Health food store giving medical advice

[mom4jesus]

I go in a local health food store every once in a while. A friend of mine works in there. I have noticed that people come in and ask the people that work there for medical advice. The cashiers tell them what is wrong with them, what herbs or vitamins to take, and give them their advice on what to do. These people have no medical background. They may know about herbs, but something just doesn't seem right. They have no idea if the person coming in for advice has some kind of medical problems such as diabetes, heart disease ect. What do you all think about this?

[HeartsOpenWide, RN]

I think herbs are great, but I would not ask some one at the health food store about them. Herbs can be very healing (and toxic if you do not know what you are doing!) and it is wise to get advise from an herbalist who has a degree...not some one at the check stand!

[bollweevil]

OMG!! You are so right. It is super frustrating and sad that people really think medicine is "bad" for them and the "natural cures" are the answer. What on earth are these people thinking? I really believe the media is a big influence on "nature rememdies" and also has a way of making conventional medicine seem like not the way to go.

They're probably thinking that what we are taught to think of as "medicine" doesn't always work. And there are plenty of side effects to "medicines".

What we really need is integrated allopathy, homeopathy, and all the other practices - Oriental approaches, chiropractic, nutrition, and lots more. If we are honest, we will readily admit that our "western" medicine allows people to die of cancer after torturing them with the slash/burn/poison approach, while a former director of the FDA himself is known to have taken his own wife to Europe for "alternative" cancer treatment.

Plenty of wonderful physicians have been ruined by our repressive government and the trade union known as the AMA, which seeks to protect its doctor members' well-being over protecting the public. I guess someone will take offense at this but there's information all over the web about this and, if you care to read it, you will see I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Each approach has its shortcomings and its good points.

[woody62, RN]

Unfortunately, health food cashiers, as long as they don't represent themselves as a medical professional are free to give advice. I am a Type 2, insulin dependent diabetic. On two other message boards, there are posters who rave about the benefits of supplements. And become down right rude when I ask for scientific data to support the supposed benefits of supplements.

As for big drug companies making billions off of their drugs, yes they do. And I don't like or agree with this one little bit. But without their insulin and metformin, I would most likely be either dead or suffering from some complication of my disease. I don't use supplements, I don't believe some of their more outrageous claims and I think they need to be pulled up short on their claims.

Woody

[bollweevil]

Unfortunately, health food cashiers, as long as they don't represent themselves as a medical professional are free to give advice. I am a Type 2, insulin dependent diabetic. On two other message boards, there are posters who rave about the benefits of supplements. And become down right rude when I ask for scientific data to support the supposed benefits of supplements.

As for big drug companies making billions off of their drugs, yes they do. And I don't like or agree with this one little bit. But without their insulin and metformin, I would most likely be either dead or suffering from some complication of my disease. I don't use supplements, I don't believe some of their more outrageous claims and I think they need to be pulled up short on their claims.

Woody

Agreed

[talaxandra]

. Studies also show that when doctors go on strike, mortality drops.

That's really interesting - do you have a source?

[TiredMD]

That's really interesting - do you have a source?

Of course there's no source, since doctors can't go on strike. This is just one more attempt to denigrate modern medicine and promote fraudulent products that exploit people at their most vulnerable.

Just like get-rich-quick scams, "natural" medicine relies on the desire to get something for nothing. After all, why suffer through the pain and misery of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, when the kid behind the counter at Whole Foods says apricot seeds will cure your ovarian cancer? Oh well, at least it keeps the morticians employed.

[TheCommuter, BSN, RN]

Oh well, at least it keeps the morticians employed.

:roll

[AmaurosisFugax]

Of course there's no source, since doctors can't go on strike. This is just one more attempt to denigrate modern medicine and promote fraudulent products that exploit people at their most vulnerable.

Just like get-rich-quick scams, "natural" medicine relies on the desire to get something for nothing. After all, why suffer through the pain and misery of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, when the kid behind the counter at Whole Foods says apricot seeds will cure your ovarian cancer? Oh well, at least it keeps the morticians employed.

I just don't see why there has to be an antagonistic relationship between modern ("Western") vs complementary & alternative ("Eastern") medicine; personally I hate the term alternative, that suggests either/or; they can work together.

People used to mock acupuncture, now studies have shown its efficacy. Many herbal supplements are based on thousands of years of documented experience, albeit maybe not in the clinical trials sense. But then, so many off-label uses are also based on anecdotal rather than clinical trials evidence. After all where does morphine & quinine come from? Even insulin is really a natural product.

Now a health store clerk promoting electrolytes for leg cramps, that is scary but it's the customers' responsibility to see a trained herbalist, not get advice from a store clerk. And yes, there are those who look at herbal medicine as a religion rather than a science. But then like Iressa even drugs that are approved can later turn out to be ineffectual; statistical significance (apart from the fact it can be manipulated) is often misleading vis-a-vis therapeutic signifcance.

Sure, people should be careful about herbal medicine & its claims & check out the science. People should also look into drug prescribing info & check out the clinical trials statistics, the P value, the CI, how many pts were enrolled & how many dropped out (or were dropped) etc.

As to the doctors-strike vs mortality question, here's one report in the BMJ

[TiredMD]

People used to mock acupuncture, now studies have shown its efficacy. Many herbal supplements are based on thousands of years of documented experience, albeit maybe not in the clinical trials sense. But then, so many off-label uses are also based on anecdotal rather than clinical trials evidence. After all where does morphine & quinine come from? Even insulin is really a natural product.

You kind of mixed two different concepts there. No one in their right mind would argue against using "natural" products, since as you point out, many (if not most) of our pharmaceuticals were originally derived from plant products.

However, when we talk about CAM, we're talking about people without medical training giving medical advice and prescribing pharmaceuticals and procedures. The medications ("herbal supplements") are not produced according to any FDA guideline and are not monitored for safety. No standards are set for their prescription, and they are not dispensed by licensed practitioners. The "procedures" and those who carry them out have similar problems.

And for the record, accupuncture does not have scientific validity (http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/145/1/12), the "thousands of years of documented experience" is frequently shown to be completely false in scientifically rigorous studies (zinc, echanacea), and the off-label use you mention is usually based on randomized-controlled studies.

Just because a use is not FDA approved does not mean that RCTs have not been done. It just means the company didn't apply for FDA approval. Also, at least if you get a medication for an off-label use, it's coming from a licensed provider, not a clerk in a health food store.

As to the doctors-strike vs mortality question, here's one report in the BMJ

From the article: "Since then, hundreds of thousands of visits to outpatient clinics have been cancelled or postponed along with tens of thousands of elective operations. Public hospitals, which provide the vast majority of secondary and tertiary medical care, have kept their emergency rooms, dialysis units, oncology departments, obstetric and neonatal departments, and other vital facilities working normally during the industrial action."

That's not quite the same as saying mortality decreases when doctors go on strike.

[Valerie Salva, BSN, RN]

I know that in a lot of cases, people will take anything if they read an article about it,or a clerk recommends it.

In some cases, however, people turn to supplements and herbals only when they can't get docs to take them seriously and treat them.

When I was having trouble getting medical tx for a condition, I took everything herbal and supplemental that was recommended for it (out of desperation). My liver enzymes went waaaay up.

I stopped taking all that stuff, and my enzymes went back to normal. Now that I have finally gotten medical treatment (I had to fly across the country and see a renouned expert to be taken seriously) I'm doing better and my liver is fine.