Doctor, isn’t there something all natural I could take? While this question may cause some doctors to roll their eyes at you, all natural remedies/medicines are well worth considering. In fact, most natural medicines and remedies should be considered your first choice before choosing prescription drugs.
Many people believe that prescription remedies are far from universally effective, while many natural remedies have proven benefits. It is a sad fact of life, however, that the large clinical trials doctors rely on to generate good quality evidence about the safety and efficacy of any treatment are very expensive to run. This puts natural remedies at a disadvantage, as being not patentable they are of little interest to the big pharmaceutical companies who have the large funds to organize trials, production and advertising. In the United States many natural remedies, like Aloe, Ginger, Vegetable Charcoal and Peppermint extracts, do undergo a very significant degree of processing and strict regulations monitored by the FDA. Regulations and processing is why many natural remedies cost a bit more than prescription drugs in the US.
The pharmaceutical industry searches the world to snap up the secrets of numerous herbal, nutritional and natural remedies to turn them into conventional pill and bottled patented remedies. Meanwhile, some elements of the pharmaceutical industry attack traditional herbalists the public is unlikely to pay large sums of money for expensive patented drugs if they can treat themselves, with no risk of side-effects, with safe and effective plant-based medicines, proven over years, sometimes centuries, of use. If doctors had to stop using all treatments unless they were proven by clinical trials, medicine as we know it would shut down.
There are a large number of proven all natural remedies which have not been formally researched and written up for publication in medical or scientific journals. But no pharmaceutical company will agree to fund such research to prove a remedy is safe and effective which anyone can then use at minimal cost. Whether we call them natural or prescription does not really matter. What does matter is that we use them in a way that maximizes the help and minimizes the harmful side effects.