Tinnitus - do you have ringing in the ears?

How about the victims of "natural" products containing ephedrine used for weight reduction? Anybody who thinks that "natural" means innocuous is mistaken. As far as I know the venom from the Black Mamba is purely "natural". Another conspiracy theorist, no doubt.

Pbb, to ridicule natural medicine is about as ridiculous an argument as anyone could make. How do you think you got here? It wasn't because we had hyper purified or synthetic medications to cure all your ancestors' ills. Most modern drugs that are effective are derived from or are synthesized versions of natural sources.

Unfortunately, compounds that provide balance and usability by the human body are often processed out of them, resulting in less effective or more highly toxic drugs. But no corporation is going to get rich promoting something that you can grow in your own garden. The capitalist system is not necessarily the most advantageous for the advancement of medicine. What's more profitable, healing the sick or maintaining their illnesses for the rest of their lives while suppressing the symptoms? I once read that, in China, doctors get paid only when you are well. Now that, if true, makes perfect sense and would be a positive feedback mechanism towards health for all, rather than the opposite which is what we have now in North America.

Any medication can be misused, I'm not saying that natural medicines are always harmless, just that they are underutilized in modern society due to economics.

"Higher doses of the concentrated synthetic analog of ephedra are still available, and in far higher doses per pill than the herbal form, as brought out by Allan Spreen, M.D. Sudafed stands for pseudo-ephedrine."

So why didn't they take Sudafed off the market? Another conspiracy theorist-theorist no doubt.

I have periodic short episodes (minutes) of tinnitus in my left ear primarily, and had learned a while ago that ginger is helpful (blood thinning), but that most NSAIDS
(esp. aspirin) cause it. Garlic's anticoagulant properties are supposed to be of minor help too. I'll try to ask my acupuncturist next time....

Pbb once again your charges are simply wrong. Ephedrine was removed from the market and is synthetic. Ephedra which is natural was not the cause of the health problems. Close, but no cigar, even an organic one!

Asdf, I never said that natural products could not be effective in certain cases, I have simply stated that this hairy fairy notion that because something is natural it is innocuous is at best untrue, and at worst dangerous. I knew the Chinese medicine reference would surely pop up. It is strange how you seem to believe that disease is unknown in China or well under control because of their traditional medicine. The last time I checked, SARS and avian flu were not being too well controlled with traditional medicine. There are certainly lessons to learn from the practices and generally from the way of thinking of other cultures or civilisations, both existing and gone, but I would stick to the work of Banting and Best, of J. Salk, Pasteur, A. Fleming and all who have followed and worked and still work to alleviate suffering and postpone our inevitable meeting with the Grim Reaper. The fact that governments in America are taking their distance more and more from regulating the drug industry and that we hear more often of research results that are played around with is disconcerting. The fact that the AMA is a lobbying group to keep the profession tooling around in 7 Series BMWs and living in gated communities is also alarming. Again, another issue, you have your problems we have ours. Natural remedies are now given a free ride and can be advertised with claims that cannot be substantiated. When dealing with a cable, preamp or speakers that practice is simply annoying, sometimes even uproarious. When dealing with health issues, I think people should draw the line.