This changes EVERYTHING for me, I have lots of hope now !

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Naughty...

Well, ...at my age anything that helps me with regularity is a bonus

yeah, actually I read that diarrhea is one possible side effect but this would be associated with huge doses.

This so called Zen wonder tea seems to have a Chinese name.. Is it from China? If so, why in the hell isn't the Chinese government all over this as a cure, and trying the sell it like they've sold everything else? And don't tell me otherwise I live THERE.

Instead parents have to suffer THIS:http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-05/31/c_13325110.htm

Only to learn that Geojizz tea was the miracle cure, that would enable their child to have a typical childhood, grow up to be party members or join the heroic PLA, and win 5 Gold Medals at the olympics, and discover the cure.

If there is one thing I really hate about my people, is they can sure be charlatans, of course Snake oil works, BUT, it only improves health, it's not a magical tonic that'll give you pecs. Even with steroids you still have to do the "work". I love all these DNA medicen commercials here, when Chinese Veggies for 3/4 the price does the same thing, as does excercise. It's called taking care of your body. But no Wuhi berries, Goji berries, and other fad diets won't turn you into a Chinese Moon goddess. Lao Tsu's pills of longevity was just getting to the point of taking care of the body.

Now I got the miracle cure for Autism right here. Fu Gwa, just eat a steady diet of Bitter Mellon...

I sat here staring at the word Sheogorath thinking, "Isn't that that guy's name from Oblivi... oh I see what he did there."

I had to google both words in order to get this joke. Luckily my grim commitment to getting jokes allowed me to slog through the long explanations I found.

Yes, I have a very Aspie sense of humor

I find it appalling how dismissive people (especially Americans?) are of herbal medicine. Why would you assume that the herb does nothing, just because it's an herb? It works the same way as any medicine works: it has chemical compounds that do things to your body. Yes, this includes mental effects - alteration of your thoughts and behavior. Western medicine in the 20th century started using synthetic chemical compounds, and these came to dominate pharmacology, but that does not mean that all herbal medicine is witchcraft, and it does not merely produce placebo effects. Also, many synthetic medicines were originally derived from herbs themselves. Taking aspirin for a headache? It was originally made from willow bark.

My non-FDA-approved herb of choice: St. John's Wort.

Causes cataracts
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... -8655(2000)0720200POLCBH2.0.CO2/abstract

I find it appalling how "herbalists" simplify the argument. Most FDA approved drugs have awful side effects, but at least they are disclosed to me and expected in the course of treatment. And yes, most FDA approved drugs come from an herb. Most herbs contains hundreds of compounds, I would prefer to limit my exposure to the one refined compound that has been proven through clinical trial to achieve the intended purpose. My biles are not out of whack, my humors are perfectly balanced, my chi is doing just fine, thank you.

Synthetic compounds have been put through a whole series of testing, measuring, proving, double-blind trials - sometimes taking years of close study and documentation, before they're even considered for release and general use.
This isn't always 100% reliable because problems do sometimes show up after a compound is released, but it mostly works very well and it's possible to show well-documented evidence that something does what is claimed. It's also part of the same study which is able to provide reliable indications of any side-effects, and certain things which should definitely be avoided - like mixing one type of compound with another.

Herbal remedies largely rely on anecdotal evidence. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with this, or with using something herbal - and as you've said, many modern medicines owe their existence to a herbal source - but it still lacks verifiable evidence.
So in the western world which is, generally speaking, highly science-based - it's easy to see why some herbal remedies might be seen as Snake Oil or a magic wonder-cure. Sometimes justifiably, sometimes not.

This credibility problem is often made worse when, lacking cold factual research documentation, some herbal practitioners start with the "balancing forces" mystical-type stuff or, as in Homeopathy for example - where it's claimed that the more a substance is diluted the more its potency is increased - make claims which move in exactly the opposite direction to what is known and well understood.
(and just to give that particular claim a little perspective: a 30C Homeopathic dilution - a "general purpose" strength - is a dilution ratio of 10^-60 (that's ten-to-the-power-of-minus-sixty, since I can't type an exponent in a browser window), which would require giving two billion doses per second to six billion people for 4 billion years to deliver a single molecule of the original material to any patient)

It's claims like those made for Homeopathy and regrettably, other outrageous claims made for herbal remedies - which leave them wide open to people simply pointing and laughing.

Also, I'd just like to add that the reach and effectiveness of a placebo is astonishing.
Again, there's nothing wrong with benefiting from it but any perceived cure or improvement is often attributed to the remedy with no justification whatever.

(Damn I wish I'd stop picking at this. That's two corrections and I'm still worrying about it )

Last edited by Cornflake on 06 Jan 2011, 3:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

By definition Jiaogulan and other adaptogens are supposed to be free from side effects.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be skeptical, of course you should.

It sounds way to good to be true. But so do all the claims from natural remedies.

I wonder how many of them actually work vs placebo effect and also vs don't really know if it works and/or can't really tell if it works. I bet its a pretty dismal %.

By the way this stuff is hard to find on the cheap, but I am going to try the Pacific Mall in Toronto/Markham. Too bad I don't speak Chinese, this could get interesting.

By definition Jiaogulan and other adaptogens are supposed to be free from side effects.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be skeptical, of course you should.

It sounds way to good to be true. But so do all the claims from natural remedies.

I wonder how many of them actually work vs placebo effect and also vs don't really know if it works and/or can't really tell if it works. I bet its a pretty dismal %.

By the way this stuff is hard to find on the cheap, but I am going to try the Pacific Mall in Toronto/Markham. Too bad I don't speak Chinese, this could get interesting.

By definition surely any ingested foreign substance has side effects, one way or another. Herbal or not, it's a drug - even if it is "only" a drug like caffeine, and that can affect people in strange ways.
Not saying it's automatically something really nasty but "herbal" is too often taken as "nature's free gift - so therefore it's completely safe". Opium is entirely natural...
And unfortunately, "adaptogen" itself seems to be a term used by herbalists. As far as I can tell neither it nor the belief system attached to it has been medically validated.
It may well all be true - but until someone picks it apart and proves it one way or the other it remains anecdotal.

Absolutely. Pinch of salt and all that.

This is the difficulty. At least with the synthetic stuff there's more than a good chance it's been throughly examined and documented.
The flip side of course is that there are likely many extremely effective herbal remedies which just get dismissed because there's only anecdotal evidence. Doubtless many genuine wonder-cures are still below the radar because of that.

Sign language? But think I'd be very careful how I moved...

By definition? Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? A substance has either side effects or doesn't, regardless of the label you place on it.

From Wiki:

"There is no strict definition of the adaptogenic characteristics of a plant, leading to a generalized usage of the term for commercial or pseudoscientific reasons."

I think the key word here is pseudoscientific.

Exactly. A chrome-plated turd is still a turd.

I really am not getting what most of the replies are getting at. My point about side effects were that there is possibly less reason to be scared to try this stuff. Whether or not it has side effects remains to be seen but right now I'm not experiencing any.

You guys are really argumentative, and yeah I'm being general.

Be skeptical, sure, what I am saying must seem to be really out there, but what do you have to lose in trying what worked for me.

You know what, if you don't care to try it then don't try it.

But then maybe if you have no interest in what worked for me you shouldn't be participating in this thread. Don't you have something better to do ? Your technical arguments don't mean a thing.

Either it works for you or it doesn't or you are too (fill in the blank) to bother trying it.