Take turmeric for example. It contains curcumin, a chemical that has quite good evidence for anti-inflammatory properties. However curcumin is not present in turmeric in clinically relevant quantities. People taking turmeric medicinally are not actually interested in the curcumin, if they were they would be taking a concentrated extract. They are interested in the ritual and cultural associations of turmeric.
In most cases when we do find evidence for something clinically relevant in traditional medicine we either discover that the effect is something other than it is traditionally associated with and/or that you need to take it at extreme doses for it to do anything at all.
- From a strictly scientific standpoint, wouldn't it be interesting to properly understand why and how it works?
- From a purely practical standpoint, who cares about any of that if not only it works, but is also better and healthier than what you might get prescribed at the doctor's?*
> From a strictly scientific standpoint, wouldn't it be interesting to properly understand why and how it works?
Personally I think it would be, but I think people who actually engage in using traditional medicine couldn't care less how it works beyond making it sound even more magical and spooky.
> From a purely practical standpoint, who cares about any of that if not only it works, but is also better and healthier than what you might get prescribed at the doctor's?*
I don't think most people engaged in traditional medicine care about it actually being healthier, again because they are first and foremost interested in the ritual and cultural aspects rather than the effectiveness of the active ingredients.
My reason for believing this is that people consistently ignore evidence that their favourite magical plant does nothing. And that even when there is evidence to support it, they frequently ignore all findings about effective doses and treatment plans in favour of doing the "natural" thing like making into tea or putting it in orifices you aren't meant to put plants in.
> I don't think most people engaged in traditional medicine care about it actually being healthier, again because they are first and foremost interested in the ritual and cultural aspects rather than the effectiveness of the active ingredients.
I think you're repeatedly resorting to all manner of generalisations. Maybe that's your experience, and all that you've seen. While I've seen a bit of that too, I've also seen quite the contrary, very smart and learned people scientifically exploring fringe approaches in order to obtain results.
I could give you some personal and near examples of that if it were to mean something.
There's also quite a lot in natural medicine (including papers and proper scientific studies, if that's the only thing that matters to you) if you look into it.
The very fact that "natural medicine" practitioners form their own group that doesn't interact much with evidence based medicine is just more evidence for my view. The whole community is more interested in forming some sort of secret club than it is in actually doing medicine. If it worked, it would just be conventional medicine.
> If it worked, it would just be conventional medicine.
There are many reasons why this is not true. One of them is profits, another one (at least where I live) is the mass oriented, streamlined healthcare, in which there are not enough resources to treat you as an individual, but rather as a number, a small part of an average.
For these reasons, as an example among others, when a woman goes to the doctor because her period is painful, they'll prescribe her birth control pills rather than raspberry leaf tea.
There is a third path where the traditional thing can't be commercialized so modern medicine doesn't pursue it. A (sincere) traditional practitioner might be less concerned with gaining and exploiting a patent, so the commercial potential isn't as important.
Telling that person apart from the sea of charlatans complicates things a bit. They're not the people who launch their careers with Oprah's help and spawn a million others riding in their wake.
That’s a thought terminating cliche. Academia doesn’t care about commercialization, they care about grants and they don’t much care which organization it comes from. You can argue why they don’t make it to market as FDA regulated medicines but not why there’s no positive evidence for their efficacy.
> Telling that person apart from the sea of charlatans complicates things a bit.
Peer review (for all its faults) and clinical trials that inform evidence based medicine. That’s how you tell them apart.
In most cases when we do find evidence for something clinically relevant in traditional medicine we either discover that the effect is something other than it is traditionally associated with and/or that you need to take it at extreme doses for it to do anything at all.