Harmful Drugs or Healing Mushrooms: It's Your Choice

I've been very frustrated by the reports I'm seeing in the past two days. Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche got FDA approval for their drug Tamiflu, which is a potent chemical formulation made from a Chinese herb known as star anise. An aside - it's also a pretty tasty herb used in high-end cooking. The FDA approved this drug in December 2005 for treatment of influenza and possibly the avian flu which health officials fear could create a pandemic should it mutate into a form easily passed from human to human. If you look on the FDA's website, just one month prior to approval they released a report stating that Tamiflu was one of eight drugs to be examined by a Pediatrics panel. The reason: "...a number of adverse event reports were identified associated with the use of Tamiflu in children 16 years of age or younger. These adverse event reports were primarily related to unusual neurologic or psychiatric events such as delirium, hallucinations, confusion, abnormal behavior, convulsions, and encephalitis." Now medical reporting can be a bit detached in its descriptions. More recent reports of "adverse effects" of children taking Tamiflu includes two separate cases of children aged 12 and 13 throwing themselves out of the window of their apartment buildings and plummeting to their death. Nevertheless, in December of 2005 the FDA approved Tamiflu.

Tamiflu has also been in the news because Roche claimed that it was a good contender to fight the potential avian flu epidemic that we've been warned about. A flurry of news stories centred around governments keen on stockpiling drugs that might fight the avian flu virus alternately ordering millions of bottles of the drug and berating Roche for not allowing other drug companies to make the drug as well. In the meanwhile, Roche's revenues rocketed skyward and by September 2005 their revenues for the year were already up 263%. And yet, there has been no definitive answer as to whether the avian flu virus can be stopped in its tracks by Tamiflu. Tamiflu has proved effective against H5N1 in mice in laboratory tests. But a look on the US Department of State website reveals this statement:
"Based upon limited data, the DHHS/CDC (Centre for Disease Control) has suggested that the anti-viral medication Oseltamivir (brand name- Tamiflu) may be effective in treating avian influenza A (H5N1)."

Now we learn about more than 100 new cases of children taking Tamiflu who are experiencing delirium, hallucinations and convulsions, so health officials must warn parents to watch children taking Tamiflu for signs of "bizarre behaviour".

Let's step back from this situation for a minute. A drug company has come up with a drug to treat influenza. The accepted medical treatment for influenza is to drink lots of liquids and get plenty of rest. Why is there a need for a drug for this? Why does the FDA approve a drug that may only shorten the effects of influenza, that may or may not be effective against H5N1, and which causes harmful effects when given to children? Why do governments spend millions of dollars on such a drug? Why are parents giving drugs to their children when water and bed rest is recommended?

There are safe and natural methods of combatting viruses that have none of these harmful effects, come from a number of companies, are not expensive and therefore accessible to most people? Case in point: New Chapter's Life Shield Throat Spray (a blend of 3 potent mushrooms) has been tested to actively fight 5 strains of the avian flu, West Nile, Yellow Fever and other viruses. Since the product is made from organic mushrooms processed at low temperatures and left mainly intact, they cannot produce harmful side effects and are safe even for young children over the age of two.

New Chapter's Paul Stamets is a mycologist who has developed the LifeShield and other mushroom products and is currently involved in two National Institutes of Health-funded clinical studies on cancer and HIV treatments using mushrooms. His patent-pending low-processing technologies and high-quality organic mushroom sources are being tested in animal clinical trials and are successfully fighting powerful pox viruses. His products quite simply work. And some actually clean up the environment while they are growing, too in a process called bioremediation. That might help the contaminants produced by pharmaceutical companies. . But that's another story....

I suspect that ignorance could be the only thing standing in the way of everyone choosing proven natural remedies for health concerns, rather than pharmaceutical ones which often come with a handful of risks and complications. When a disease is not life-threatening there is also the option to do nothing, to take no remedy and let the body fight the infection on its own. Of course, we always have the skeptics. A common skeptic response to alternative health claims is: "one should question whether or not these remedies, which tend to be pricey, actually work." I agree with the first part, and noone should take a product that has not been proven to work, unless taking it poses little risk. For example I might take a common herb to help me treat a headache and if it's ineffective, so what? But I wouldn't use it to "cure" cancerous cell-growth. But addressing the question of cost, is $25 for a bottle that can last a family of 4 an entire flu season pricey? How many pharmaceutical remedies are that inexpensive? I've never heard of prescription drugs for four people costing as little as $25.

