Unfortunately, this practice is often rooted in folkloric beliefs, superstition or misinformation. Home remedies and unscientific treatments may translate into dangerous practices masquerading as helpful advice or holistic alternatives.
All Advice Is Not Equal
One of the most dangerous aspects of patients seeking advice on social media is the assumption that the recommendations made by friends and family should carry the same weight as a doctor’s advice. A recent example came from my own Facebook feed, from a friend soliciting advice on alternative treatment for hypertension. Within just a few hours, many individuals replied with recommendations on various supplements as well as suggesting yoga, meditation and stress relief. Few, if any, advised taking medically prescribed medications as advised as part of treatment.
There are multiple problems with this chat room approach to medicine and health.
1. Practicing medicine without a license
In medical practice, doctors and other licensed healthcare providers (nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and in some states, pharmacists) are licensed to practice medicine and prescribe medication based on years of education and experience. Clinical decisions such as prescribing medications or other medical treatment are based on a thorough knowledge of medicine, pharmacology, human physiology along with empirical research and evidence based practice guidelines. The privilege of prescribing carries with it the responsibility for safe prescribing and medical practice, meaning
that we can be held legally liable or responsible for our patient’s outcomes.
While friends or family members are often exempt from prosecution, when they recommend medications or treatments on Facebook, or in person, they are essentially practicing medicine without a license. While we hope that people have the commonsense to see a specialist, rather than their neighbor for advice, that is not always the case.
But it’s more than a legal consideration; it’s an ethical and moral one too.
Assuming responsibility
If you are the advice giver, stop and consider for a moment: Are you willing to assume responsibility for the advice being given? In the example cited above, the advice seeker has high blood pressure and doesn’t want to take his medications. If that patient decides to forgo his medications and follows your advice, are you willing to take responsibility; if he has a heart attack, stroke or even renal failure from untreated blood pressure? If he developed liver failure from over-the-counter supplements?
Are you qualified to give this advice? Being an avid reader on the internet doesn’t count, nor does celebrity.
The celebrity advice giver: Jenny McCarthy
In recent years, a former Playboy Playmate has managed to single handedly become one of the newest public health menaces. Just because Jenny McCarthy has a media platform to spew wildly inaccurate anti-vaccine rhetoric regarding childhood vaccines, doesn’t mean she’s qualified to do so. While posing naked is hardly
a medical credential, her ignorance doesn’t abdicate her from resuming responsibility for her message.
Scott Hurst makes an excellent argument in the 2009 article, “Shouting Fire” that given her high profile, along with her virulent (and successful) campaign against childhood vaccinations, she should be held at least partially responsible for the upswing in preventable illnesses and outbreaks due to low vaccination rates in many parts of the country. In fact, the Jenny McCarthy body count website tracks the number of preventable illnesses and deaths due to anti-vaccination hysteria. In their view, parents of affected children should feel free to submit their medical (or funeral) bills to Ms. McCarthy. It may be the only way to get her to reconsider her position as a medical source for millions.
2. Substituting herbal supplements for medications
Of course, at the heart of this discussion is the misguided belief that supplements, herbal medications and so-called ‘holistic medications’ are somehow less hazardous, and less unnatural than pharmaceutical grade, FDA regulated products. With “Facebook medicine” many people are seeking and choosing to discontinue their prescribed medications in favor of vitamins, and supplements recommended by unlicensed non-healthcare personnel. In addition to the problems described above, the ingestion of multiple vitamins and supplements in lieu of, or even in addition to prescribed medications can be a risky proposition.
There are several reasons why people should think twice before attempting to treat medical problems using over-the-counter vitamins, dietary supplements and herbal preparations. All of these concerns revolve around the reason that these substances are over-the-counter in the first place: limited or no Food & Drug Administration (FDA) regulation and oversight.
Unproven and unscientific
Basically, the bar or set standards for sale and consumption are lower for items like cosmetics, vitamins or supplements. Unlike drugs or medications which are required to demonstrate both safety and effectiveness for FDA approval, there is no such requirement for many of these items. That’s because, in the past, the majority of these items were considered fundamentally harmless.
At the same time, the FDA does restrict manufacturer’s ability to make claims regarding these products. For example, vitamin E capsules (and the company manufacturing these capsules) do not have to prove that their capsules contain vitamin E, nor do they
need to conduct randomized studies to prove it works. However, it
is illegal for the company marketing the vitamin E capsules to then make health claims by saying, “Vitamin E will improve vision, and reduce the incidence of heart disease”. Now often consumer companies may make false or exaggerated claims, but that’s when the FDA should step in and issue warnings for such violations.
