Many patients seek Chinese herbal medicines (CHM) from traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinics. This study aimed to estimate the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs) in adults diagnosed with obesity, with or without CHM.
Patients with obesity aged 18 to 50 years were identified using diagnostic codes from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database between 2008 and 2018. The researchers randomized 67,655 patients with or without CHM using propensity score matching. All patients were followed up from the start of the study until MACEs, death, or the end of 2018. A Cox proportional regression model was used to evaluate the hazard ratios of MACEs in the CHM and non-CHM cohorts.
During a median follow-up of 4.2 years, the CHM group had a higher incidence of MACEs than the non-CHM control cohort (9.35 versus 8.27 per 1,000 person-years). The CHM group had a 1.13-fold higher risk of MACEs compared with the non-CHM control (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 1.13; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.07–1.19; p <0.001), especially in ischemic stroke (aHR = 1.18; 95% CI: 1.07–1.31; p <0.01), arrhythmia (aHR = 1.26; 95% CI: 1.14–1.38; p <0.001), and young adults aged 18 to 29 years (aHR = 1.22; 95%
CI: 1.05–1.43; p <0.001).
The authors concluded that, although certain CHMs offer cardiovascular benefits, young and middle-aged obese adults receiving CHM exhibit a higher risk of MACEs than those not receiving CHM. Therefore, TCM practitioners should be cautious when prescribing medications to young patients with obesity, considering their potential cardiovascular risks.
I am not sure why the authors concluded that “certain CHMs offer cardiovascular benefits”; their data do not support this statement and I am not aware of any such evidence either. The more valid result of this study is that the use of CHMs is a risk factor for cardiovascular health in obese people. I fear that this might also be true for non-obese individuals and could also apply to non-cardiovascular areas of health.
Just like any other form of herbal therapy, CHMs can contain toxic ingredients and might interact with prescribed medications. Unlike most other forms of herbal treatments CHMs are known to be often contaminated (e.g. with heaviy metals) and/or adulterated (e.g. with illegal amounts of synthetic drugs). as they typically contain a multitude of herbs, the risk of interactions is also increased. Our 2013 review shoed that “herbal medicinal products (HMPs) were adulterated or contaminated with dust, pollens, insects, rodents, parasites, microbes, fungi, mould, toxins, pesticides, toxic heavy metals and/or prescription drugs. The most severe adverse effects caused by these adulterations were agranulocytosis, meningitis, multi-organ failure, perinatal stroke, arsenic, lead or mercury poisoning, malignancies or carcinomas, hepatic encephalopathy, hepatorenal syndrome, nephrotoxicity, rhabdomyolysis, metabolic acidosis, renal or liver failure, cerebral edema, coma, intracerebral haemorrhage, and death. Adulteration and contamination of HMPs were most commonly noted for traditional Indian and Chinese remedies, respectively.”
My advice has therefore long been very clear and outspoken:
CHMs are best avoided!
22 Responses to If you ask me, Chinese herbal medicines are best avoided
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If you ask me, conventional medicine is best avoided.
yes, this would reduce the average life expectancy by more than 20 years
Spoken like the idiot you are, Mutus. Any evidence to back up your halfwitted assertion? And don’t bother trotting out the long-debunked “third leading cause of death” bullshit you halfwits seem so keen on citing.
Thank you for wanting me dead.
I’m being kept alive by “conventional medicine” and extensive gurgle searches (for arguing with proponents of alternative medicines) have not found any remotely credible bits of alternative medicine of any relevance to me; not to mention repeated questions to proponents of alternatives which have produced no meaningful answers.
Spoken like the ignoramus you have always been and always will be Lenny.
Let me give you a couple of examples,
Austrian surgeon amputates wrong leg
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59498082.amp
Article- Medication Dispensing Errors and Prevention
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519065/
There are numerous more examples but I’m not going to do the research for you Lenny, it’s time you put your big boy pants on and do the research yourself.
Look up “cherrypicking” you inconsequential imbecile. Then look up how many lives are saved or prolonged by conventional medicine. Then come back and admit you’re a drooling halfwit who couldn’t poor piss out of a boot even with the instructions written on the sole.
As ever, the fact that planes crash occasionally does not validate a belief in magic carpets.
Your pathetic and nonsensical flailing, as with all AltMed goons, only demonstrates your utter inability to think coherently. With each post you only make a bigger idiot of yourself.
