Natural?

[Eos of the Eons]

I see the word natural in homeopathy a lot. Medical science is not 'natural' according to them. What about poison ivy or those frogs with poison on their bodies, or the fact that everything we have came from this planet including all chemicals and drugs etc. Not everything 'natural' is good for you. And 'unnatural' doesn't mean it's bad for you. Even manufactured drugs are made completely by 'stuff' found only on this planet.

Then we have causes and effects mixed up and double standards. Homeopaths blame vaccines for allergies. Never mind that people would have the same allergies if they didn't ever see a vaccine. It's the allergy that causes the reaction, not the vaccine. I'm allergic to cats. I curse my allergy, not the cats. You don't see homeopaths calling for a ban on cats or peanuts for that matter. Peanut butter is still in homes. If you have the allergy, then you stay away from the allergen. I don't think cats caused my allergies. I also have allergies to dust and tobacco and mold, etc.

Can't they teach basic chemistry in school science before High School? Then kids could understand that a drug derived from a plant is chemically no different than one made without the plant in the equation. I never heard of any of that until I specifically took chemistry in High School. Most people I know don't know carbon chains basically make up everything on this planet (food, wood), even plastic.

That' s a simple enough concept for a kid in grade 8.

But it's okay for those homeopaths to say ban vaccines altogether for ALL your kids whether or not they ever have a reaction. And they also say noone should get them. It's like saying everyone has to stop buying peanut butter or having cats in their homes.

One size fits all doesn't fit in this vaccine topic. Even everyone who does get an allergic reaction fully recovers. But these 'reactions' to one in a million then means that vaccines should never be taken by anyone?

And why do they get to call themselves doctors anyway? Those homeopathy schools ('colleges') are hardly an education. It's mis-education. Heck, they shouldn't be able to attach PhD to that mis-education. They should be made to take regular courses in a real college first, get THAT PhD, and then study homeopathy. I know this doesn't mean that they will be good at being whatever doctor they call themselves, but it would make it harder for people to run around calling themselves doctors.

I just got an email saying that margarine is absolutely horrible for you because it is just like being plastic on the molecular level. Therefore butter is better for you because it is more organic and 'natural'.

[neutrino_cannon]

Natural is "in" right now. Natural is, of course, a highly subjective term, which is what the advertisers love. The profts it can generate are highly objective, however. Just look at all the products bearing the word (OK, that wasn't very objective).

Of course natural things can be dangerous. Asteroids slamming into earth are natural, and very hazardous to your health, naturally occuring grizzly bears mauling you are bad for your health, and organic grown forests that catch on fire with you in them are also bad for you.

In some cases artificial chemical manufacture actually saves rare plants or other resources. Organic farming does keep pesticides out of the soil, but how much harm those actually do to the soil is up for debate.

Aha!Linky!

[Eos of the Eons]

Ah, one of my favorite forums, but I like the format on this one better and it doesn't get bogged down like straight dope's seems to.

Quote:

Even if we were to accept an extreme definition of "natural"--e.g., not subjected to any process invented since 1812--the word still doesn't tell you anything especially useful. Many "natural" substitutes for common consumer products--honey for sugar, sea salt for ordinary salt, carob candies for chocolate--are essentially equivalent to the foods they're supposed to replace. Furthermore, there are many naturally-occurring substances, such as the cyanide precursors found in some fruit pits, that are dangerous. The fact that something is "natural" doesn't necessarily mean it's healthful.

Exactly.

Quote:

All that having been said, the government finally did establish minimal definitions for some terms, including "natural." But I venture to say a lot of folks won't find them entirely satisfactory. Here's a rundown:

- "Natural," "all natural." Contains no synthetic or artificial ingredients, although there's no restriction on sugar. "Natural" meat or poultry is free of artificial additives and subjected to only minimal processing. "Natural" meat may still contain drug residues, though.

- "Light" food generally must have a third fewer calories or half the fat of the non-light version. Labeling-wise this is definitely an improvement. For a long time light could simply mean that the product was (tee-hee) light in color or texture. But there are still some big loopholes. Products that traditionally have been known as light, e.g., light cream, are exempt, meaning that veggies prepared in a "light cream sauce" aren't necessarily low-fat or low-cal. Certain terms such as "lightly sweetened" aren't regulated either.

