I think herbal medicine can cure common aliments as the modern scientific medicine has its origins in herbal medicine but it cannot kill something like bacteria or viruses and have any effect on genetic diseases like cancer.
When I got infected after drinking unhygienic street food several years ago twice.. if i had taken traditional herbal medicine i would have been dead within a month... but modern antibiotic medicine no matter how nasty they are cured me within a month both times.
@safiuddinkhan People probably downplay herbal medicine by extension to their distrust for homeopathy — which they are right about, any substance in trace amounts can't have effect, but they are wrong about plants of course — plants to contain active substances that have observable effect, this is where stuff was originally extracted from. Even ephedrine was extracted from leaves, not made in some lab, and it does have very clear effect 🤪
@m0xee yeah indeed
@m0xee herbal can only cure mild illnesses at best.
@m0xee @safiuddinkhan If herbal medicine hadn’t worked, human race would have gone extinct thousands years ago 😉
@VikingKong @m0xee originally herbal medicine was the medicine.. the modern scientific medicine evolved out of the herbal medicine.
@m0xee @safiuddinkhan 1/2
Of course plants have active ingredients and lots of substances, some inert and some chemically active in the human body.
The real problem with herbology is the impossibility of measuring dose: chances are you either get too little of it and get no real benefit (other than placebo), or you get too much and get intoxicated.
@m0xee @safiuddinkhan
2/2
E.g., we know that aspirin is useful AND safe in doses ranging from 88 to 1500 mg per day. Now, try to make a willow tree bark infusion that has enough but not too much, it’s a coin toss.
Every leave in a plant has different concentrations of the active ingredients, and don’t even start on different individual plants. Other than taking it to a lab to have it processed and measured, there is NO SIMPLE WAY to know how much (or little) it has 🤷🏽♂️
@neurologo I agree with you. I was just noting that a lot of people dismiss herbal medicine as some completely made up stuff like homeopathy. No, it's very real, it just has implications, like dosage as you've just noted. It does not in fact contradict evidence-based medicine. A lot of people believe that if there were no trials, there can be no effect — no, plants do have active substances and their effect might be very real — lack of trials is just that.
@safiuddinkhan
@safiuddinkhan But yeah, it's no replacement for antibiotics and more advanced medicine in general.
Herbs can still help inflammation, reduce skin irritation, reduce mild anxiety — for the rest we have more streamlined stuff.
People just often go to extremes about this — some start taking strong stuff against mild fever some try to downplay the seriousness of their condition until it's too late and when it's time to be operated on 🤷