Natural remedies "seldom effective"

Thought I would post this as well. A friend with RA started doing castor oil wraps everyday for 2 weeks. She now does the wraps on a regular bases as she doesn't have the pain she had and the swelling went down in her joints. Thus she can again go about the activities she did before. Note she was on several type of drugs which shut her liver down to 25 percent. They had no choice but to take her off the drugs. This home remedy was her only hope. She also had tumor cancer of the uterus that she didn't know about. They spotted a dark area in her uterus/stomach/and bottom part of her lungs. This came about as she started having sever bleeding and discharge of a black green substance from her uterus. She had been on the castor oil wraps for around 6 months. Her doctors had never seen a tumor in the uterus die like this before. Between the time they did the 1st scans and right before her surgery to remove her uterus, a later scan detected no dark area in lungs/stomach/uterus. They had diagnosed her at stage 3 cancer before this. They went in to remove part of her stomach, lungs, and lymph nodes. The lymph nodes came back clear as well as the lungs and stomach. She believes the castor oil killed the tumor and cancer. I believe it did as well since I saw how it shrunk our dogs fatty tumor when we wrapped it with castor oil wraps. Doctors about killed her with drugs and a home remedy brought her back. My stepmother/aunt both died in the hands of doctors with their cancers. Stepmother had been diagnosed with a 5" tumor in her lungs. She started on coral calcium and green veggie/carrots and the last scan she had it had shrunk to 2". Doctor found out she was on these herbs and bee pollen and told her to stop taking them. She died within 3 months in his hands.

reply to post by SurrealisticPillow

I worked on the pipe line and kept a bottle of bee pollen on the desk. I took it every morning as well as a few others who were interested in it. Those of us that were on the bee pollen didn't get the flu when it hit. Those who didn't take it got the flu. Yes I had a lot of bee pollen on hand. You might want to try Elderberry juice as well when symptoms start. I had read that it stops the connectors of the virus from entering the cells. Since I don't do the bee pollen every day due to the problem of getting bee pollen any longer (you want to be able to use bee pollen from your area). I have found elderberry juice taken as soon as you notice the symptoms within 1/2 a day, are gone

i would love to here from someone who worked in the big pharma or chemo areas, and then went natural. an inside voice

Some I have found that work: arjuna, willow bark, cranberry (for kidney), tumeric (inflamation, like arthritis & hives), senna root, psyllum husks, ecaluptus and castor, clove oil for toothache, tea tree oil to speed healing, plantain polstices to minimize scarring and speed healing, tobacco for bee stings.

Colloidal silver, arnica

I will admit I only read the first three pages but had to jump in.
#1 Arnica: Listed in the OP arnica not only works but works very well. No study just the results of actual use. My mother-in-law had an accident and my daughter recommended arnica. I will tell you that the results were great. Two days later the doctors could not even believe she was in an accident.
#2 Colloidal silver: Also listed by the OP. I have read that this is the only thing that has shown any positive results (cure) for morgellons disease. The cure was around hundreds of years before the disease. And Yes, silver has been used for a very long time before some asks about it we just make it a newer way now.
2 others that I have personal results with.
Raw honey (uncooked). At least 8 people with chronic heartburn problems and one with acid reflux. All of them the problem is gone with one spoon full at night before bed for 2 weeks. Big pharma will convice you that the only way to go is acid pump blockers. This eliminates magnesium in your system and prevents more from coming in. I really think that the next “bad medicine” commercials will be from acid pump blockers for causing osteoporosis. Besides that these meds only correct the symptom and not the cause. The main cause is E. Pylori bacteria damaging the lining of your stomach. Honey kills e. pylori. But big pharma will not get rich if you take honey for 2 weeks and the problem is gone.
Tea tree oil. Best cure for athletes foot that I ever came across. I fill a quart spray bottle with isopropyl alcohol and the add a half bottle of the oil. I spray on my feet before I put on my shoes. A recurring problem that I suffered with for years, gone. It also clears toenail fungus without harming your liver. Yes the fungus will take some time to disappear as your toenails have to grow back out but I now have pink toenails. It also works very well on dandruff.

