Try something besides Airborne for cold prevention
November 2nd, 2008 By Drs. Kay Judge and Maxine Barish-WredenNow that the cold and flu season is upon us, many people will be reaching for Airborne, the over-the-counter supplement that has claimed to prevent and cure viral infections.
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I have some snake oil in my garage that gandpa used to make. I think it cures everything from shingles to mumps.
@ marjon: Because people will buy anything if they think it *might* cure them (or just manage the symtoms) of the cold and flu. It's why snake oil salesmen were so succesful for so long. Any hope can be exploited, especially when you are miserable.
The most commonly used placebo treatments prescribed in the past year were over the counter painkillers (41%) or vitamins (38%). Some of the physicians reported using antibiotics (13%) and sedatives (13%) as placebos, only 3% reported using sugar pills. "
http://www.physor...956.html
If it works....
Interestingly, once you *have* bought some snake oil once, you have an *increased* tendency to continue to buy and use it. It's confirmation bias -- to stop using it would be to admit you got taken, and since you're much too smart for that, it *must* be effective.
Now, not everyone reacts that way, but enough do so that products like this (and like a lot of make-up products) continue to sell.
You know there are about 6 billion people in the world.
Medical research has demonstrated that drugs do not react to all people the same way.
If 'snake oil' works for one, who are you to say it doesn't?
And you jump straight from this statement to the conclusion that any advertised potion should be taken at face value. The point here is that I don't have to say it doesn't -- I don't have to prove diddly. The companies that want to sell snake oil have an obligation to show through objective studies, using well-established guidelines, that it *does* work.
No system is perfect, but at least repeated independant double-blind studies will give you a reasonable indication of what products work most of the time for most people, and how effectively. For instance, just to use one ferinstance, echinecia has been shown to work better than placebo, but only *barely* better. That may be an indication that it has weak medicinal properties, or it may be an indication that the health-food companies have crappy quality control. But it also begs the question -- do you want to pay $20 for a 2% improvement in your chances of getting your cold cured one day early? I think the public has a right to know how such products ACTUALLY perform in controlled studies.
Interestingly, in Canada a number of years ago, the govt introduced a bill that would require *all* products claiming *any* medicinal/curative results to be able to show studies proving their claims. Guess which companies lobbied extremely hard to get the bill pulled? Yeah. "Natural", "Holistic", "Alternative" sellers. Wonder why?
How many FDA 'approved' drugs have killed people lately?
Check into it and you find that all people are not created equally. People have evolved and adapted to various types and proportions of fat, protein and carbohydrate. What works for one person does not work for another.
How do controlled medical studies account for this?
Ever hear of reading for comprehension? I responded already to these points that you made already. Look up a couple of posts and read it this time.