Being well informed about what you’re taking is important whether you’re taking medically prescribed medicine or nature-based supplements and remedies. Having said that, people dying from prescription drug reactions, dangerous interactions, errors, etc, are high while there are few to none from taking natural remedies.
Every so often out comes an article like the above in Australia but a lot less often about the safety of Pharma industry medicines, apart from opioids and depression medications whose effects can be dangerous and lethal. Many would be surprised just how much damage can be done by medically-prescribed medicines.
Mhh, Colloidal Silver…
If a natural remedy actually worked, it would be mainstream “medicine”. There’s so many examples of this.
The other thing is, there’s nothing “natural” about a highly refined extract in a capsule. It’s just an unregulated untested concoction of molecules, usually with a common name you see at the supermarket like turmeric or ginseng.
Alternative medicine is a placebo at best, and has an adverse reaction at worst. The TGA only cares about the latter.
Of course, people die because they think they’re treating a condition when they’re actually not.
The article is specifically about andrographis btw, which I’ve never heard of, but apparently like half of Australians use as a natural cold remedy. It’s unclear how much it works but it’s not totally useless. The risk is a sudden allergic reaction/anaphylaxis.
I do think supplements and OTC remedies can be helpful even if it’s largely placebo, but it should be regulated. It seems like maybe the problem here might be dosage, or maybe it should be banned, no idea, but it would be nice if some regulatory body could research that and let us know.
The regulation here is the TGA responding to science that andrographis comes with too high an acceptable adverse risk. Like with many things, over-reacting with bans rather than researching is so much easier, cough e-bikes, cough.
Well, I’ve ruled out mushrooms.
Unless I want to get rid of somebody, in which case they work perfectly as a natural remedy.
