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Herbal/Natural Remedies for colds are under attack again as being ineffective. These reports are dated Feb. 9th 2007. But as usual in this post we dig up the facts to help you through your day especially if your day includes a cold.

Here are the headlines and the quotes.

Science: Little proof that herbal cold remedies work. Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press, Tuscaloosa News,

“Herbal remedies have been used to treat illness and promote health for thousands of years - and that’s enough evidence for some people during cold and flu season.

But what is the scientific evidence for alternative cold and flu remedies, such as echinacea, ginseng and zinc? Dr. Ronald Turner, a cold virus expert at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, says the evidence is weak. But Turner doesn’t try to discourage people from spending their money on remedies they think make them feel better, as long as there are no harmful side effects.” (bold added)

Cold remedies - do they work? By Chris Swingle, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Enquirer.com

“Most lack proof from large-scale, scientific studies. The label’s typical fine print: The claims have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The product “is not intended to diagnose, cure or prevent any disease.” (bold added)

So, there you have it, the definitive statement for Herbal/Natural Remedies for colds:

“Most lack proof from large-scale, scientific studies”, well do the studies already. Or “the evidence is weak” So don’t head down to your local pharmacy or health food store to relieve your miserable symptoms.

“One of the things that permits people to believe in unproven therapies is that it really doesn’t matter what you take because you’re going to get better anyway,” Turner said. Johnson reports.

Easy for Dr. Turner to say! Who wants to live with the symptoms of a cold if you don’t have to!

So what’s a person to do?

Interestingly this is one time that the Medical Establishment has been as even handed with Herbal/Natural Remedies as it has been with Drug Cough and Cold Remedies.

Ron Eccles and his colleagues at the Common Cold Centre (CCC), a clinical research organisation based at the University of Cardiff, U.K. pointed out: “While OTC cough medicines are effective, they’re probably not much more effective than a very good placebo.” Chemistry World, November 2003, Royal Society of Chemists.

According to the Mayo Clinic’s site – “Now scientists have put chicken soup to the test, discovering that it does seem to help relieve cold and flu symptoms…” More than placebo, and more than most over the counter pharmaceutical remedies, I might add.

Rather than debate the pros and cons of Herbal/Natural Remedies I’d just like to mention a couple of ways that are even a better approach.

Herbal/Natural Remedies work best as a prevention from colds because if you tend to ‘catch a lot of colds’ you need them to build up your immune system.

However, the best I’ve seen for prevention and treatment for colds/flues are homeopathic remedies.

Despite the (I’ll bite my tongue) skeptics (who only accept the ‘Big Pharma - Medical Establishment’ brand of so-called ‘Scientific Medicine’ and totally dismiss other healing arts even if there are ‘Scientific Studies’ that prove they work); there are studies that show a Homeopathic remedy works for the treatment of colds.

The Cochrane Library, is the Medical Scientific Communities ‘Gold Standard’ for Evidenced-Based Health Care’ because they only accept the best studies. Here’s their comments on the Homeopathic remedy Cold-Eeze. -

“Zinc gluconate glycine lozenges are safe and well tolerated by a geriatric population and are suitable for prophylactic or therapeutic use to reduce the duration or severity of the common cold.”

So, there take that you naysayers! If and when I have a cold my first choice is a Homeopathic remedy.

“However, taking homoeopathic Oscillococcinum once you have influenza might shorten the illness, but more research is needed.”

Rite Care Pharmacies website lists 4 ‘RANDOMIZED PLACEBO CONTROLLED STUDIES WITH Oscillococcinum THAT SHOW IT WORKS’.

The jury is still out for prevention of the flu with this and other similar products. But as far as I’m concerned they work. Influenzinum works well, but for my money though, Muccococinum is an even better treatment and preventative for the flu.

Despite the negative reviews of Alternative Medicine - Herbal/Natural Remedies for the common cold, if you know where to look you can find ‘alternatives’ to these with other proven Alternative Medicines – Homeopathic Remedies.

Well, well here we go again. A new story really shows the double-edged sword that the prescribing of antibiotics indiscriminately has become. How’s “terrifying”?

In a recent study published in the Lancet researchers were shocked to find that the resistance to one week of antibiotic therapy lasted for 6 months in patients.

