Potential Adverse Effects of Alternative Rx ‘Growing Exponentially’
There are several ways to look at this article. First, the list of adverse effects (potential, actually…) could keep growing exponentially for many years and still not touch the numbers associated with pharmaceutical drugs. On the other hand, we really do need to come to terms with the power of natural medicine and stop taking it so lightly. There are many, and I would venture to say most, patients using a specific natural medicine based on something their neighbor told them or they read in Reader’s Digest. It’s not that easy, and almost always, involves some aspect of lifestyle changes to augment the therapy, such as consistent exercise.
(article) The number of known nutrient-to-nutrient and nutrient-to-drug interactions is growing exponentially, panelists said here Monday at a complementary and alternative medicine symposium at the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral nutrition’s 25th Clinical Congress. Though herbs and plants have been used to treat medical conditions for thousands of years, “we don’t know what effect our culture has on these herbs,” warned Georgia M. Decker, a nurse practitioner at Integrative Care in Albany, New York. The speakers emphasized that even benign-sounding herbs can be dangerous in combination with other therapies or if taken by patients with certain diseases. For example, garlic can worsen a hypoglycemic patient’s symptoms, and ginger should not be taken by patients with gall bladder disease. Another drawback is that alternative therapies sometimes mask patients’ symptoms and thus their underlying diseases. That means patients need to be asked not only what they are taking, but how much, panelists said. “Licorice wafers do help settle the stomach when there’s a lot of acidity,” Decker explained. “But if somebody is saying to you, ‘Oh, I take five, six licorice wafers a day,’ then what’s the gastrointestinal symptom that would require five or six wafers a day?” The presenters encouraged healthcare professionals to continue to learn what they can from the literature that is available. “We simply cannot say, ‘No, you can’t take that,’ because there aren’t several big prospective randomized trials that have come to the same conclusion,” said Kathryn K. Hamilton, a registered dietitian and instructor at Columbia University in New York. “In all likelihood, these trials are not going to happen.”