Try something besides Airborne for cold prevention

I had always been skeptical of this product, simply because its packaging's only evidence for its contents' efficacy is that it is "made by a TEACHER." A school nurse would be an improvement, but I'm pretty sure I'll still be trusting doctors for my medical advice (and maybe professors.)

Never heard of it before. Now I know why. It is some kind of new age herbal medicine and therefore must be good for you.

I have some snake oil in my garage that gandpa used to make. I think it cures everything from shingles to mumps.

wow... another genius marketer has saught to use Physorg to create false ligitimacy. happened with tons of others like batmax. which these brain dead morons would realize the difference between advertising blind assertions and actually having a real product with real effects to sell.

If it did not work, why would people keep buying it?

@ ArtflDgr: Did you even read the article? Or just one word and go off half cocked?

@ 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.

Capt: "The authors report that among the 679 physicians (57%) who responded to the survey half of them said they prescribed "placebo treatments" on a regular basis. Most physicians (62%) believed the practice to be ethically acceptable and were happy to recommend or prescribe placebo treatments.

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....

@ 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.

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.

D666:
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?

D666:
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?

D666: Anyone forcing you to buy it?

How many FDA 'approved' drugs have killed people lately?

D66: Ever hear of The Metabolic Typing Diet?

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?

D66: Ever hear of The Metabolic Typing Diet?

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.