I cannot recommend these things as I am not a medical professional and could get a lawsuit for making medical recommendations. I however can say that the results I have had/seen with these few have been so great that the OP and its link is a bunch of cow dung.

Unfortunately I'm a bit short of time so I've not had chance to read every post in the thread.
Although I'm absolutely positive that there are many natural remedies which are effective, I'm also very certain that more of them are ineffective and rely on the placebo effect for "results".
Are people also aware about how much the natural remedy business is worth (I include all forms in this, from acupuncture to homoeopathy)?
Surely there's a counter-conspiracy which keeps you spending your money on these?

Originally posted by Afterthought
How did our ancestors ever survive without big pharma?

AtG, you need to do your research for BOTH sides of the spectrum. I had a terrible skin infection. Doctors prescribed 9 different antibiotics, but none of them worked.

Then, I read about oil of oregano. Got some and I was cured within two weeks without side effects.

I was also on antidepressants for a few years. After doing some of my own research, I quit them cold turkey (don't do this -- it was horrible!) and started taking 5000 iu of D3. I haven't felt so good in years. Now, if I'm depressed, there's a reason for it. I don't have days of feeling sad and anxious for no reason.

I had a similar experience. I placed a cotton swab with a few drops of Oregano oil on a perstsitent pimple on my back and secured it with a bandaid overnight. Within a week it was completely healed. Nothing else had been effective on this very localized skin infection which had been there for more than six months.

If there is one reason why natural Remedies "may" not be effective it is this one: The pre-packaged stuff that many herbal stores sell, you will pay a high price for all that packaging, and in the product itself you will only have a small amount of the ingredient they claim is in this package. Everything else is fillers in the product. So, just like big pharmaceutical companies, the goal here is to cause you to keep buying the product over and over again.

Natural Remedies DO work, otherwise how in the hell did people live without doctors, drug stores, etc, for hundreds of years? They had to rely on nature and her powerful medicinal properties. People need to only buy the herb itself (in most whole foods stores they are sold by the ounce) and use it like that, instead of wasting their money on fancy packaging with only a small amount of the product inside.

Originally posted by Kllyblvn
reply to post by SurrealisticPillow

 

I worked on the pipe line and kept a bottle of bee pollen on the desk. I took it every morning as well as a few others who were interested in it. Those of us that were on the bee pollen didn't get the flu when it hit. Those who didn't take it got the flu. Yes I had a lot of bee pollen on hand. You might want to try Elderberry juice as well when symptoms start. I had read that it stops the connectors of the virus from entering the cells. Since I don't do the bee pollen every day due to the problem of getting bee pollen any longer (you want to be able to use bee pollen from your area). I have found elderberry juice taken as soon as you notice the symptoms within 1/2 a day, are gone

Ditto to this! I used to get bronchiatis every spring and every fall. Nearly every attack of it landed me in a hospital. But now, I make my own elderberry syrup, and whenever I feel the symptoms coming on, I take a tablespoon or two of that and it knocks it out! No sickness or hospital for me after I do that.

Originally posted by Kllyblvn
Herniated ulcer: Cornstarch & Milk. Cured my moms and cured mine. Wasn't over night but each time an attack came on I took it and it relieved it immediately. I have not had an attack in over 5 years now.
Castor oil: Our dog had a fatty tumor on his lip it got as big as a baseball. Using castor oil wraps for two weeks it shrunk to a golf ball size. Then I rubber banded the core attached to his lip and it fell off in two days and never came back.
Elderberry juice when flu like symptoms are coming on and it stops it dead in its tracks within a 1/2 a day.

IMO pharmacies make no money if we find ways to heal ourselves with out their costly drugs. Of course they are going to pay people off to say "they don't work".

