After a decade of increasing acceptance of alternative therapies in this country, some recent health letters contain articles damning herbal and homeopathic remedies. I was shocked to read these in the November edition of “Worst Pills, Best Pills.” The monthly letter published by the Public Citizen’s Health Research Group traditionally has been months or years ahead of the FDA in warning of serious side effects of prescription drugs.
In the “Do Not Use” column is Echinacea, an herbal remedy made from coneflowers, often touted as a prevention or cure for the common cold. Even though the herb has a long history of use by more than a dozen Native American tribes, it was used for other ailments such as sore mouth and gums, cough, toothache, even snakebite and hydrophobia. A recent study, however, found it “not to have clinically significant effects on infection with rhinovirus.”
Okay, I’ll buy that. Various members of my family have had only marginal results taking Echinacea to reduce cold symptoms. I’ve had better luck by increasing my regular dose of vitamin C as soon as anyone in the family or office starts sneezing and coughing on my telephone, computer, doorknobs, etc. and washing my hands till the skin prunes. “Worst Pills” cites a 2004 review of some trials, which found that vitamin C does not prevent upper respiratory infections. I’m hanging with Linus Pauling on this one.
About once every four years, this approach fails, or I’ve failed to notice exposure to a virus. At the first hint of a scratchy throat or sniffle, I take the appropriate homeopathic remedy and, voilà. No more symptoms develop.
So guess what. On the following pages, “Worst Pills” slams homeopathy. Now, I’m aware that many medical professionals don’t understand the principle of this practice that has flourished in Europe and Asia for centuries. Of those who reject the notion of its efficacy, most say any benefit is the result of the placebo effect.
I’m willing to allow that in people, even those who are skeptical of a remedy’s effectiveness, the placebo effect can be significant. To this, I’d say, so what? If it works, who cares?
I learned of homeopathy from a doctor of Oriental medicine who treated my horses with acupuncture. In concert with traditional acupuncture needles, he sometimes gave the horses arnica (in little sugar tablets under the tongue) for intractable pain from arthritis. It was also used in an alcohol-based lotion applied to sore back muscles and bruises. The effects were often dramatic.
Now, I can assure you that a horse does not know from the placebo effect. Even the ones who are clever in many ways just aren’t smart enough to know that the tablets you place in their mouths are any different from the sugar cubes they occasionally get that have no clinical benefit whatsoever. A horse can sag to its knees from the pressure of your hand over its back. You apply arnica lotion and moments later, you can press as hard as you want and the horse will not even blink. This, I believe, is not a placebo effect. Arnica is my remedy of choice for my own bruises, sprains and muscle spasms.
Doctors have asked me how it’s possible that I haven’t thrown up in 35 years, surrounded as I often am with barfing babies and adults with intestinal flu. Well, I found another homeopathic remedy called nux vomica, which quells nausea in a matter of minutes. I take it with me on boat rides, too, just in case.
Three years ago, our puppy was bitten in the face by a small rattlesnake. Baby dog, baby rattler, bad prognosis. His nose was swelling fast, so I put a half dropper full of crotalus horridus antivenom in his mouth, repeating the dose every 10 minutes. By the time we got him to the hospital, the swelling was almost gone and he was breathing normally. The vet was amazed. So was I. Hard to call that a placebo effect.
Anyway, all this alternative medicine bashing comes at a time when, we are told, an avian flu pandemic is looming. With pharmaceutical companies playing catch-up on developing a suitable flu vaccine, there’s news from Asia about an alternative remedy for avian flu. Sauerkraut. Doctors are laughing. I’m not.
Many years ago, I discovered that sauerkraut has excellent antifungal properties. I had a horse with a condition known as scratches. Since he had the same amount of lesions on all four legs, he was the perfect candidate for an experiment. I treated one leg with my vet’s sulphur-smelling ointment, one with a commercial cream, one with a popular remedy for athlete’s foot, and the fourth with sauerkraut juice. To be fair, the vet’s preparation, which smelled marginally worse than the sauerkraut, did dry up the sores but left deep thick scabs that were slow to shed. The other two didn’t do much of anything. The leg treated with only sauerkraut juice (at a fast $3 a quart) was completely healed in about a week with no scabs or scars. I was convinced.
If the avian flu ever gets here and mutates to pass from human to human, I’ll most likely be found in the imported foods aisle at Trader Joe’s stocking up on sauerkraut. Big Pharma and the FDA will still be double-blind studying the new universal vaccine nasal spray. That is, if the NIH can get sufficient funding from the government, which is still throwing money at the old-fashioned chicken-and-egg method.
Meanwhile, I’m sticking with tried-and-true folk remedies, herbs, homeopathics, placebo and all. Whatever works.