New EU regulations on herbal medicines come into force

New regulations for herbal remedies have now come into force: BBC News

What do people think about this? In my mind it's maybe not the best way to go about it (I'd favour education of the public) but it is a step in the right direction. Pharmaceutical companies have to jump through hoops to prove their drugs are effective and safe. These quacks now have to do the same. Seems fair to me

 

This only requires them to state the dose, make sure that the doses doesn't change with every other pill, and to seek an "permit" to sell the drug,

It is a step, next would be that they have to prove that they work.

oh wait, that would kill most of the remedies, and the ones that would be able to prove that they work would be, well just ordinary medicine.

while education of the public would be nice as you say Threefiguremini I have yet to see it work, there are always some people that has a tendency to believe everything they hear.

 

I'd say it's a good thing. With this you know what you're getting, whether you believe it works is up to you. Of course, the same is true for conventional pharmaceuticals as well.

 

Probably has little to do with protecting the consumer, but everything to do with corporate interests. Move along now, nothing to see here: just another new legislation/regulation with a warm and fuzzy description attached to it like 'consumer protection' and 'health & safety'.

 

Good job making a post without any factual basis.

 

That's what these usually are. Forgive me if I'm mistaken but I don't notice any consumers struggling on the streets as unsuspecting victims of these products. Perhaps they might have wasted a bit of money on something almost useless, but that's part of life and you learn to be more responsible and do more research before you make a purchase the next time.

Even if there isn't a specific clause in this regulation that is obviously biased towards special interest, the most useful thing to come out of this are more barriers for entry into the herbal market. I'm sure these regulators genuinely believe in the 'good' intentions of their work but more often than not the people to gain most from these are the vested interests who are being protected from competition by new players/smaller businesses in the market.

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^^ Nothing highlights this better than the fact that yet another license is being introduced and perfectly safe (even if fake) products that you would normally find on the shelf but choose to avoid are now being outlawed.

I also agree with Threefiguremini that education would be the better route, and you can't know if it wouldn never work if we've never tried it.

 

It's a nice little baby step towards outright banning of these useless garbage leafs-in-pill-form, but that is all it is - a baby step. As stated above: they're still available, and they're still making outright false claims, duping Joe and Jane Public out of their hard earned for a leaf or two to ram down their throat in hopes of curing whatever ails them. Though the suggestion that nobody has tried education is laughable: YouTube has thousands of very good lectures, talks, debates, and such on this subject by some of the best in the field the world over, all one ever has to do is look. Much the same can be said of your local doctor: just ask them of the efficacy of these "traditional" remedies in the real world.

To those that believe this crap actually does something: if swallowing a leaf a day cured half the stuff these people say it does, why was the death-rate so high before modern medications came along? You know, the period in our history when all we had were these "traditional" remedies and people would die of a paper-cut or the common cold? Yeah, great idea to keep that crap around...

 

From Dara O'Briain's stand up:
"Yes, herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years and then we tested it all and the stuff that worked became 'medicine'."

 

That is just the point here, they are not "safe" some of these does have an effect especially if you mix them with other medicine. Having too low blood pressure or too thin blood can be life threatening, just because you took this remedy just before a surgery.

On top of that a lot of the herbs are somewhat poisonous, the "christmas star" can be deadly, and a few other plants you may have in your house. What strikes me here is that they say that these companies does not have the money required to properly test these remedies... wait, what? they never properly testes the remedies they sell, and claim has beneficial effects ?
It may be for the best that we shut those down.

bonus info the blackberry is also know as the Viagra of nature.

 

Many Times Alt Medicine works

Many times drug companies copy the chemical compounds that are in plants and produce the medicine synthetically when it is the same chemical structure as plant medicine.

One quick example that I know first hand. My mother received conventional medicine for a problem that she had. It treated the problem but gave her a very annoying twitching throughout her body.

So she went to an alternative medicine Dr. who gave her medicine from plants. The plant medicine treated the problem but also gave her an twitch. Both medicines were the same thing!

I believe in first trying conventional medicine and if that doesn't work, I go to alternative medicine. Sometimes the natural remedies of grandma can cure things that science hasn't figured out yet.

Let it be licensed and checked

 

Indeed but that does not mean that all alternative medicines are safe, it just means that the ones that are considered "alternative" could also be regarded as redundant as conventional medicine covers it. the difference being that the normal medicine has been tested and proven to work, and are under strict rules in order to make sure that it is a quality product.

There are tonnes of medicine that is based on plants, but these medicines has been proven to work, in this case we are talking about remedies that has either never been tested, been proven not to work, or remedies that has a "ordinary" counterpart.

 

Skepticism makes you look analytical and wise. Cynicism makes you look uninformed and just a teensy bit paranoid. Thin line between those two.

Why is it important to regulate herbal medicine? Why is it important to regulate any medicine? Because you want to know that it contains what it is supposed to contain, and nothing but what it is supposed to contain, and in the correct dose. Because you want to know what it does, what it won't do and that it won't unintentionally harm you.

It is not enough to argue that herbal medication doesn't do anything anyway, so no harm done. First, some herbal medicines do have a mild (if often massively overstated) effect, and they do interact with other medication (St. John's Worth with antidepressants, digoxin (heart tablets), antihistamines, immunosuppressants and anticonvulsants for example). And even if they don't have any clinical effect, you would not want impurities to sneak in that do.