Sigh castor oil is supposed to reduce wrinkles....so far.......its not working LOL

I am curious as to how you got the dog to keep the bandage on, mine would have had it scratched off in no time LOL

reply to post by Nana2


Just bear in mind that before doctors and pharma etc, a human's life expectancy was probably only half of what it is now. Remember, people often used to die from an infected tooth or a small cut back then so comparing the natural remedies to what we have now in that respect is pretty much invalid.

reply to post by My.mind.is.mine


They work well because the ones that work we took and made medicine out of. The rest was left to rot.


There's natural remedy and then BS. When I became pre diabetic, I literally put cinnamon on everything I ate in copious amounts. Because it is chemical fact that it has insulin-like properties. After, I normalized and never got diabetes, and have been significantly healthier with running daily.

This is science. "deer velvet" and whatever they were mentioning is not

I never use natural remedies, most of them are gimmicks and far less effective than synthesized pharms

Originally posted by jude11
Or is the REAL conspiracy in the fact that these studies are carried out by the very same people that gain by selling what Big Pharma has to push?

edit on 15-1-2012 by jude11 because: (no reason given)

remove your personal belief for a second, and this quote says it all.

i doubt that this article was published because all of a sudden the NZ medical institutes all banded together to tell people that something doesnt work. more like sales of "mainstream" medicine/drugs were down, and they needed some FUD to get the numbers back up again.

I've seen some natural remedies work, and ive seen some just not work @ all. there are even skeptics in the field of natural medicine itself, espcially around iridology and homeopathy..

my GF is actually studying to be in the field of natropathy. there is just as much mainstream medicine taught in it,science. its just the treatment and its methods of preventative and long term that are different from the pharmacological. honestly, i just think its because the drug companies havent figured out a way to mass produce it on the cheap yet. natural remedies provide a way out of an illness, mainstream medicine just cures the symptoms, not cause. get sick, take some panadol, dont feel the headache.. even though youve still got the cold!

/rant

Something we all need to bear in mind too is that these natural healing modalities have been corrupted and misapplied because they have been subject to ego-influenced healers, primarily those trying to appease medical practitioners over the years. To understand this, you must look back at the history of healing but primarily through the last, say, four hundred years. Healing will occur optimally when the healer guides a person through their own process. This takes a lot of experience first with the healer's own healing of Self.

Since we're discouraged from applying links to other sites lately, I suggest that you all do a search on the spiritual or metaphysical meaning of pain and disease. Read several of these documents so that you can see where they have come from. Do NOT expect to agree with a lot of what you read, particularly if you suffer from auto-immune diseases. These are the worst to treat because they are virtually all caused by wrong-thinking, and wrong-thinking begets and perpetuates wrong-thinking. Otherwise, give it some consideration. You will start to see lights coming on in the darkness.

I have been a healer for all time. Please do contact me if you'd like any help or advice.

I think the scientists in the OP make a very sweeping statement that for me creates a false dichotomy.
I've had positive and negative experiences with both alternative and pharma medicines.
Alternative medicines cover a wide range of territory, from herbalism (long recognized and qualified in Germany) to complimentary therapies that might work or not, but at least cause no harm, right down to sociopathic con-men, who eventually make false claims and diagnoses, and even add anything from inappropriate medications to industrial solvents to their "cures" (which is then sold to gullible punters as "natural" cures and vitamin pills).

Information between doctors can sometimes be highly contested.
For example, the herbal liver treatment Milk Thistle is still questioned in some studies, while in other countries it is one of the only effective treatments for poisonous mushrooms in hospitals.
It always depends what scientists are looking for - Arnica is not effective for everything, so one would have to discuss particular ailments in more detail before making sweeping (and rather arbitrary statements).
In that sense the thread is simply too broad.

