Homeopathy, Beware

Yesterday 400+ Brits took a "massive overdose" of homeopathic remedies to protest Boots' (their equivalent of our Duane Reade, but with better, actually fresh, food) endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies.

Homeopathy has always struck me as a strange science, if science at all. The vitalist philosophy, born all the way back in 1796 to a German doctor, doesn't just concern all things herbal - it's based on a few (interesting) principles, some of which include the following:

1. Water has memory

2. Therefore diluting something with water makes it stronger, making some remedies so diluted that there aren't even any molecules from the original solution

These two are pretty much agreed upon actual homeopathic ideas. But certain homeopaths also adhere to others, like what ails you can cure you (ie caffeine - diluted, remember - to cure insomnia) and stuff involving pinning the patient with a piece paper with the remedy written on it, which borders on superstition.

Anyhow homeopathy is much bigger in Europe (compared to Americans, where most just think it's "something herbal..?"), where insurance covers it and even Sweden did some 5 year study and found it wasn't cost-effective enough to concern itself with the idea. It seems to be the biggest in India actually, where it's recognized as a national system of medicine.

Yesterday's stunt, called the 1023 campaign, was actually preceded by a letter of complaint the Merseyside Skeptics Society sent to Boots protesting homeopathy a week ago. So I guess there are other people besides me who aren't exactly convinced of homeopathy's efficacy.

They don't really say why they're targeting Boots and not homeopathic manufacturers and physicians themselves. Maybe Boots sells so many of the homeopathic remedies, that Boots is where MSS can dent?

It's hard to tell as the company was taken private in ₤11.1bn takeover in 2007 by now-Executive Vice Chairman Stefano Pessina, so sales figures on homeopathic or even health products aren't available. But he did say in May 2009 that the health and beauty division had sales of ₤6.2bn, so looks like there's a lot at stake, anyway.

Well I guess since this is not taking place in the US, few Americans care. I don't know if I believed much in homeopathy in the first place, but who knows about these things? Just as long as another philosophy doesn't get in the way of you getting medical attention or care when you need it (vaccines, surgeries, which MSS says severe homeopathics do cut out), I don't see why it's so bad. They just better not touch acupuncture, because I tell you that stuff really works.

Speaking of NyQuil: Supplements and Multivitams

This NyQuil case was a good step toward closer scrutiny of supplements, and thinking about it again, there's another misconception I'd love to address:

Not all supplements are created equal.

Those cheap, one-tablet-a-day multivitamins? You might just consider them garbage when you're talking about whether you're even absorbing any of it, whether the manufacturer is lying about how much is in them, or worse if they contain poison.

While numbers are hard to come by when you're trying to figure out how much a human body is absorbing (called "bioavailability") from a specific source and the FDA says repeatedly that it's not their responsibility to regulate, you can be sure it's a business that needs regulating, especially when it's a $22.75 billion business from last year alone (Americans spent $7.54 billion) according to Euromonitor International.

ConsumerLabs actually found that taking whatever cheap multivitamin out there can be useless or dangerous: 52 percent of the multivitamins it examined were contaminated with lead, didn't disintegrate properly, or had more or less of certain ingredients than indicated on the label.

Such is the seriousness of this matter that there is a nonprofit organization called U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) devoted to testing multivitamins and certifying ones that are safe and worth taking (this certification is displayed on the packaging).

Then, if you're thinking about taking multis even if they don't prevent the common cold because they might prevent long-term, more serious illnesses, it's no good there either. In 2006 scientists in the State of the Science Conference at the National Institutes of Health found after extensive trials that the "evidence is insufficient to prove the presence or absence of benefits from use of multivitamin or mineral supplements to prevent cancer and chronic disease."Obviously this wasn't such resounding news as year-on-year growth of multivitamin sales was higher from 2006-2007 than the year prior according to Euromonitor International. Or we didn't get the memo until the next year, which had a lower rate of YOY growth.


But if you're really bent on getting your vitamins and can't go the fruit and veggie route, get the USP certified stuff and stop drowning yourself in OJ once you're sick (not that oranges are even in the top five most Vitamin C-packed raw fruit list - Barbados cherries are first, then guavas, currants, kiwis, and longans, then lemons according to nutritiondata.com). Or more effectively, just invest in some all-natural hand-sanitizer. I would consider it more effective and safe than cultivating expensive pee and lead pills.

NyQuil, Vitamin C and Multivitamins

I can't talk enough about viral sicknesses after being completely enraptured by the infectious but unliving genetic structures in high school after reading stuff like The Great Influenza by John Barry and The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. That was the only type of terror I could happily handle, being so traumatized by movies like The Ring that I used to lie in bed in the middle of the night debating whether or not to get up and pee.

So here's a third post on the subject of fighting viruses in about a month...because it is very important:

You MUST know that gorging on massive quantities of Vitamin C when you're sick will not doing anything except maybe give you the runs. Vitamin C does not cure the flu.

This myth about Vitamin C curing common sicknesses is something I vehemently would love to eradicate with pleasure, so much that I used to troll Yahoo! Answers for the opportunity to warn people about this.

Well, we are one step closer to greater enlightenment, when today the FDA told Vicks to stop putting Vitamin C in NyQuil, since leads people to believe the FDA has evaluated the vitamin's efficacy when in fact (and big surprise) the agency's experts have found that Vitamin C does not cure the common cold. That this is clearly stated in the third line of the NYT article is even better.

I became aware of this pervasive misconception when in high school I read a small blurb on the subject in Newsweek's Periscope section (which ceased to exist this year), debunking both Vitamin C as well as Echinacea, saying that Zinc, instead, has been shown to slow growth of rhinoviruses (common cause of the cold) in recent studies at Wesleyan and as early as 1974. And then while Zinc hasn't exactly been completely debunked with several conflicting studies, there have been health concerns about taking too much of it, leading to the recall of Zicam earlier this year.

This is on top of last year's lawsuit in March against Airborne, which settled, paying $23.25 million to compensate for marketing itself as a cure of the common cold.


So where did the myth come from? Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist (1901-1994) who wrote a book in 1970 exalting the benefits of Vitamin C without any scientific evidence. Even Pauling's biographer, Thomas Hager, said to Newsweek here that "he seemed to be prescribing a major change in dietary habits without much evidence."

I told my dad about this but old habits die hard with a fervent believer, so whenever he tells me to knock back a couple Airborne tablets when I'm feeling sick I just let him go on. After all, the placebo effect is undeniable, especially with major scientific proof to actually see it in action...so just forget about all this if you can't stand to see the light and you'd rather stay in Plato's cave.