- "Healthy" food has a max of (1) three grams of fat, (2) 480 milligrams of sodium, and (3) 60 milligrams of cholesterol per serving. It also has to provide at least 10% of the FDA's recommended daily amount of one of the following: vitamins A or C, calcium, iron, protein, or fiber. But there can still be sugar or chemicals.

- "Fat-free" means pretty much what it sounds like--the product contains only trivial amounts of fat (less than 0.5 grams per serving). But fat-free products can still contain a lot of calories.

Bottom line: catchy words like "natural," "light," etc., may or may not mean something, but you'd still better read the fine print.

I'd like to hear more about organic foods and things like essential oils sold by places like Young Living's. They claim to protect you from diseases-even AIDS--providing a 'barrier'. Hmph. That's what my friend sells.

Quote:

Huckster for Young Living Essential Oils, and Raindrop Therapy this dangerous quack has lived a series of lies. Dr. Eva Briggs takes the shine off Young's oily past in this no-holds-barred attack on one of North America's most notorious flim-flam operators.

http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/young.html

[Pyrian]

Quote:

I just got an email saying that margarine is absolutely horrible for you because it is just like being plastic on the molecular level. Therefore butter is better for you because it is more organic and 'natural'.

For the record, margarine is a hydrogenated fat - a process involving adding hydrogen to an unsaturated fat to make it more saturated and therefore solid at room temperature. The process of hydrogenation results in extremely elevated quantities of trans fatty acids (present in only trace quantities in normal fats) which are in turn implicated in arterial clogging (trans fatty acids are twisted rather than straight and literally tangle up).

Current theories support the idea that the old attack on saturated fats was overall unjustified and that trans fatty acids were the true culprit all along.

Of course, like most studies of long term dietary effects, it is very difficult to get definitive results, so questions stand and results are suspect as usual.

[reprise]

Excellent post EoE, but the best argument you can make back to homeopaths (except for the one about them being full of horse doo-doo) is that their remedies are prepared from the very same plants as the allopathic medicines they denigrate.

Actually EoE, schools in the US HAVE started banning peanut butter! Doing so is more than a little bit of a wank given that any child who is going to have an anaphylactic reaction to peanut products is also going to have that reaction to the ketchup on the sandwich the child next to him is eating if that ketchup was manufactured in a factory which processes peanuts. Please note, I am NOT saying that such sensitivity does not exist - it really does - but banning peanut butter sandwiches from a school and having a nurse check school lunches and confiscate them if they contain obvious peanut products is not going to address the problem given how many foods contain peanut oil or have been manufactured in a plant which processes peanuts.

The fact that certain children who have certain allergies should not have certain vaccines is NOT the same thing at all as vaccines being dangerous for all children.

BTW, eldest daughter - predictably - had no reaction whatsoever to meningoccocal C vaccine despite them being so reluctant to give it to her that they rang me as they were about to administer it. Now I have to go through the same crap next week to get younger daughter (who is also highly reactive to pertussis vaccine and ONLY pertussis vaccine) immunised. I'm hoping it will be a little easier the second time around. And to be honest, if I wasn't so articulate I doubt very much that they would have gone ahead with immunising daughter the elder - they were astonished that I even knew the vaccine components and was able to demonstrate why it wasn't a risk to my child.

[xouper]

Quote:

Eos of the Eons: I see the word natural in homeopathy a lot.

My personal favorite is homeopathic arsenic (arsenicum album). All natural? It's still arsenic. Good thing there's not really much arsenic in the "remedies" they sell. You can get more arsenic per ounce drinking the water at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

[reprise]

This would be a funny story if it were not so tragic.

I've already related the tale of how both of my daughters are highly allergic to the pertussis vaccine, yadayadayada, and how I've had to fight for daughter the elder to be immunised against meningoccocal C because of her allergy to the pertussis vaccine. She only ended up being immunised because I could convince the health care provider that she wasn't allergic to the diptheria protein (which the meningoccocal C vaccine contains) and I really COULD prove that because she's been receiving CDT throughout the whole of her childhood and had an ADT booster only last year.

