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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Tuesday, august 1, 2017
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Radio-TV ad a slur against herbal medicine
NOW airing on radio and TV is Dahon-Dahan as performed by singer-actor Vic Sotto to the tune of Bahay Kubo. For the nth time, Sotto extols a branded cough medicine and belittles a growing number of “slow-acting” herbal competitors.
There is no longer just one local manufacturer turning lagundi into cough syrup and tablet; there are now many of them that thrive sans endorsement from the Department of Health (DoH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
It’s not just to save money that some people have shifted to herbal alternatives. To cite a personal experience, my doctor prescribed an anti-cholesterol drug to protect me from “atherosclerotic aorta.” But because the branded “statin drug” was very expensive, I just bought a partial number of tablets.
However, within three days of taking the drug, I could no longer put on my polo shirt without wincing due to excruciating muscle pain.
So I turned to the Internet for info on “statin” – medical term for an anti-cholesterol formula. It shocked me to read that other users of the drug had reported the same side effect as mine. There was not a single favorable testimonial.
The book Stop Inflammation Now by an American physician, Dr. Richard Fleming, recommends fruits and vegetables as the better alternatives to anti-cholesterol drugs in restoring cardio-vascular health; as well as fish in lieu of pork, beef and other red meat.
If we care to look back, we will discover that no less than the acknowledged Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates (460-337 BC), taught, “Let your food be your medicine.”
Today, we all know that vegetables and fruits strengthen the body’s built-in immune system, giving it the capacity to fight disease-causing bacteria and virus. The lowly and cheap malunggay has already been proven effective in boosting the immune system.
There were no “fast foods” and preserved “junks” during Hippocrates’ time. The main foodstuffs then consisted mostly of fresh plants and fresh fish. That he lived to be an octogenarian proves that he successfully practiced what he had preached.
Hippocrates as a physician – so I discovered during my research – prescribed natural remedies to prevent and treat diseases. His approach was both therapeutic and experimental, since there were no sophisticated laboratories yet to help him diagnose patients and evaluate outcome of treatment. He would wait and see. Whenever a patient recovered, he would further observe him to validate nutritional therapy, herbal medicine and other natural remedies.
Hippocrates might have heard about herbal practitioners who had preceded him. Despite the primitive means of transportation and communication in his time, herbal medicine as practiced in China for centuries had already gained global patronage. Today, such previously doubtful Chinese practices as acupuncture, acupressure and reflexology have gained a niche in modern medicine.
Shed of hypocrisy, conventional medicine ought to be integrated with alternative medicine because they really do not oppose each other. On the contrary, they complement each other like parallel railroad tracks.
The latest discoveries in cancer prevention and treatment are actually rediscoveries. The supposedly newly-discovered therapeutic “isoflavones” in soybeans and “carotenoids” in certain fruits and vegetables have served our ancestors well.
There was a time when representatives of a Japanese drug company came to Manila looking for suppliers of rosas sa baybayon, which they would like to formulate into tablets and capsules for early-stage cancer.
The Philippine government, unfortunately, appears lukewarm in implementing the Traditional Alternative Medicine Act (TAMA) of 1998, which is supposed to encourage drug companies to use native herbs as active components of their products.
I wonder whether FDA’s passivity on its obligation to promote the aforesaid plant cures is proof of its officials’ “golden fidelity” to the Big Pharma. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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