Herbalsim is probably the closest to modern medicines, and indeed lies at the root of much modern medicine. Like pharma, it can cure in some doses, and poison in others.
I also think part of the Inquisition was to extract knowledge of poisons and cures from the healers who could cure or kill, or the "witches" (or the "venefica" - female poisoners or witches in the Romance languages).
One thinks of early treatments for gout (from a flower, or today's Colchicine), Purple Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) or Ephidrine (Ephydra distachya). However, I'd be very careful in using such herbs today, and in unqualified hands they could be deadly.
In that sense, pharma merely standardized the dosage, or later made chemical copies in standard doses.
In SA traditional herbalists are now organizing to fall under official bodies, to prevent abuse by conmen, since much of our population still relies on traditional healers for primary health care.
At times traditional healers in various countries are shocked about how the Western "alternative health" industries misuse their treatments.
A South American resin called Dragon's Blood for example was only applied to external wounds, but in the West some use it internally.

And so one could go from treatment to treatment.
I had a chaffed leg and opted for a herbal ointment that claimed to be based on "Ayurveda" and Indian healing herbs.
The sore festered until it became septic, and after two weeks I could hardly make it to the doctor, who cleared it up with antibiotics and anti-septic washes.
Later I found out that in Ayurveda the ointment was completely inappropriate, yet it's commonly sold at pharmacies.

I've also had long problems with fungal skin conditions in summer for many years.
Over-the-counter creams don't help, and neither does tea-tree oil.
I went on a three week anti-Candida diet, prescribed by an alternative healer also called the "candida guru" (because everyone who consults him is put on this diet), and I bought some barley at an astronomical price. For three weeks I stuck to this diet and ate nothing but potatoes, yoghurt and garlic.
It did nothing.

Eventually I got a powerful anti-fungal pill from the doctor, and the next day it was gone.
However, reading the insert and the possible side effects made me very paranoid.

Two summers ago it started again, and a friend who had been in London looked under my arm, and she gave me some cream to try. It's called Sudocrem, and is commonly used for nappy rash.
I was very skeptical at first.
But, it worked!
So an inexpensive cream still works for me right now, that is neither strictly pharma nor alternative!

At other times the answer is obvious, because pharma can only go so far.
I've had bouts of food poisoning, where no pill will stay down.
So three homeopathic pellets of Arsinicum under the tongue is the only option.
And I think it works, soon it subsides, and I can take some Immodium and sleep.
It's not scientific, but it works for me.

The doctors I've been to are also hesitant to prescribe addictive tranquilizers for panic attacks.
So I use Argentum and Rescue Remedy. I still get anxiety, but it hasn't gone over to a full attack in ages.
Perhaps it's a placebo and a crutch, but at least I'm not addicted to Ativan or Xanax, like many other people.
I'm quite surprised that some still doubt Valerian or Sceletium for anxiety and insomnia, although it depends on the situation.
At least the doctors I've seen try to keep people off "chemicals" for as long as possible, possibly because there is so much addiction, and their reputation rests on not fueling addiction, or attracting addicts.

I saw a Doctor OZ program yesterday, and almost everything he recommended was diet based or complimentary medicine (for example, lemon aromatherapy oil for fatigue).

Originally posted by Aloysius the Gaul
Ther is homeopathy for example - one of the most ridiculous pieces of woo to have ever existed!! If the premise of homeopathy is true - the "memory" thing - then every molecule of water on the planet should energise everyone because it was created in the big bang which is the most energetic event ever.

Which is the perfect industry to hook people through misleading information, like using ingredient information written in a format that most people recognize as concentrations, rather than dilutions. Take a homeopathic remedy that has Belladonna in it. The info label may say it contains a 3X HPUS amount of Belladonna in it. Few people understand that this actually means it underwent three 1:10 dilutions. There are trace amounts of the ingredients in the products, but you are correct--the premise is water memory. The woo-ier or more educated people may know this, but most everyday people do not.

And then there's the "natural remedies" that are wiping out species - trade in Rhino horns, tiger penises and the like.

Sorry bub, that's a different natural remedy ball game. Herbalism =/= Chinese Medicine.

There is a lot more to "natural remedies" than just Aloe Vera and Wormwood!

Indeed there is. And we owe it to ourselves to learn the differences between the medicine types, and equally so to understanding how to use them.