SO her friend lines up for the meningoccocal vaccine today. As good school nurses do, school nurse asks friend if she has any allergies. Friend says - quite truthfully - that she has a peanut allergy (where the hell were all the kids with peanut allergies when I was young). Without finding out ANY further information whatsoever (friend gets mild rash if she eats large amounts of peanuts), school nurse refuses to immunise friend. There are no (fill in expletive of your choice here) peanuts or peanut products in the vaccine - a peanut allergy is NOT a contraindication to vaccination with this specific vaccine. As far as I know, they don't use peanuts or peanut products in ANY vaccine (I'm prepared to be proven wrong on that particular issue, but not one of my medical texts lists a peanut allergy as even a "caution" in respect of vaccination). What the hell do you have to do around here to be a responsible parent and get your kid vaccinated. By refusing to vaccinate this child at school (where the vaccination is free) the nurse who refused to vaccinate this child (assuming that the parents dont' appeal to the DoH - which I WOULD) because she has a mild peanut allergy has left this child 1) unvaccinated and 2) unable to access the vaccine free of charge until 2006. This is NOT a cheap vaccine. I would preferred by far that my daughters received it from our local doctor, but it's going to be another three years before that becomes a viable option for most parents on limited incomes.

Who the heck do you yell at in situations like these? The anti-immunisation mob who have stirred up this level of anxiety? The parents who are anxious? The medical staff who are too scared to vaccinate IN CASE something does go wrong?

This is just FFFFFFFFFFFFed, and I have to go through the whole process again next week. I just hope to heck that I get the same school nurse with daughter the younger, because otherwise I might start threatening lawsuits if they DON'T vaccinate my child.

Natural? Have you SEEN the list of venomous animals which live in Australia and our toxic plants? Give me synthesised nature any day!

[reprise]

BTW, while I place no credence whatsoever in homeopathy I swear by the effectiveness of the arnica cream I use for bruising and the chickweed gel I use for all kinds of itching - I've yet to find any comparable OTC products which work as well as the ones our apothecary (and yes, she does call herself that because she mixes everything by hand and no "drugs" involved) mixes up.

I'm too tired to do it now, but almost all of the heavy duty poisons known to man - including the one which is often quoted as being most lethal, ricin - are "natural". I'll list them tomorrow. There are synthetic versions of many of these poisons available, but they are analogues and we got the idea from good old mother nature in the first place (and changed a molecule or two so that we could patent them).

[Dancing David]

Skyscrapers and cars are as natural as tree trunks and wasp nests.

[BTox]

This is a subject I like to throw back to the "all natural is good, synthetic is bad" crowd. Especailly when they toss around scare tactics that preservatives in food are carcinogens and will kill you. Little do they know that fresh fruits and vegetables have many naturally occuring carcinogens, often at levels and risk levels much higher than man-made food additives. Here's the site, you can download the entire article in pdf format:

acs natural carcinogen paper

[Number Six]

I agree with this thread in general. "It's natural" is one of my favorite "What does that mean?"-question generators. It seems subjective to me. And it is amazing how people assume that natural must be healthy and unnatural must be unhealthy.

Using the most common general definition of "natural," here is one of my favorites to use in response, assuming it's true, and I think it is but I'm not sure: Smallpox is natural and and the vaccine against smallpox is unnatural.

[Pyrian]

I'm fond of the argument that unnatural is an oxymoron.

[Peter Soderqvist]

Is smallpox vaccine both natural and unnatural in the same unit if time?
Yes, because the smallpox vaccine is unnatural, since it is artificial, but smallpox vaccine is also natural in the sense that it is not a supernatural phenomenon, and for the same reason, the smallpox vaccine is a member in the set of natural science, which unicorns are not!

This is how professor Keyser from European Institute for General Semantics define Natural, the quote is from his book 1921, mathematical philosophy!