@Mutus Bellator
Nope. YOU claim that regular medicine is no good, to the point that people would be better off without it. So YOU must not only do the research in support of that claim, but also produce sufficient evidence that regular medicine does indeed do more harm than good.
Also see https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Do_your_own_research
Richard you need to take your pharmaceutical horse blinders off and have a look around at the research then come back and tell me if you can with a straight face that conventional medicine is completely safe to use.
@Mutus Bellator
Nope. YOU claim that regular medicine is no good, to the point that people would be better off without it. So YOU must not only do the research in support of that claim, but also produce sufficient evidence that regular medicine does indeed do more harm than good. So far, you have produced nothing even close to such evidence.
Ah, a perfect example of the nirvana fallacy, of course combined with the earlier straw man that generalizes occasional medical errors into claiming that the whole profession is only harmful and thus best abandoned.
Of course no-one claims that real medicine is perfect, and that no mistakes are ever made. And what you say is extremely insulting to those ~70 million healthcare workers worldwide who are on average quite successful in helping their fellow humans, to the extent that less children die than ever before, and that we live a good two decades longer than would otherwise be the case, and in better health and more comfort, at that.
But thank you for your comments – even if you are not a troll they are good examples why people should avoid listening to let alone consulting quacks. Let’s just say that some of the keywords that define the alternative world (and yes, that certainly includes you) are gullibility, stupidity, arrogance, and medical and scientific incompetence.
Then again, you are probably a troll. No doubt, you still chuckle at every comment of yours because those dumb foureyes keep failing to spot that you are quite vocal for someone calling themselves ‘silent’.
Richard Rasker on Saturday 21 September 2024 at 09:46
“….70 million healthcare workers worldwide who are on average quite successful in helping their fellow humans,..”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html
If it is America with all its latest diagnostic technology, one can imagine the outcome in other parts of the world. If this is in America, would Europe be any different. Same training. Same drugs.
https://eaasm.eu/en-gb/2022/09/13/press-release-medication-errors-the-most-common-adverse-event-in-hospitals-threatens-patient-safety-and-causes-160000-deaths-per-year/
The proof:
https://d-nb.info/1214869033/34
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/slightly-blighty/201510/why-do-patients-stop-dying-when-doctors-go-strike
“we live a good two decades longer than would otherwise be the case, and in better health and more comfort, at that.”
REALLY? The doctor’s research points exactly in the opposite direction. This doctor is not a homeopath.
“Yet recently, just within the past few decades, amid all of these medical advances, something has gone terribly wrong. In many different ways we appear to be getting sicker. You can see the headlines every day. We are suffering from a mysterious array of what I call “modern plagues”: obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, hay fever, food allergies, esophageal reflux and cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism, eczema. In all likelihood you or someone in your family or someone you know is afflicted. Unlike most lethal plagues of the past that struck relatively fast and hard, these are chronic conditions that diminish and degrade their victims’ quality of life for decades.”
Commenting on Dr Blaser:
“For someone who pioneered our understanding of Helicobacter pylori in gastroduodenal ulcers and stomach cancer, it was a wake-up call when Blaser discovered that having virulent Helicobacter decreases a person’s chance of developing asthma by 40% and protects against celiac disease. Infants receiving antibiotics in their first year of life are at increased risk of developing asthma by the time they are seven. Children who have early inflammatory bowel disease are 84% more likely to develop Crohn’s disease than children who don’t; the risk goes up 18% for each course of antibiotics. The average American child receives 17 courses of antibiotics before they reach their 20s. Children who receive antibiotics in the first 6 months of life become fatter than those who don’t.”
@Krishna
Nope, not even close.
This has been debunked so many times already that only complete imbeciles still trot it out.
(FYI: if that statistic were correct, then about two thirds of all in-hospital deaths in the US would be caused by medical error. Which is of course ludicrous.)
Nope, not even close.
Here in the Netherlands, the best estimate is that all medical errors taken together cause approximately 1200 deaths per year, on a population of 18 million. Extrapolated to the US population, this number would be about 20 times higher, so 36,000. Yes, still quite a lot, but nowhere near 160,000. And this includes also other medical errors than just medication errors.
Maybe this is news for you, but there are more doctors in the world than just your Personal God Dr Blaser.
