS from a scientific point of view, but it is interesting to know and understand. To fight some one, you must understand his point of view.

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OK let me rephrase that. Homeopathic stuff isn’t regulated as much as real medicine. What bothers me, is that they think this stuff will cure them or they don’t even read the ingredients (as in the eye drops with belladonna) or if they do, they don’t understand what they are reading or even what the poison is. In the case of eye use, belladonna is a poison and if I remember right, it could cause blindness, if it doesn’t harm them in other ways or kill them. They truly don’t understand what they are doing to themselves with many of these things. They believe it’s BETTER than modern medicine, which is scientifically proven. There is a difference between, “what the heck, it’s a spice, I’ll give it a go (if the doctor sees no issues) and test it on myself” and “Oh it’s all natural, therefore it’s harmless, unlike what Big Pharma gives us.” Those who believe it’s completely harmless are fooling themselves.

I had a great aunt who sold Shaklee and she truly believed Alfalfa supplements, which my mother and I are allergic to, cured allergies. She encouraged my mother to take it and give to me too. Guess what? Right. Alfalfa pills didn’t cure our allergies. If anything, it brought them out BIG TIME. We were pretty sick with allergies from it.

Tina Turner took some sort of herbal supplement for some health issue she had and ended up with kidney problems because of it. Luckily, her latest husband was a match and donated one of his kidneys.

People don’t read up on these things, much less ask their doctors if it’s OK to try it or if it will mix poorly with something else they are taking or any other questions. Poke weed, nice looking yummy berries to kids, but if they eat them… they could die, especially if they don’t get treatment fast enough. I worked at a daycare where there was Pokeweed and I tried to keep the kids away from it, because they did want the berries. The head of the daycare didn’t believe me at first that they were poison, so I showed her. She had no clue until then, but the pokeweed was soon gone.

There’s a lot of things that are natural. Some are placebos and others are poison in large or small amounts. Homeopathy needs to be regulated. Not taken away from people, entirely, but regulated, just like everything else we have in this world and warnings placed on them. Yes, doctors in the 1800s used quinine for fevers and stuff, but it was well measured, but after science showed it’s not so good and we discovered willow bark for aspirin we moved on and stop using quinine medically.

I’m preaching to the choir though.

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I understand you better, the difference being that, in France, homeopathic products are subject to the same rules as any drug.

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That’s the way it should be too, because of how they are used, what they could do (or not do) to a person, etc etc. In the U.S., all homeopathics have an advisory that the statements have not been scientifically proven. That’s it. They aren’t regulated, except maybe for buying age, or much anything else. So… They could be purely nothing, not even what is said to be in them, or they could be pure belladonna, for example. Buyer beware is what it truly is in the States.