Just to add: So I don't experience this strict dichotomy between alternative treatments and science.
If anything, it is moving closer together, as doctors are less inclined to prescribe addictive tranquilizers or stimulants for some of our most common ailments like fatigue and insomnia.
I mean Dr. OZ is a medical doctor, and he recommends many alternative treatments, and health foods.

However, I think the OP made a brave point, and some people would follow anything "alternative" unconditionally simply because it is anti-pharma, and that is also very dangerous.
I also find it unacceptable that some posters immediately accused him of working for "big pharma", simply because he has an opinion.
Usually mods will immediately jump in and say we should discuss the topic and not each other.
I'm surprised that such a personal line was allowed to be followed, which solicited his personal career information.
The OP actually gave an occupation, and that was used for further ridicule.
That dogmatism in the alternative camp is truly frightening.
One could similarly ask right back what career in alternative medicine the trolls who solicit such information follow, and the irony is that some of the most insulting unconditional supporters of anything "alternative" did indicate that they made their living from that industry (although not all were trolls).

So thanks for your courage OP, and allowing a general response for many well-meaning posters.
Nobody should be flamed for following a scientific methodology, although in some cases that methodology is simply too narrow and incomplete, and in this case somewhat ignorant.
And yes, people should be careful of alternative medicines, and money is made in all quarters.
Essentially chemicals are chemicals, whether they are sold by big pharma or somebody else.
Every good healer will also know his or her limitations (and that can go both ways).

However, just to reject everything because it comes from "big pharma" is dogmatic.
It reminds me of the whole alternative music movement where your friends would turn on you for listening to anything "commercial" simply out of dogma, as if their own over-priced music came for free.
People demanded a lot from modern medical science, but it could not always deliver miracles.
But there's always somebody willing to sell you a "miracle".
Sometimes miracles do happen - cancer can go into remission, for example.
But, when certain alternative healers kill all of their patients for two decades, and credit themselves with false scientific degrees and papers (and medicines for those conditions have advanced and work), something is obviously wrong.
However, to fish all that out one would have to go into individual claims and healers.

Generally, my doctors are quite positive about complimentary medicines for therapeutic values, and they often even work in the same buildings alongside alternative therapists.
I guess that's not good enough for purists from either camp, but it's good enough for me.
I think it's the future really.

reply to post by Nana2


We put the wrap around the tumor. Plastic over that and then used a string to tie around the base of the tumor to hold it all on. He was an OLD dog so he didn't resist to much and I honestly think he knew we were trying to help

reply to post by My.mind.is.mine


Also, please bare in mind that the medical industry refuses in many many cases to even do clinical studies on homeopathic remedies for the simple reason that they DO work.

I know of at least three remedies that work like a bomb, and does not take long:

1. Urina - if you have any form of bladder infection, give it a bash. I can assure you, if you take it every hour if you have a bad case, then you will feel the difference the next day. And it cures it. I recommended this at an office where someone was seriously suffering and she could not believe the results!

2. Tonzolot - for thoat infection. Excellent! Works very very well for sore thoat and problem tonsils.

3. Achena Force (spelling) - for flue and infection. I have cured my daughter of flue many many times, once I actually tried regular medicines from a doctore first, it made her feel nausious, light headed and there was no imporvement. Then I tossed it all out, and changed back to achena and tonzolot. She was back at school the next day.

4. For burns, open wounds and where the skin is infected:
finely cut up comfry leafs (they are those big hairy ones), mix with sugar and a little Sunlight Green soap (sorry, don't know the US equivelant) and plaster on the wound. Works like a bomb.

5. For sore tummies, flu, and excellent for sore kidneys: Cucumber juice. Use a juice extractor and sip the juice slowly throughout the day. It is a miracle worker. Especially for sore kidneys and bladder problems. If you can have this juice first thng in the morning you will feel relief the same day. Garuanteed.

I can go on and on.... but I don't want to bore you.