Second, regulation of medication does not only cover its composition and safety, but also its use and clinical effectiveness. The alternative health industry is (at most modest estimate) worth £0.5 billion pounds a year in the UK and $2.7 billion dollars a year in the US. Much of its advertising makes totally unsubstantiated claims. The average consumer has no way of knowing what is true or not. Shouldn't this industry be held to the same standards of proof and quality as the medical industry?

You can argue that the consumer should be better eduated, but let's face it: most people are not as bright as us. And do you know exactly what the tablets do that your doctor prescribes? No, but you can reasonably trust that it will probably work, and not inadvertently kill you in the process. Because medicine is regulated. It cannot make half-assed claims; it cannot release a product onto the market without exhaustive testing that, if not effective, it is at least not harmful. If alternative medicine wants to be taken seriously, then it should be held to the same standard.

Possibly. Two totally different compounds can have the same effect. Anything that puts a serious load on your liver can cause itching. Anything that causes an allergic histamine response can cause itching. It's not that simple.

Very similar compounds can also cause very different effects. 5-hydroxytriptamine lifts mood (occasionally to mania). 6-hydroxytriptamine is neurotoxic and causes brain damage.

Pharmaceutical industries often produce synthetic copies of plant chemicals simply because it is cheaper to mass-produce the compound in this way, and because it is easier to control purity and concentration. An important consideration in chemotherapies based on plant alkaloids.

 

My problem with "alternative medicine" is:

If it were as good as it is claimed to be, surely by now it'd just be medicine?

Regulation won't change anything, except perhaps kill off some of it's popularity. I'm sick and tired of certain people I know complaining of aches, pains, discomforts etcetera, and flatly refusing to go to a doctor (I've been told, on numerous occasions that "I don't like <insert racial slur towards whatever ethnic group was seen last time> doctors" or "they only want your money" (Forgetting that, due to NI contributions it's already been given to the NHS..)), instead saying "I'll just get some X, Y and/or Z" which, usually, costs as much as a prescription would.

 

As others have already pointed out, a lot of them Do work. There are many 'drugs' commonly available over the counter that work extremely well, such that we really ought to be careful taking them, just like we would with prescribed medicines. Others have contraindications - Nexxo has already highlighted the incredibly popular and incredibly powerful St John's Wort and how it reacts with numerous common prescription drugs.

This is an attempt at curing a genuine problem. How well it does remains to be seen - I suspect it won't stop the snake oil salesmen, but it help us handle the more powerful over-the-counter offerings.

Yeah man, damn those 'corporate interests' for trying to limit the number of powerful unregulated drugs on the market... how dare they!

 

Missed the point.

 

OK, what was your point?

 

Never ignore the power of the placebo effect.

By the way, licorice for toothaches. At least it worked fine for me-I chewed licorice root, but the candy (if it's REAL licorice) is close. Old remedy, passed down in the family. Not all of them work (but at least I know what I can eat in the front yard, lawl) but a few aren't in regular medicine but work reasonably well. It's no Percocet (or even handful of ibuprofen) but it's much more pleasant to me, and it tends to mask the sick odor I got at the end when I went necrotic.

Is it doctor approved? Ex post facto, actually. Is it a pharmaceutical? Debateable. Did it work? For me, at least. And anecdotally, for others. It got me through a VERY difficult time. Did it work because I hoped it would? Also up for debate, but then again we all know what sugar pills can do.

It's a positive step, but I think there's much more to be done.

 

Liquorice contains glycyrrhizic acid, which has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory effects. It also contains carbenoxolone which may have a tranquillising effect.

Placebo effects are becoming an increasing problem in pharmaceutical research, which shows a steady increase in placebo phenomena since the 1980's. People are getting used to tablets, and the magical expectations they have of them. It confounds things.

Example: I have a young male bowel cancer patient who recently had stoma surgery. As you'd expect he was pretty sore afterwards. Unusually he is still in a lot of pain 2 months later, with breakthrough pain that can only be managed by Morphine injections in A&E. When I saw him, he reported being in quite a lot of pain right then, severe enough to keep him awake at night.

I did a psychological pain management/relaxation exercise with him. Five minutes, and the pain disappeared completely. It's not the surgery; it's stress. He has a lot to be stressed about. He is young, his relatives are far away, he is unable to work and benefits take ages to come online so he has no money to live on and has lost his privately rented bedsit. The morphine worked because he expected it to, so he relaxed and the pain went. It also helps that he felt looked after in a safe environment.

People's illnesses and symptoms do not happen in isolation; they occur against a backdrop of personal circumstances and history, knowledge and coping patterns, needs, emotions, attributions and expectations. They are not lab rats; they present the (to psychologists typically irritating) problem that they know when they are being observed and have things done to them. No tablet is popped in a vacuum; it carries a load of motivations, expectations and emotions with it.

People are also more likely to look for a remedy as the symptoms get worse. The symptoms are at their worst (logically) just before they get better. This means that statistically speaking, people are most likely to try a remedy just before the problem improves, whether it was through the remedy or because it would have anyway. Of course, the improvement is always attributed to the remedy; this reinforces expectations for the next time.

 

What I tried to elaborate on in subsequent posts, is that the reason I'm skeptical is because most new regulations are at some level lobbied by big business because it is often they who also benefit from them the most. It should be no revelation that these regulations often help them against smaller businesses and puts up barriers against new ones, as it is the smaller investors who are taxed by the burden.
What is the possible result? Consumers can be the loser too (higher costs, more scamful products).

Of course I can appreciate the need for safety, but where the line is drawn and how it is regulated is something I'm not so settled on.