Quote:

You are aware that the terms "nature" and "natural" are currently employed in a large variety of senses-most of them so vague as to be fit only for the use of "literary" men, not for the serious use of scientific men. What ought we to mean by the term "natural" in such a discussion as we are now engaged in? The question admits, I believe, of a brief answer that is fairly satisfactory. Everyone knows that the things encountered by a normal human in the course of his experience differ widely in respect of vagueness and certitude; some of them are facts so regular, so well ascertained, so indubitable that they guide in all the affairs of practical life; they are known facts, we say, and to disregard them would be to perish like unprotected idiots or imbeciles; such facts are of two kinds:

facts of sense-perception, or of this and memory, and facts of pure thought; the former are familiar in the moving pageant of the world-birth, growth, death, day, night, land, water, sky, change of seasons, and so on; facts of pure thought are not so obtrusively obvious but there are such facts; one of them is-"If something S has the property P and whatever has P has the property P', then S has P'." Now, all such facts are compatible-each of them fits in, as we say, with all the others. I take it that what we ought to mean by natural is, therefore, this: Nature (or the natural) consists of all and only such things as are compatible (consistent) with the best-ascertained facts of sense and of thought.
http://www.esgs.org/uk/art/moh-ap6.htm

[Eos of the Eons]

Quote:

Originally posted by reprise
BTW, while I place no credence whatsoever in homeopathy I swear by the effectiveness of the arnica cream I use for bruising and the chickweed gel I use for all kinds of itching - I've yet to find any comparable OTC products which work as well as the ones our apothecary (and yes, she does call herself that because she mixes everything by hand and no "drugs" involved) mixes up.

I'm too tired to do it now, but almost all of the heavy duty poisons known to man - including the one which is often quoted as being most lethal, ricin - are "natural". I'll list them tomorrow. There are synthetic versions of many of these poisons available, but they are analogues and we got the idea from good old mother nature in the first place (and changed a molecule or two so that we could patent them).

I appreciate everything posted here. Reprise, you are so on the money here on this one. I'm grateful to see your posts. I'm glad your daughter can still be protected from some diseases. This is why 'herd immunity' is so important-so that children with allergies can be protected as well.

Smallpox is a virus. Cowpox (smallpox vaccine) is a virus. What the HECK makes smallpox more 'natural' than the cowpox viruses used in the vaccine? They are both viruses in the same viral 'family'! If you ask me, none of those diseases are 'natural' to our bodies. If you can use one to save yourself from the other, then that is absolutely wonderful, and everyone should be grateful we even have the option.

Just shows you how ridiculous this type of 'argument' can get.

The homeopath arguments twist everything around to make their methods look best. They don't care what the consequences are.

I don't like homeopathy. The medicinal properties of some plants like garlic, primrose oil, and other apothecary potions that work is not something homeopaths can use to say "see, we are better". These properties are what are recognized and used in drugs to help people. You can't always trust homeopathy applications in the dose of these drugs. Drug companies do have to comply with rules and regulations and make sure each pill is the same so you get the same dose every time.

We do need to weed out the quack homeopaths to give the more responsible 'apothecaries' a chance to profit from responsibility if they can prove their potions and creams, etc. do work. They also need to patent some of their products before drug companies do. This licensing of 'natural' remedies would go a long way to saving people from quackery.

Of course I don't even know how this could even begin to happen, so any insights on the topic of insuring 'natural' remedies work and are safe, then I'm all ears.

The internet is horrible in this area. With Young's oil products-he can't say certain things, but that doesn't stop his little distributors in the pyramid marketing from making claims he can't openly.

My friend honestly believes that the 'holy' and 'historical' applications of these 'essential oils' will protect her from HIV, herpes, etc. In the article I posted above, I read how harmful some of these oils can be in the way they are directed to be used by consumers.

This whole thing is so frustrating.

[Eos of the Eons]

Quote:

Originally posted by xouper
My personal favorite is homeopathic arsenic (arsenicum album). All natural? It's still arsenic. Good thing there's not really much arsenic in the "remedies" they sell. You can get more arsenic per ounce drinking the water at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Quote:

Quiz question: How many of these jars contain a molecule of the original homeopathic agent?