Anyway, people with a normal intelligence know that one should look at the benefit vs. harm ratio, and not just at harms. And yes, the overwhelming majority of treatments used in modern science-based medicine have proven to have greater benefits than harms. If you disagree, then point out a treatment still in use that causes more harm than benefits, complete with proper peer-reviewed evidence of course. But even if you find one or two examples (e.g. opioid prescriptions come to mind), then that still is not evidence that all of regular medicine is no good. You would need to present us with convincing evidence that the vast majority of regular medical treatments is more harmful than beneficial. Good luck with that.
Anyway, all this has been explained to you on many previous occasions already. Maybe you have some sort of memory problem?
@Krishna
““Yet recently, just within the past few decades, amid all of these medical advances, something has gone terribly wrong. In many different ways we appear to be getting sicker. You can see the headlines every day. We are suffering from a mysterious array of what I call “modern plagues”: obesity, childhood diabetes, asthma, hay fever, food allergies, esophageal reflux and cancer, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, autism, eczema. In all likelihood you or someone in your family or someone you know is afflicted. Unlike most lethal plagues of the past that struck relatively fast and hard, these are chronic conditions that diminish and degrade their victims’ quality of life for decades.””
My retort would be that this is occurring as you suggest, but not so much as a result of failed medicine, but in spite of SBM.
Most of the chronic disease modern man is facing today can be linked to diet. To be specific where to put the blame. Seed oils, too much sugar (including some carbs), processed foods (including packaged) and chemicals (glyphosate, food colors, preservatives, artificial flavors). Make these simple changes (perhaps not so easy for the financially challenged), and in most cases the patient will recover from many of the chronic diseases.
For those that live in Europe, you are fortunate that many of the harmful ingredients are not permitted to be added to foods that are permitted to be added in the USA. I believe this points to one reason that the health in the USA is among the poorest in the world. The poorest and unassuming citizens of the USA are being fed a toxic diet, and it is evident in the overall health of the nation… in SPITE of the efforts of SBM.
For anybody that is not aware, the increase in chronic disease if rampant among the ages 18-34 in the USA. Not only obesity, but type two diabetes among other issues. Chronic Disease has certainly increased among the population rather than SBM winning the battle against disease.
“You can see the headlines every day.”
Maybe you should try the real evidence – just for a change?
for instance this one:
“Globally, life expectancy from birth increased from 61·7 years (95% uncertainty interval 61·4-61·9) in 1980 to 71·8 years (71·5-72·2) in 2015.”
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27733281/
@Edzard
And of course TCM, homeopathy and other forms of SCAM did NOT contribute to this progress in global health in any perceivable way.
@Edzard
Life expectancy does not define quality of life. Some patients live in hospitals for years before succumbing to death, others in pain every day.
Yes, they have found ways to keep people alive longer than they would without medication. Insulin is one such example. However, better to never have become insulin resistant than to be dependent on injections to stay alive.
How much higher might the life expectancy be than it is now if people make better choices ?
don’t bullshit me!
your claim was “we appear to be getting sicker” and not about QoL.
@Edzard
Just one example.
Today one billion people in the world have diabetes or pre-diabetes. and the number is growing every day.
So. what I said is that in spite of MD’s and SBM offering treatment for this growing problem, what is being done to PREVENT the problem ? Nothing
So if SBM is only treating diabetes, but not preventing diabetes. It only makes good sense to examine the diet.
Dis-ease continues killing people prematurely, because diabetes and metabolic syndrome is accelerated death.
Diabetes is a QoL issue AND a length of life issue.
So RG – sorry – John
So who or what should be done? I thought you were the libertarian opposed to interfering Big Government? Shouldn’t people be free to make their own lifestyle choices?
If you’re in favour of government interventions to stop 100,000 people dying annually of diabetes then presumably you’ll also be happy for government to repeal the second amendment to stop 50,000 people dying from firearm injuries every year?
@
RG“John”(Ignoring for a moment that this is waaayyy off-topic …)
Two of the biggest risk factors for many if not most of the conditions you mention are obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.
The best, ‘natural’ solution to this is very clear: get people to eat less and healthier, and get them off their lazy butt. And yes, almost all doctors know this and give the above advice to patients who are at risk.
However, the quote marks around ‘natural’ are there for a reason: developing obesity is quite natural in this modern world overflowing with cheap, tasty food. We have evolved a huge preference for sweet and fatty foods, as well as a tendency to eat as much of it as possible as long as it’s available. Same with lack of exercise: we evolved to conserve energy as much as possible.