Not required to be proven safe or effective
While manufacturers of these supplements have no responsibility to demonstrate the safety or efficacy of their products prior to making it available to consumers, the FDA can recall these supplements once they have been demonstrated to harm the public. However, it may take several instances of serious adverse events or even deaths for a recall to occur.
According to Alison Young’s recent article, over half of the recalls of drugs for serious or fatal adverse effects were herbal supplements.
Unmeasured versus inert
(What’s really in this stuff, anyway?)
There are two very specific but contradictory concerns for herbal and supplemental products. Products can be either pharmacologically active (thus a drug) or biologically inert. For pharmacologically active ingredients, purity and dosing become important considerations. While most people wouldn’t take a blind handful of blood pressure medications, many people don’t think twice about taking unregulated herbal medications or vitamins, even in mega-dose quantities.
”Herbal” is a misnomer. This terminology is used to imply to the substance is somehow more pure or safe than its pharmaceutical counterpart. In reality, the opposite is true.
Almost all drugs come from natural plants and herbs. However, the refining process for pharmaceutical use is essential to maintain equal dosing to ensure the medication strength is consistent from pill to pill or bottle to bottle. This is particularly important for medications that require only minute quantities. Take foxglove, or the digitalis variety. Extracts from this pretty flowered plant family (digoxin) are used to treat serious cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation as well as congestive heart failure. However, the amounts used to treat patients therapeutically are measured in micrograms (or 1/1000th of milligram) which makes it an extremely toxic choice for do-it-yourselfers or unregulated botanicals. Too much digoxin can cause severe bradycardia, nausea, vomiting, changes in vision, seizures, collapse and can be fatal.
A good way to think of this unmeasured versus inert is: “If substance X actually works, then it’s a drug (and should be regulated for purity and quality). If it doesn’t actually work, then it’s a waste of money.
What’s on the label isn’t always what’s in the bottle
Since herbal compounds and vitamin supplements aren’t regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), there is no quality oversight or assurance that capsules, supplements or tinctures actually contain any of the desired substance. Stoeckle et al. (2011) revealed that even commercially available tea preparations were often contaminated or substituted with common weeds and grasses.
A widely publicized report by Canadian researchers made headlines this year when it was revealed that less than half of all tested herbal compounds actually contained the marketed product. In the study by Newmaster et al, (2013) the researchers used the plant’s DNA to identify the mystery substances of 44 products by 12 popular companies. The researchers found that several herbs were substituted with ingredients that were either toxic or known to cause cancer. Other products used unlabeled fillers containing wheat, rice or soybean based items, which could be potentially life-threatening in people with allergic conditions.
Herbals tainted with drugs
In other cases, the so-called supplements were actually spiked with pharmaceutical medications, in unknown quantities. In a recent investigative series by USAToday journalists, Alejandro Gonzalez, Alison Young and Jerry Mosemak, it was revealed that numerous supplements were intentionally tainted with antipsychotics, human growth hormones, amphetamines and other drugs by the manufacturers to promote sales.
Credible sources
So in the end, remember that medical advice is all about promoting health and safety. Unless you are the treating provider, never advise anyone to quit their current medications, avoid vaccinations, ingest unproven 'remedies' or ignore the treatment prescribed by their doctor. For those seeking medical information - stick with the professionals with bonafide credentials; medical physicians (MD or DO), physician's assistants (PA-C), nurse practitioners (NP) or pharmacists (PharmD).
Article Source: The Examiner
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On a personal note, let me say that I am by no means against natural aids, quite the contrary. I in fact swear by several. Age old ones, not mass market pitched variety. It
is about diligently employing common sense, and being reasonable and realistic...to remain mindful of the fact
that there is really no such thing as "miracle cures".
To quote Patrick Swayze, who so bravely fought against pancreatic cancer..."If you had the "magic cure" you'd be two things, you would be very rich and you would be very famous, so do me a favor... just shut up!"
Above all to never suggest or recommend to anyone what they should do, use or ingest to remedy any symptom or health issue. Only to advise to seek the sound advice of a professional and licensed practitioner. Anything beyond that I consider to be not only dangerous but quite simply irresponsible.