Answer: Only one. The other 99 jars contain no molucules of the original homeopathic agent whatsoever.

If you repeat the previous step, (taking each jar and adding it to 99 ounces of pure water, and splitting that into a hundred more jars of one ounce each), you will have 10,000 jars, each with a dilution of 14C (or 28X).

And if you do this 16 more times, you will have a grand total of 1036 jars, each containing one ounce of 30C dilution (or 60X).

Quiz question: How many of these jars contain a molecule of the original homeopathic agent?

Answer: Only one. The other bazillion jars contain no molecules of the original homeopathic agent whatsoever.
?

yes, homeopathy should be illegal and their products not allowed to be peddled unless we can start licensing them. They should not be allowed to be sold they way they are with the 'food' loophole. Just my humble opinion...I guess that's a whole other thread I haven't dug through yet.


Does nature know best? Good question...I'll enjoy reading through that site as well. Poisons are just as natural as the beneficial properties of garlic. Humans don't make all the arsenic on the planet in their science labs out of 'non' natural methods.

[Rolfe]

Quote:

Originally posted by reprise
BTW, while I place no credence whatsoever in homeopathy I swear by the effectiveness of the arnica cream I use for bruising and the chickweed gel I use for all kinds of itching - I've yet to find any comparable OTC products which work as well as the ones our apothecary (and yes, she does call herself that because she mixes everything by hand and no "drugs" involved) mixes up.

Arnica. Do you know what it is? Some sort of daisy ("Leopard's bane"). OK, I suppose it's not impossible that some sort of daisy could have some magic ingredient that affects blood clotting, but in a cream? Get real. The structure of the skin is robust enough so that nothing of that sort put on the outside is likely to have much effect on the inside.

Also, consider the complexity of the blood clotting cascade. It's pretty difficult to beef it up in any way, and even products which were originally thought for quite rational reasons to do this (such as malonate) have been de-licensed as proper trials showed they didn't actually have any effect.

Now, what sort of concentration was this "arnica" that you swear by? Do you know if there was actually any there at all? Because it's a bit odd if there wasn't, and yet still you think there was an effect. Arnica is usually sold in homoeopathic potencies, and even the "lower" potencies (which do have something in them) are so dilute that this is stretching credulity to breaking point.

And then again, arnica has been tested for this. Have a look at an actual trial and a meta-analysis. This press release has a decent summary.

Admittedly, most of this was done on genuinely homoeopathic arnica. However, that's because that's what it is. It's a pure invention of the homoeopaths, and it's never been sold as an ordinary herbal remedy in "real" quantities. Nobody has even suggested that the plant has an active ingredient, it's all about homoeopathy.

I had this argument with my cousin a couple of weeks ago. She had no evidence at all, she just "swore by it".

The strength of this belief, including Reprise's, is much more a testament to the power of the "old wives' tale" and the ability of the general public to convince themselves of it, than it has to do with any real effect produced by ultra-low dilutions of that pretty plant.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Oh, and I forgot. Homoeopathy is about as "natural" as a jet plane. All that diluting and succussing, really natural, right.

And if you were watching the famous Horizon programme, the bit where they panned the camera across the shelves and shelves of material gathered on these "provings", you'd have noticed that one of the "remedies" "proved" was - nylon.

Real natural, yeah.

But when they showed that joker Milgrom interviewing a patient, all the patient was heard to say, respectfully, was "I'd just like to have something a bit more natural". They're all at it.

Rolfe.

[reprise]

Rolfe, I don't know what concentration of arnica was in the cream to which I referred (nor do I know whether arnica was the only ingredient apart from a neutral base). I'll see if I can find out. It's certainly possible that there's some kind of topical anaesthetic in the cream which makes the bruised area less sensitive and therefore less noticeable to me.

FWIW, there's a spray which medical staff use to reduce bruising when something goes amiss during venepuncture (I'm a pretty spectacular bruiser) and I'm not sure what the active ingredient is in that spray either, although I should be able to track down that information fairly easily.