In one of the better more understandable write-ups on this study is today’s Globe and Mail, Feb. 09/07, by Helen Branswell of the Canadian Press.

Some snippets from her article –

“Senior author Dr. Herman Goossens said he and his co-authors assumed that if they followed the subjects in their study for six months they would see the rates of resistant bacteria in participants’ mouths return to normal levels. But that didn’t happen.

“We were pretty staggered by these data,” said Dr. Goossens, a microbiologist at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium. “We never expected this.”

The finding, reported in the journal The Lancet, is a sharp reminder of the power of antibiotics, suggested Eric Brown, a biochemist at McMaster University in Hamilton.

“So a quick course of antibiotics and a half a year later, you’re still carrying resistant organisms. That’s a little bit terrifying,” said Dr. Brown, whose laboratory is working on alternative ways to kill bacteria, because of the rising problem of antibiotic resistance.

“It . . . should serve as a wake up call for individual prescribing physicians, nurse practitioners, midwives, dentists and others that inappropriate use of antibiotics does have consequences,” said Dr. John Conly, former chair of the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance and head of the department of medicine at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary.” End quote.

Looks like the ‘Law of unintended consequences’ strike once again.

What happens when the ‘Medical Paradigm’, uses a nuclear bomb to kill a fly?

Infections are to be taken seriously, however, if physicians were trained in simple preventative and management techniques from Alternative Medicine they wouldn’t always have to rely on heroic ’search and destroy’ warfare.

Tons of antibiotics are prescribed for chronic ear infections in children, unfortunately even after a major study from ten years ago that discovered over 90% of these children were not suffering from bugs but from food allergy this information was ignored. They will in many cases suffer the ‘law’ as stated above, gut problems etc., from antibiotics down the road, and no one will realize the real culprit.

The ‘wake up call for individual prescribing physicians,’ etc., went out after this study and others but due to the ingrained prescribing patterns of overworked physicians they still over-prescribe these dangerous drugs over 10 years later or as if I can make the leap – from one MD above - “terrifying” drugs. So do you think this Lancet study will change your physicians prescribing habits when he/she is bombarded by drug companies promoting the latest so-called life-saving antibiotic?

These same physicians will continue to write millions of prescriptions of antibiotics for non-ear infections and thus cause more resistance despite the clear scientific literature to the contrary and set up children with potential health problems in the future due to the scary scenario described above.

There are appropriate occasions when antibiotics are needed but they are routinely over utilized. These same physicians ironically resisted, for over 20 years, prescribing antibiotics for ulcers because it didn’t make sense to them.

When it was discovered by Australian Physician Barry Marshall and his colleague (for which they shared a Nobel prize for medicine), that indeed stomach and duodenal ulcers were caused by the infectious bug h-pylori they were ignored by the Medical Establishment because of the ‘vested interests’, as pointed out by ABC’s 20/20 medical correspondent.

Physicians only started prescribing antibiotics for ulcers when the vested interests of different pharmaceutical companies with newer more expensive antibiotics began aggressively marketing to them. It certainly wasn’t due to the ‘medical scientific research data’ which sat on the dust bin for over 20 years. But that’s another story.

So don’t ‘hold your breath’ that the information from these researchers who ‘were pretty staggered by the data’, will make its way to your local physicians office any time soon.

A very interesting commentary dated Feb. 8th, 2007 was made on the “the revolt” from the ‘Conventional News Media’. Newspapers and Television news are on the run. The New York Times is suffering huge losses in readership and profits due to the power of the internet and the independent voices of people who are not cow towing to vested interests. - ’small dead animals- the roadkill diaries’

Katie the author of the blog quotes Sulzberger of the New York Times –

Perception is Reality – Unfortunately.

From the 2 previous posts we have seen that Conventional Medicine (CM) is not as effective or as safe as is claimed. So, why is there the perception in many people’s minds and the media that this so-called ‘CM’ or ‘Scientific Medicine’ is more effective than Alternative Medicine and has been thoroughly tested?

What does ‘Spin Doctor’ mean?

“Someone, especially in politics, who tries to influence public opinion by putting a favorable bias on information when it is presented to the public or to the media.” - Allwords.com.

What are the accomplishments of Conventional (Biomedical) Medicine?