In today's age of rapid-fire information, this recklessness has become much more prevalent. And is, to say the least, a worrisome turn. Remain mindful that anyone can SAY and claim anything, but that does not mean it is true. Do your own in depth research and don't fall for gimmicks and fads that inevitably abound. Nor the word of the friend who tells you what will "fix it all up".
Suggestions for healthy foods, recipes and basic tried and true supplements is perfectly fine...such as garlic, apple cider vinegar, natural herbs and spices. But never make a claim to someone that a natural, herbal or holistic product, or any substance for that matter, will help or cure their ail, that is just wrong.
Why? First, prolific reading on the internet or elsewhere, nor any experimentation you may have done does not qualify you in any way to advise about medical issues. Second, unless you have the extensive education and experience of a licensed practioner, you have absolutely
no business giving advice. Third, you have no idea of an individual's physiology and how their body may react or hidden conditions they may have which could potentially cause more harm by recommendations you make. You may think that a product will be helpful, or at the very least, will be harmless. That way of thinking is dead wrong.
Of course everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but NOT for those beliefs to cause potential harm to others. To make bold claims with certitude, though completely absent of principle and solid deductive and rigorous scientific evidence is simply to be indulging oneself in magical thinking.
Also, I have encountered a few people who are so dug into their anti-establishment/anti-conventional stance, they make appalling and obviously ridiculously untrue claims against their doctor, and the medical field in general. This is terribly offensive to me. In my experience, medical professionals are among the finest individuals you could ever know, who so selflessly dedicate their lives to healing and saving people. I have two family members in the medical field. These people deserve to be honored, not reviled.
Of course, when you employ what to me is a reasonable way of thinking , the zealots will inevitably label you as having "cognative dissonance" and of being nothing more than a "sheople". Whateeever. Myself, I'd say just the opposite is the truth.
My feelings on this subject are, I believe, well founded having sadly watched one of my dear sisters in law alter
her life as she became overtaken with the idea of "natural" and alternative remedies. Deciding to forego conventional treatment. This in turn proved out to exacerbate her already serious pre-existing condition. Ending up with the development of toxicity and damage to her liver due to a product not being the aid it had been claimed to be. Not pretty. This experience reinforcing for me that it is truly nothing to mess around with, especially when in absence
of thorough research. And truthfully, not even then. This has and is happening to so many well meaning people due to the spread of bogus claims and information.
This new "natural" trend grew legs and became all the rage in the 1990's. Suddenly the stores had sizeable sections devoted to these new miracle products. As well, health food stores began cropping up in every strip mall. It became just another big money-making industry. It didn't take long before many of these products proved to be in fact utterly useless and in several cases proven to be quite harmful.
Then suddenly in the 2000's it was the colon cleanse craze. You'd notice the seemingly wall to wall info-mercials...then it dropped away almost as quickly as it cropped up. Again, before too long the health claims were largely disproven as well as many who having bought into it began running into complications. To my mind, this should all be a red flag to people. But by nature so many are susceptible and gullible to the shrewd marketing...they want to believe.
This new "natural" trend grew legs and became all the rage in the 1990's. Suddenly the stores had sizeable sections devoted to these new miracle products. As well, health food stores began cropping up in every strip mall. It became just another big money-making industry. It didn't take long before many of these products proved to be in fact utterly useless and in several cases proven to be quite harmful.
Then suddenly in the 2000's it was the colon cleanse craze. You'd notice the seemingly wall to wall info-mercials...then it dropped away almost as quickly as it cropped up. Again, before too long the health claims were largely disproven as well as many who having bought into it began running into complications. To my mind, this should all be a red flag to people. But by nature so many are susceptible and gullible to the shrewd marketing...they want to believe.
the breeding of this recklessness is only growing. Then there is the lunacy of the seemingly endless conspiracy theories that now abound more than ever before. Which,
of course, only serves to further exacerbate it all. At times
I say to myself, it's no wonder people can't think straight!
It is all tricky and controversial ground and I for one will never lay claim to any medical or health expertise, only
It is all tricky and controversial ground and I for one will never lay claim to any medical or health expertise, only
lay knowledge...my way of thinking is that my food is my medicine in concert with conventional treatments and the sound advice of my physician, who happens to promote many (safe) natural remedies. My supplements are fruits and vegetables, naturally grown herbs & spices and basic everyday vitamin supplements. Keep it simple. In the wise words of my mother....
"All things in moderation".
Be wise and use common sense
