Pills developed in Russia billed as medical miracle

Finally, they frequently claim to provide relief for a broad spectrum of conditions.

OTOH, pills from "Big Pharma" are often tested ad infinitum before being approved for ONE or a VERY FEW specific conditions...

And after awhile, doctors begin prescribing them for off-label usage...because they, too, are efficacious at more than one thing.

Full Disclosure: And, the "Big Pharma" pills often have the same set of side effects: headache, dry mouth, nausea, constipation, "sexual side effects". Just maybe, this is because many agents in the body are involved in more than one system, and there are feedback mechanisms? So affecting any one item is bound to have side effects...just as setting right one item that is out of whack may positively affect many different things.

Cheers!

OTOH, pills from "Big Pharma" are often tested ad infinitum before being approved for ONE or a VERY FEW specific conditions...

And after awhile, doctors begin prescribing them for off-label usage...because they, too, are efficacious at more than one thing.

Yes but I'm not aware of any "conventional" medication that claims to provide the spectrum of relief I see being claimed for alternative medicines.

I see your point and can't dispute it. The side effects may also be due to differences in individual physiologies.

And I'm not saying that these natural remedies don't have merit. Some of them probably do.
Let's not forget, most medicines DO stem from plants and whatnot.
Lets also not forget that these "natural" products can have serious side effects when combined, and may even kill you if you mix them with others or with pharmacy drugs.
You have to be very carefull with them, because unlike pharmacy type drugs which list what they may react with, there is no such system in place for organics.

Thing like these rely on what I term, "The survivor response".

If you interview people with cancer (I am one) they will tell you they are either in treatment or are a "cancer survivor". From that, you can determine, through interviews, that no one dies of cancer. Hence, here, if you interview people who are taking or have taken the pill, all are survivors. Obviously, the pill works.

I keep bees. There is a mite that is killing off colonies of bees. Many have come up with "home remedies" that work, because they tell us they work. Many follow that piper and extol the virtues of the technique. In about two years you never hear from them because they no longer keep bees. Or they tell you they have gone back to conventional treatments since, obviously, they got something wrong and did not do the treatment right, since their bees died. It is never that the treatment was an honest hoax in the first place.

Another, and major problem, with these sorts of "home remedies" is you never hear about the other treatments. You can assume from the article that the pills were in conjunction with standard therapy. You can often arrive at the same results with or without the pill. But the pill takes center stage, since we know people die of whatever is being treated, even with standard therapies. But the survival rate for most therapies is fairly high. I am alive because the cancer was cut out and after several CT scans, have no detectable cancer.

And then, there is the fact that the body does heal itself, no matter what is used. We do have immune systems that are designed for just that. I was told that all of us will encounter cancer in our bodies and most of the time the immune system kills it off, along with many other diseases.

One thing the pill does give, is hope, and many studies have shown that it is a major factor in the healing process. People in depression do not fare as well as those who take control of the process and fight. But you do not need a pill for that.

We need more testimony from people who have taken this product.

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Anecdote is not data. I know someone who contracted Hep C decades ago from a transfusion, when they didn't test blood for it. She was a dairy farmer at a time when everyone drank unpasteurized milk from the bulk tank and made their own yogurt. She is now in hospice w/terminal liver cancer. That is also anecdote, of course.

I know several people who are multi-level marketers. They have all jumped on the probiotic, neutriceutical bandwagon. They are all still taking their physician-prescribed meds for their various conditions. More anecdote.

In the past several years, several people I know, some of them only in their early 40s, have died of cancer that progressed while they religiously took every alternative treatment/product that was touted by the natural cure community. They died cursing modern medicine. More anecdote.

OTOH, many, many people are treated by scientific medical means every day and survive. There are mounds of real data supporting these cures/remissions. Nothing is 100%, but I would like to see some comparative studies between those who take no actual medicines/treatments and those who do. I have read some that indicate that there are more successes from the products of science than from the alternatives.

Lactobaccilus has some benefits in diarrhea. I use it when I travel. As for the rest, I remain skeptical.

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