Health Fads Part II: Trick of Treatment

I recently read Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst MD, 2008). Each chapter is about a different alternative medicine, its history, its uses, and all the information the authors could gather from large reputable studies about their effectiveness.
Usually when drugs or treatments are tested, some studies show that they work and other studies show that the same treatment does not work. There may be problems with the studies that the researchers do not realize. Before the scientific community comes to a consensus on something, a lot of studies have to be done. Then researchers do mega-analysis of those studies to come out with a verdict.

Health Fads Part I: The "Truth" About Beauty

There is a streak in me that longs to put aloe vera in my smoothies and mushed banana on my face. My interest in alternative treatments took off in late high school when I bought a book called The Truth About Beauty by Kat James.
The truth, Kat tells us, is that real beauty does not come from diet cokes and low-fat, low-carb, low-flavor highly packaging, highly marketed diet products as she once thought. Nor does it come from expensive cosmetics or prescription drugs. All these things are supposedly damaging. True beauty comes from a healthy diet of natural foods supported by high doses of vitamin and mineral supplements.

Diet Pills

Last Wednesday (2/2/11) the New York Times published the article “F.D.A. Fails to Approve Diet Drug.” The prescription diet pill Contrave will not be approved until a long-term study can prove that it dose not raise the risk of heart attacks.
In recent months the FDA has turned down two other weight-loss drugs. Now experts believe the decision will discourage drug companies from developing weight loss drugs. Several commentators expressed disapproval echoing that of by Morgan Downey, editor of the Downey Obesity Report,  that “the FDA has decided that the most significant threat to public health will not be treated by any drug.”