This $25 bottle of LifeShield Throat Spray is just one product that I know about because I've been doing product demos for New Chapter for years, and am now a vendor. New Chapter is quiet about their products' successes and seem to spend their extra dollars on manufacturing instead of marketing. But the point is, there are likely other high-quality non-pharmaceutical solutions out there. Why else would the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) be examining medicinal mushrooms in their joint biodefense antiviral screening program with the NIH unless they believed the non-pharma route was a viable option? This is the USAMRIID after all whose vision is "to be the Nation's preeminent research laboratory providing cutting-edge medical research for the warfighter against biological threats". These folks would not waste time investigating ineffective methods.

We all owe it to our health, our pocketbooks and our peace of mind to investigate ways of treating health problems without pharmaceuticals, especially for common, generally low-risk health problems such as the cold and flu. Learn about better safer alternatives to drugs because they are out there. And don't forget that we choose where to put our money and that's how we show our support for businesses. I'd rather support a mushroom farmer who's trying to save the world through fungi than throw a few more dollars at a faceless, polluting big corporation billion-dollar revenues.

Only Drugs Can Heal You!

...or at least that's what the FDA wants us to believe. Call me cynical - because I am! - but this news item with the FDA's assertion that green tea has absolutely no health benefits has I'm-in-bed-with-Big-Pharma written all over it.

I'm all for regulation of food, to ensure that all the world's people can have access to a basic survival necessity: clean, safe food. Those of us who've worked in the food industry know that food can easily be contaminated. But as more and more studies indicate that pesticide-free fresh foods are protective against modern diseases, the FDA's heavy dismissal hints at a more insidious story behind the story.

The only way to research food is finding serious funding to pay for clinical trials, long study periods and expert scientific analysis. Most foods items that are being studied ultimately come from farms, and few farmers have the money to pay to prove the benefits of their products. So companies with an interest in the outcomes of these studies are the only ones who can afford them, along with disease-research organizations. Very few studies get put forth and it's often companies (such as vitamin or sports nutrition manufacturers) competing with pharmaceutical giants who foot the bill to test the food components of their products. In this case, a large Japanese green tea company wanted to put some science behind what we've come to know as an obvious truth: drinking green tea daily helps Japanese people live longer healthier lives. But the FDA squashed their attempt, stating that after reading 105 articles on the matter, they could still find "no evidence to support claims of the beverage's health benefits."

I think the truth of the matter lies here in the article's final sentence: "A health claim, in the language of the FDA, characterizes the relationship between a substance and a reduction in the risk of contracting a particular disease." And what would happen, I ask you, if FOOD could be a factor in reducing risk of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, cancer? Well, then people wouldn't spend so much money on drugs, they might spend it instead on food. And informed people wouldn't spend their money on processed food either because the real preventive and protective foods are foods our grandparents ate. Foods like fruits, vegetables, lean meats, legumes and grains that nobody but silly old farmers can profit from. What would happen to the economy if people stopped buying drugs, multivitamins, "enriched whole grain" Lucky Charms cereals and the like?! I'm sure Big Business is feeling faint just imagining such a scenario.

UPDATE: The FDA has just seen fit to approve a new drug for children to treat Crohn's disease, despite the fact that this same drug has been linked to an increased risk of cancer in some patients. Many people have been cured of Crohn's through dietary modification, such as the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to name just one. Once again, there's much less profit in hawking fruits and veggies than the billions of dollars that over-the-counter medications bring in each year.

When the FDA is so utterly unwilling to acknowledge the benefits of food, and yet so willing to play a role in pushing potentially harmful drugs on children it makes me leery to say the least. The FDA may exist to protect me from food poisoning, but they do not really care about me reaching optimal health. Unless, of course, their stakeholders can benefit from it in some way. Shrug. The truth is, I don't need their help. I don't need a scientific study to show me that eating a fresh orange gives me vitality and makes me feel good. A Dairy Queen Blizzard, on the other hand, makes my tongue feel happy for a while, but makes me feel bloated and twitchy soon afterwards. So I'm going to continue to seek out the freshest, most wholesome food for my diet because I know it is beneficial to my health. And the FDA can go to Hell. I hear the road there is paved with good medications.