The problem I have with natural treatments is the way natural has become an advertizing buzzword that can be easily misconstrued. Many products say they are 'made with' natural ______. I can whip up a veritable chemical stew, add in a drop or 2 of natural_____ & make this claim. Cosmetics firms are some of the worst offenders here. Also, the public has never been properly educated about this word natural & many mistakenly equate it with safe & innocuous. This is a potentially lethal misunderstanding. For example, every year, several babies die because parents use oil of cloves directly on the gums for teething pain. Essential oil of clove is very highly concentrated & can easily kill a baby. The a frozen safely sized teething ring is the better option as is a tiny dab of pharmaceutical preparation ANBESOL.
Pure unadulterated 100% natural essential oils of certain herbs (oregano, parsley etc.) regularly used in cooling or on salads contain alarming & lethal levels of ketones due to how highly concentrated they are. Even the small bottles sold over the counter at most every pharmacy contain enough to kill an adult! They are sold to anyone without any safety information (or what to do if accidentally consumed) & the who e natural umbrella gives them a false halo. Some can induce hypothermia, migraines or even miscarriage by causing the uterus to spasm!
Aslo, as Loomis pointed out, mislabelling is a serious problem as is the lack of oversight, It may shock you to learn that there is no oversight in the compounding of these herbal medicines. You or I could be preparing them in an unhygienic basement worktable using un-gloved hands & LIE blatantly about what I put in it. Another danger is that few natural preparations have ever been subjected to rigorous scientific evaluation. Read the wording on many websites (reputable ones even) selling herbal medicines: they'll say that _________ is believed to be helpful for________. They say_________ is thought to be or is said to be 'good for'_________. This misleading usage of language is basically a lie.
The distrust many members here feel towards pharmaceutical corporations is one I share; a relative died because of VIOXX, an Arthritis medication that was later found to cause heart attacks even in people with no history of cardiac problems. A side effect from something I was given almost killed me too.
FOLKLORE & our tendency to romanticize the past has substituted itself for real verifiable data about how herbal preparations were used in the past, whether they really did heal many wounds, prevent or cure or treat any illnesses. In many cultures reliant upon these preparations without medical doctors, people have high mortality rates. Maternal mortality & infant mortality rates are astronomical compared to rates in industrialized countries. We've assumed that people who relied upon herbal medications lived well because of it. In truth, looking even today at such populations, we draw this misleading & false conclusion. Look again: few people are elderly & those who are are often revered. Why? Because so few people make it that long! You'll see few people with congenital disabilities & people seem mysteriously 'whole'. This is because many tribes immediately destroy any infants born bearing any disability: even minor ones like a cleft lip that Drs in the west can easily treat.
Dying in childbirth is epidemic in these cultures as well. Right now Nepal is working hard to build maternity hospitals & provide women there with access to prenatal care, vitamins & post-natal care. Until the advent of modern medicine in the west, death in childbirth was the leading cause of death amongst women (right into the 1920s: now, it's homicide by the father of the fetus-but I digress...)
I'd love nothing more than to see a day when we could truly rely on herbal natural preparations when those terms would mean reliable, consistent, SAFE & bio-compatible. We're not there yet. I'm not exonerating pharmaceuticals at all: they're the lesser of 2 evils right now.
I'm using what is known about certain vitamins, foods, minerals & other practices to support my health but, sadly, the field of herbal medicines is a hotbed of quackery at present.
