Dr. Shawn’s Blog

Natural Therapies and the Studies That “Prove” They Don’t Work

March 1, 2010 on 4:37 pm | In General Posts | No Comments

“But at this point, there is little scientific justification for the widespread use of such products for nearly any condition with the assumption of safety and efficacy.”

The above quote was taken from a website well known for trying to debunk natural/alternative therapies. It was in reference to the use of probiotics (natural healthy bacteria) to help pets suffering from diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.

When I read quotes like this the first question that comes to my mind is this: ”Is the sky blue in your world?”

It’s interesting that skeptics of natural health always seem to find one or two articles that supposedly “prove” that natural therapies don’t work, all the while ignoring hundreds if not thousands of articles as well as years of clinical experience “proving” that the same therapies work remarkably well.

Whenever I read about a study that supposedly proves a natural therapy doesn’t work, I have to carefully examine that study for any design flaws. For example, there was a study done several years ago in people that purportedly showed that the herb St. John’s wort was ineffective for treating people with severe depression. Duh! People with severe depression require hospitalization not an herb! However, noticeably absent from media reports and blogs discussing the ineffectiveness of St. John’s wort for depression (notice how the term “severe” was cleverly left out of many of these discussions) was the fact that the same study showed that a placebo worked better than one of the drugs commonly prescribed for depression.

Unfortunately the public does not take the time, nor do they have the medical knowledge, to carefully sort through these studies. Instead, they rely upon the media and bloggers to hopefully give them factually correct information. Unfortunately, due to a bias in the media, it’s unlikely the public will ever get the truth about the benefits of natural therapies.

I spoke at a dog show yesterday, and one of the participants who uses a lot of natural therapies for herself and her dogs was discussing this bias with me. As I explained to her, even if natural therapies don’t work other than by inducing a placebo effect (which can’t happen in pets by the way,) wouldn’t it be better to take one of these safe and effective natural remedies rather than take a drug that is likely to be more expensive and have more side effects but also would be ineffective other than by inducing healing through a placebo effect?

In other words, if you or your pet will get better no matter what you take, why not take a natural remedy free of side effects rather than a potentially toxic medication?

For now, I’ll continue to take and prescribe probiotics are my patients. I’ve seen the positive results and life-saving miracles when I use natural therapies, including probiotics, even though a few poorly designed studies supposedly “prove” that my natural therapies don’t work.

Just don’t tell my patients that my natural therapies don’t work, as they are all feeling better and many have been cured from diseases that were deemed incurable by conventional doctors whose conventional “proven” drugs failed these patients.