These traits of course evolved when we lived in a world where food was scarce and took a lot of effort and roaming around to find enough to survive. And especially sweet and fatty (read: energy-rich) foodstuffs were very special treats not daily available.
But what is your point exactly? That medical science isn’t very effective in preventing obesity? Well, then tell us how they could tackle this problem. Because loads of people much smarter than you and I have not found a foolproof solution yet. It is very hard to make people do things against their innate drives, especially when there are large, powerful corporations that do their very best to make us consume even more instead of less – because to them, making money is more important than keeping people healthy.
Every single day, people are exposed to dozens or even hundreds of ads, all trying to entice them to buy unhealthy foodstuffs. They hardly see any good medical advice, and certainly not in the same form as those polished, attractive commercials for food.
So I’m a bit puzzled here. Not only are your comments off-topic, they don’t even make sense as criticism of modern healthcare.
@Lenny
“Shouldn’t people be free to make their own lifestyle choices? ”
You assume that I was speaking at the of the government… Lenny. I said no such thing, I was speaking of the medical community.
But since you mention the government, yes things could be changed to ensure that the population might be less prone to disease.
The AMA or the Medical Universities could begin to educate MDs about nutrition, and the importance of good nutrition, instead of pushing pills that treat but don’t prevent disease.
The EU has banned three thousand substances from foods that are not permitted in the USA. The US FDA could ban the same toxic substances from foods. Implement more controls on glyphosate. Correct the current food pyramid lie.
Many things could be done to improve the SAD (Standard American Diet). Nobody said anything about taking away the rights of patients to make their own choices, nor about government forcing anything… except you.
Richard Rasker on Saturday 21 September 2024 at 22:40
“This has been debunked so many times already that only complete imbeciles still trot it out.”
Debunked by who? Did you study the report and forward it to Sen Bernie Sanders and help save millions of US$?
https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/more-than-1-000-preventable-deaths-a-day-is-too-many-the-need-to-improve-patient-safety
Who really is an imbecile here? Bernie Sanders? Or these doctors. You can check their testimony.
Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA
John James, PhD, Founder, Patient Safety America, Houston, TX
Tejal Gandhi, MD, MPH, President, National Patient Safety Foundation; Associate Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President for Patient Safety and Quality and Director of the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, MD
Joanne Disch, PhD, RN, Professor ad Honorem, University of Minnesota School of Nursing, Minneapolis, MN
Joanne Disch, PhD, RN, Professor ad Honorem, University of Minnesota School of Nursing, Minneapolis, MN
Also there are many other reports that you have missed.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/medical-errors-in-massachusetts-harm-patients-drive-up-costs/
https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/clinical-care/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-death-senators-told?page=0%2C1
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/07/18/332584593/health-safety-experts-call-for-public-reporting-of-medical-harms
I am quoting verbatim:
“Hearing members, who spoke before the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, not only underscored the devastating loss of human life – more than 1,000 people each day – but also called attention to the fact that these medical errors cost the nation a colossal $1 trillion each year. ”
The great part: this report, first complied by Dr Leape in 1994 has continued to be complied every few years by doctors and the numbers have continued to increase in the report every time.
So either the doctors in Netherlands hide this information from people like you, or you refuse to look at the data. The US data extrapolated for the world: the population of Argentina wiped out EVERY YEAR by doctors.
In India, the situation is equally grim:
https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/india-s-medical-error-deaths-nearly-5-mn-a-year-can-be-cut-by-50-expert-118102800193_1.html
“…normal intelligence know that one should look at the benefit vs. harm ratio, and not just at harms.”
Is this not an oft repeated error statement? Followed by “science is continuous learning”, “a drug that does no harm does no good”…… Tell me something new about normal intelligence.
The diseases Dr Blaser links to antibiotics are not limited to the patient: it travels down to next generations. Children born sick because of the treatment received by parents. Great system. How do YOU calculate cost benefit ? The good part being that most patients are with “normal intelligence” and by the time their intelligence improves, it is too late. The patient and the next generations, are sick requiring treatment.
This is the effect of just 2 regular drugs. What is the outcome of the patients taking over 6 drugs every day prescribed by 3 specialists?
https://www.ted.com/talks/russ_altman_what_really_happens_when_you_mix_medications?subtitle=en
NONE of these doctors is a homeopath and I have referred reports available in public domain.