{"id":163,"date":"2018-12-31T16:58:16","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T21:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ayslcorp.com\/blog\/?p=163"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:58:16","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T21:58:16","slug":"is-evidence-based-medicine-scientific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ayslcorp.com\/blog\/index.php\/2018\/12\/31\/is-evidence-based-medicine-scientific\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Evidence-Based Medicine Scientific?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Synthetic Drugs versus Traditional Herbal Medicines <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Two Different Systems of Therapy<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In recent years we hear so much about evidence-based medicine?\u00a0 What is it?\u00a0 Does it mean scientific?\u00a0 Or is it accumulated Grandmas\u2019 wisdom?<\/p>\n

First of all, with chemical drugs that are easily identifiable and quantifiable such as aspirin and morphine, their development and production may be scientific.\u00a0 However, once they enter a complex multi-cellular organism like our body, this therapeutic process can hardly be considered scientific.\u00a0 We may use scientific technologies to control and analyze the drugs (their purity, dosage, and methods of administration, etc.) but we can\u2019t control our body by telling its millions of chemicals and cells to step aside when the drugs enter it, so that they can go directly to their presumed targets (receptors, enzymes, or other living matters) to do their magic. \u00a0Without precise guidance, these drugs are bound to bump into many of the living matters in our highly organized and extremely well-functioning body to cause havoc.\u00a0 This process is simply trial and error, not scientific.\u00a0 And it hasn\u2019t changed since our ancestors started treating our illnesses with herbs, minerals, or animal products millennia ago.\u00a0 When one herb (or drug) does not work, try another.\u00a0 That is pretty much it.\u00a0 How scientific can that be?\u00a0 It\u2019s the skill, compassion, and experience of the healer more than anything else, as always, since the beginning of human existence.\u00a0 Hence, for centuries, the practice of medicine has been invariably considered an art.\u00a0 Or could evidence-based medicine also mean to include historical experience of traditional herbal medicine in addition to the modern treatment with toxic drugs?<\/p>\n

Actually, the difference between modern synthetic drugs and natural medicines (e. g., herbs) definitely has played a crucial role since the modern drug era started 200-300 years ago.\u00a0 \u00a0Natural medicines are taken from our environment and sooner or later will return to it.\u00a0 This has been going on since antiquity.\u00a0 If they don\u2019t work, they cause us no harm. \u00a0Nor would they seriously damage our environment. \u00a0\u00a0On the other hand, with synthetic drugs, it\u2019s another story.\u00a0 They are mostly toxic because these chemicals are brand new to our environment and have never before interacted with us on our planet, despite the fact that one of its major raw material sources is petroleum.\u00a0 Though we have never ingested it to have lived to tell our experience.\u00a0 Whatever we tried to do with herbs eons ago when our ancestors started to develop our systems of traditional medicines by trial and error are now deemed non-scientific by many, if not most, scientists. \u00a0\u00a0Regardless, by now we have already accumulated millennia of experience, knowledge, and wisdom on these medicines.\u00a0 And we know what are safe and what are not.\u00a0 In contrast, modern drug therapy has no more than 300 years or so of accumulated experience.\u00a0 Even after a drug has successfully passed clinical trials, it still always has side-effects many of which are toxic, because it may also contain impurities due to intermediates and byproducts resulting from the synthetic process, which cannot be completely removed.\u00a0\u00a0 The traditional wisdom among chemists and scientists has always been that synthetic and natural chemicals are the same because they have the same chemical structure whether they are synthetic or derived from nature, as long as they are both pure.\u00a0 Yet we have never bothered to take these impurities seriously.\u00a0 We set limits for them.\u00a0 But as far as I can tell, during my long years being educated in drugs and natural chemicals, as well as my years involved in these fields as a professional, we seemed never to have bothered to test specifically for the toxicities of these impurities.\u00a0 When you scan the United States Pharmacopeia (U.S.P., our official book on drug standards) you will find there is always a small to sizable percentage of impurities allowed in the drugs.\u00a0 \u00a0The range of these impurities span from around 2% to 10%, or more, with natural drugs (chemicals) being allowed the higher limits. \u00a0It seems whoever set these limits of impurities already had an implicit understanding that the impurities in natural medicines are less toxic than those accompanying synthetic drugs, hence our body can tolerate more of them, whatever they are.\u00a0 Because of these synthetic drugs being brand new, along with their equally brand-new impurities, our body\u2019s experience would take probably centuries or millennia before it would get used to them, just as it had gotten used to the natural substances, including natural chemicals, before we finally have come to know the nature of some of them to consider them now safe and effective.\u00a0 Consequently, this modern scenario is not unlike the progression of the development of traditional herbal medicines \u2013 trial and error over time, until we can determine which works or is not toxic, and which kills.<\/p>\n

Can anyone, especially those involved in the original coining of the phrase \u201cevidence-based medicine,\u201d tell us, in understandable language, what it actually means, now that I have given my \u2018simple-minded\u2019 arguments? \u00a0If you read my earlier posts and my newest dual book, you may agree with me.\u00a0 Like me, you may also have been trained in college and graduate\/medical school the Big-Pharma way and may not realize there is another true therapy option, which you may have already dismissed as not scientific or evidence-based.\u00a0 Until 15 to 20 years ago, I was like you, always thinking the same way \u2013 active principles.\u00a0 Only my Chinese medicine upbringing since childhood finally made me realize the problem.\u00a0 Chemical drugs and multi-chemical herbs cannot be treated the same way.\u00a0 The technology established specifically for analyzing simple drugs cannot be applied to complex herbs to produce consistent and meaningful results that we expect. \u00a0It is not unlike trying to analyze pectin (one of the countless chemicals present in apple) and call that chemical, apple; or chlorogenic acid in echinacea and call that chemical, echinacea.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t you brand that process \u2018pseudoscience,\u2019 as many of us call herbal medicine?<\/p>\n

Thank you all!\u00a0 Watch for my next 2 posts. One is on the imminent demise of traditional herbal medicine, unless…\u00a0 The other is for producers and\/or marketers of genuine cannabidiol, CBD, on how to be leaders in the crowded field of this lucrative business by showing your products\u2019 unique fingerprints, not just hype.<\/p>\n

As this subject is not trivial, to avoid mutual embarrassment, please send serious comments to my personal email:\u00a0 ayl@earthpower.com<\/a><\/p>\n

HAPPY NEW YEAR!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

20181231<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synthetic Drugs versus Traditional Herbal Medicines \u00a0Two Different Systems of Therapy   In recent years we hear so much about evidence-based medicine?\u00a0 What is it?\u00a0 Does it mean scientific?\u00a0 Or is it accumulated Grandmas\u2019 wisdom? First of all, with chemical drugs that are easily identifiable and quantifiable such as aspirin and morphine, their development and … <\/p>\n

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