I didn't say anything against God, I spoke against people who invoke God simply to threaten those who disagree with them, as Dr. Day does. Religious people may tend to have a more positive outlook when they do get sick, and I think that having a positive outlook makes everything easier to overcome. Religious belief does not magically prevent disease, however. Millions of religious people die of all sorts of illnesses every year, some of whom disregard modern medicine, choosing "natural" alternatives that end up doing more harm than good.
For example, aristolochic acid, found in some Chinese herbs, especially those of the family Aristolochia, has been shown to cause extensive kidney damage. These herbs have been prescribed for joint pain and in childbirth to help expel the placenta. This has caused women to die in childbirth, and other people get lesions on their kidneys. Others have suffered from cancer of the urinary tract.
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey...
The simple reason that barley green and other good supplimental food products helps so many ailments is because it is holistic, super-food researched and produced in such a manner so as to be able to rejuvinate the whole body. To put it another way, if you take it for arthritis, the side effects of it are all good, whereas with powerful drugs, the side effects are often severe and all to often, fatal.
That's odd, because my mother has had rhuematoid arthritis for years and her medication has greatly improved her quality of life. If it didn't work, I don't think she would take it. I think that something like barley greens might contain useful nutrients or compounds, but I still think that some research should be done to see why it has any effect, if indeed it does have a measureable effect. How do you know that it won't have any side effects in everyone? What methods are used to ensure that it treats the whole body, as you say, when little research has been done? How is the dosage controlled?
In many plants, production of certain chemicals can be affected by farming methods. For example, peppers of the same variety can have widely varying amounts of capsaicin, the chemical responsible for their "heat". How do herb farmers avoid this effect to accurately control dosage?
The fact that some drugs are recalled when they are found to be dangerous is a testament to the function of such research. Even though a drug may work for most people, a small fraction of the population may turn out to have a negative effect from it. Very little research is done on holistic medicine and so it can take a very long time for accurate information to surface, if it ever does. Interestingly enough, many medications do come from plants or other living organisms, or are synthesized versions of chemicals from natural sources. If such chemicals were in the plants they came from, would that miraculously make them safe to use?
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