Last night, I had me one of those conversations that leads to a blog post. The conversation was around the idea of certain natural health care products that are proven to work, and how taking them is better than taking some chemical. I’d like to point out that this opinion is rampant, promoted by any number of health care and non-health care professionals to the point that it is essentially believed true. And it is incorrect. It’s actually just another example of the Appeal to nature fallacy.

The first thing I thought of when we had the conversation was this incredibly good video by youtuber c0nc0rdance (who if you aren’t already subscribing to, I highly recommend it) that has been making it’s way around the science blogs of late. I very much appreciate the thorough and concise approach of the video, and feel that it cleanly makes the argument in a lot of ways.

Many drugs make their start as what the masses think of as natural products. But science then goes through the process of isolating the thing in that natural product that has the desired impact. The benefits of doing this are numerous, but the two most important ones are that we can control the dosage of the active ingredient and remove any other chemicals that might counteract or poorly interact with the body. Imagine, for instance, that an enzyme that occurs in deadly nightshade is capable of aiding in the treatment of glaucoma. I am making this example up, so please don’t start eating deadly nightshade if you have glaucoma. If we can determine what that enzyme is, we can find ways to get it that don’t require someone to consume the plant and thus run the risk of belladonna poisoning, or that some other chemical in the plant reacts with some other drug the person is taking.

So you have a natural remedy that has shown the ability to help with a given ailment. How much should you take? How much of the actual active ingredient is in the remedy? Is it a standard amount, or will it fluctuate depending on where the plant was harvested, how much of the remedy is made up of leaves, stalk, root, etc., when it was harvested, and all the myriad variables that can have an impact? In the case of a medical product that has been derived in a lab, we know the exact dosage, and that dosage is the same because the variables are ruled out. It’s the difference between a yard stick and stretching your hand out from your nose as a means of measure.

Not only that, but I have a newsflash. Everything is made up of chemicals. Chemicals get a bad name, and it’s laughable. Having a scientific name does not equate to being safe or dangerous, and being “natural” does not either. I wrote an article a while ago here entitled Drugs, Supplmenets, And Side Effectsthat talked about this concept. You can overdose on broccoli. The difference is that when we are taking medicine that comes from a doctor, we stand a better chance of understanding the safety and efficacy of a dosage, and what interactions there might be.

Some natural products have been highly evaluated, such as St. John’s Wort, and we have a stronger understanding of their interactions and side effects. But that is not the case for broccoli. We know that it has many things that are good about it and that it can be helpful in dealing with things like cancer, but we don’t understand the reason why and we have no information on side effects. Let’s say that someone reads on the internet that Diindolylmethanewhich is one of the components of broccoli is good at fighting cancer. This may well be true, and there are clinical trials underway to determine this. But how much is too much? How much is too little? The simple answer is we don’t bloody know.

Medical innovation often starts with what they would call natural products, but unlike the bottle of bling blong chow you bought at the supplement store, they refine, test, and control the product to make it safer, healthier, more consumable (if you watched the video, imagine eating all that yew bark!), and more understood. The end result is a reliable treatment, and not a pipe dream of health. I know which one I’d want to eat…

Jim