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Originally Posted by MMM
I could be wrong, but I think the US is one of the only countries in the world where prescription medicine companies have multi-million dollar advertising campaigns.
It is interesting how Westerners (or is it just North Americans?) have severe skepticism for natural herbal remedies that have been used for over 1000 years, but quickly feel faith in the "newest and latest" remedies they are told to talk to their doctor about.
I wonder if we would feel differently if traditional herbal medicine had an advertising budget.
I remember watching an American TV show on video in Japan, and an ad for some sleeping medicine came up. The Japanese person I was watching with reacted, "Only in America would you sell a medicine for symptoms of being human."
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Personally I would be far more worried if people started losing their skepticism. Currently you can find 1000's of supposed alternative remedies out there claiming all sorts of miraculous cures for just about everything.
So much of it smacks of snake oil salesmanship.
There are some clinical trials that do show that some herbal treatments can be very effective in treating certain ailments but the issue of their effectiveness comes down to dosage and it appears dosage can vary so greatly between different practioners that the efficacy can vary greatly. Also they are often sold with claims of being effective for a far wider range of ailments than they actually are.
So there's definitely some proven beneficial herbal remedies out there but again I just believe there needs to be greater controls over quality so people can feel confident they are getting something that will actually work. Here in Japan I'd say those controls are pretty good. Elsewhere where such remedies are considered 'alternative' I'm not so sure.