According to Conventional Medicine –”The remarkable increase in our life span during the 20th Century has been due, in large part, to the contributions of basic biomedical research.”1

THIS IS AN OVERESTIMATION AND NOT TRUE!

Many sources acknowledge medicine’s minimal role in life expectancy improvements the last century. They don’t due it as sarcastically as one writer put it in a letter to the editor of the BMJ (British Medical Journal): “There was an audit of the effect of modern medicine in the USA…improvement in human health and fall in disease incidence there could be attributed to improvement in sanitation, improved nutrition, better education, decent housing, economic empowerment of the masses, and healthier life style avoiding tobacco and alcohol, only 3.4% of the change could be due to modern medical claptrap!”2

In fact before to-days dominant Conventional (Biomedical, Allopathic, Orthodox, Western) Medicine took control of health-care and marginalized Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States, Americans were healthier. -

“During the period [before Conventional Medicine took over health-care], the United States was one of the healthiest nations, with the world’s lowest infant mortality rate.” 3

Now the United States ranks 46th in the world for life expectancy according to the World Fact Book (put out by the CIA). This along with the most spent per capita in high tech health care in the world.

Who controls the Government and the Media – Conventional or Alternative Medicine?
“A Policy Analysis” from the CATO Institute entitled –

“The Medical Monopoly: Protecting Consumers or Limiting Competition?”

Here are the highlights or should I say lowlights from the ‘Analysis’ by the health policy consultant who wrote the article:

• “Nonphysician providers of medical care are in high demand in the United States.

• But licensure laws and federal regulations limit their scope of practice and restrict access to their services…Licensure laws appear to be designed to limit the supply of health care providers and restrict competition to physicians.

• In addition to using government to restrict competition, the medical monopoly also turns to government for subsidies.

• Any serious reform of the U.S. health care system must address the medical monopoly…

• Although protection of the public is often cited as the reason for medical licensing and limiting access to unconventional therapies, history indicates that professional interest was more of an overriding concern in the early enactment of those laws…

• …the self-interest of physicians soon began to assert itself. The AMA (American Medical Association) was determined to protect physicians from competition by nonphysician health care providers…

• There is little actual evidence that medical licensing improves quality or protects the public.” 3

“Indeed, the history of medicine through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries makes it clear that if it were not for the extensive political manoeuvring by the profession in accordance with its own visions and goals, it is extremely doubtful whether biomedicine would occupy the position it does today… large scale investment enabled the biomedical model to establish a virtual monopoly in developed nations within a few decades.”4

And you thought that from the ‘Spin Doctoring of Medicine’ that ‘the medical and scientific establishment’ was doing altruistic (unselfishly concerned for or devoted to the welfare of others, dictionary.com) work to benefit the masses of humanity.

A United Kingdom physician calls a ‘Spade a Spade’ –

Notice that he points out that “the medical and scientific establishment…control politicians and the media”!

“The medical and scientific establishments have (largely through the fact that they have sold out to the enormously wealthy and powerful international pharmaceutical industry) obtained more or less complete control over politicians and the media.”5

Who does Vernon Coleman M.D. say really controls “the medical and scientific establishment”?

In brackets in the above quote he really states who is in charge of the agenda “the enormously wealthy and powerful international pharmaceutical industry” controls Conventional Medicine and thus “more or less complete control over politicians and the media.”?

He who ‘controls the purse strings controls the agenda’!

The ‘control of the purse strings’ was caused in part by Governments cutting back independent research dollars to medical scientists and “the enormously wealthy and powerful international pharmaceutical industry” filling the vacuum. -

This will be discussed further in the next post – Part 5 - In Medicine he who ‘controls the purse strings controls the agenda’!

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Dennis Cutforth is a researcher and writer with over 35 years experience in health-care sales, marketing and research in pharmaceuticals and natural health. Visit his website at Get A Better Life Today.
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1. Julius Axelrod, Ph.D., Scientist Emeritus of the National Institutes of Health 1970 Nobel Laureate in Medicine. Living Longer And Loving It, Issue 8

2. Hegde, BM, Retd. Vice Chancellor Mangalore-575004, India, BMJ

3. 4. Sue Blevins, 1995 Policy Analysis no. 246 3 December 15 1995, CATO Institute

5. Dr. Vernon Coleman