Ginkgo Doesn't Improve Memory Or Cognitive Skills 403
JumperCable writes "Ginkgo biloba has failed — again — to live up to its reputation for boosting memory and brain function. Just over a year after a study showed that the herb doesn't prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease, a new study from the same team of researchers has found no evidence that ginkgo reduces the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging. In the new study, the largest of its kind to date, DeKosky and his colleagues followed more than 3,000 people between the ages of 72 and 96 for an average of six years. Half of the participants took two 120-milligram capsules of ginkgo a day during the study period, and the other half took a placebo. The people who took ginkgo showed no differences in attention, memory, and other cognitive measures compared to those who took the placebo, according to the study, which was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association."
Re:Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:5, Insightful)
People say the same about crystal meth
Untested drug found useless... wonders never cease (Score:4, Insightful)
Or perhaps it's best put, wonders often never materialize in the first place. Is anyone really surprised that something sold with a big "these claims have not been evaluated by the FDA" on the bottle has, in fact, been found to do nothing close to the claim?
Hopefully herbal viagra is next, and some day spammers will be emailing about things people actually can use...*
*(warning the claims in this post have not been evaluated by the FDA)
Re:So what exactly then... (Score:4, Insightful)
The same thing that the color black is good for. Selling stuff to people.
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:1, Insightful)
Science is not centric anything, you look at the evidence and if it do not support the claims made by the manufacturer, it's clearly bullshit.
Not that I had expected the result to be anything different than what it currently is. Just because something is used by a group of people for years does not mean it actually works. Ref religion, clearly a fantasy yet millions of people are dumb enough to accept it as reality without asking the most basic questions.
Interesting fact (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:2, Insightful)
These euro-centric "scientists" can't see pas their narrow-minded blinders to tap into the millenia of cultural experience embodied in Eastern medical and spiritual traditions.
Yup, right up there with leeching and medicinal tapeworms. Those aren't "eastern", but they were used for years too. Got a headache? We'll drill a gaping, untreated hole in your head to release the "bad spirits"! Thats African, not "eastern", but do you think it's not effective? You must clearly be racist and sexist as well.
The point is, Gingko Baloba has a very potent effect when added to the labels of alternative medical products, causing them to fly off the shelves in exchange for cash.
Yup, it makes yuppies in "Organic" food stores worldwide not listen to reason. I've another shipment of snake oil that's been selling so well I can hardly keep it in stock. Since that's your only proof of effect so far, this stuff must be awesome. I'll get you some dirt cheap if you want. I swear!!!
Western medicine is just jealous and probably racist and sexist against peoples like me.
This statement confuses me such that I'm not quite sure how to comment. I'll try anyway, after a deep breath. Ginkgo Baloba[sic] is a plant. I am sure that by pure virtue of you posting your above comment, you are not a plant, certainly not of the same species as Ginkgo is. I'm fairly certain that you can't rightfully claim any similarity between your gender, whatever it may be, and that of any type of Ginkgo. Why is it that you assume some sort of racial or even sexist slight against you, whomever or whatever you might be, when a study is done involving herbal qualities of a plant and they're found to be equivalent to a placebo?
Oh, unless you thought the whole thing was about Ginkgo Balboa, Rocky's little known Chinese adopted sister.
Re:Medical conspiracy! (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you're making a joke, but ginko is far from exotic and nor is it a weed (it's a tree). It is widely grown in cities as it is very hardy. If you live in NYC, you see them all over the place and come fall can't help but smell the foul odor of the pods as they fall to the ground and are crushed underfoot.
http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=200005235 [efloras.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_Biloba [wikipedia.org]
&c, &c
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:3, Insightful)
I read this [wired.com] a while back, and it's been noted that placebos are becoming even more effective... so the manufacturers are making even more potent ones.
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, if they wanted to check psychosomatic elements, the ideal would be to have subgroups who "know" what they are taking, but lie to some of them. So you have a group that "knows" they are taking the real thing (some of them actually are, some of them are taking the placebo), and a group that "knows" they are taking the placebo (some are, some aren't). Arrange it so the people appear to have learned accidentally about their faked status, so they feel certain they know the truth.
If a significant percentage of those who "know" they are taking a placebo get a real benefit from the drug anyway, then you've probably eliminated psychosomatic bias and have a winner.
Especially if that exceeds the number who "know" they are taking the real drug but are actually taking a placebo, because you've demonstrated that the real benefits of the drug are better than the placebo effect can even generate. :)
Re:Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:2, Insightful)
I know I'm being silly here, but I actually read *some* of the JAMA article. In the paper I saw, they were testing to see if GB had any effect on *older* patients with cognitive degeneration.
So, if you are 70 and you take GB because you think it'll improve your memory, you are probably SOL. If you are 30 and you take it because you want a quick boost, you are probably getting what you pay for.
Disclosures: Dr DeKosky Gets Big Pharma Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to say the results of this particular study are necessarily bogus, but sure makes one wonder.
Big pharma dislikes "natural", as in often unpatentable, treatments; discourages their use.
Ron
Re:No surprise because of the dosage (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind then that Vitamin C (arguably an 'unrefined plant material') has the odd effect of making you *not get scurvy and die* as a result of a daily dosage of around 100mg.
Relatively small doses of simple things can affect you in lots of interesting ways. Look at medication that treats thyroid disorders; it's a simple material (although it doesn't grow on trees) dosed out in *micrograms*, the slightest variation of which (less than 15 micrograms for some people, myself included) your body WILL feel the difference of.
Most things, sure, your body sends in one end and it comes out the other relatively unchanged. Certain things, though, are profoundly influential.
Re:Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:3, Insightful)
Your post seems to say that drugs that work on younger people generally don't work on older people, or people with health problems. Can you give some other examples of this general rule? Maybe some other scientific studies?
Re:Actually works to their advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an advocate of herbal remedies. Well, the ones that work. Plants can be pretty potent, and to think otherwise is shockingly naive. Not every herb is going to be a cure-all, but there's a gamut of plants that effectively address an array of health problems. Or recreational desires.
Over-reliance on synthetics created by for-profit organizations is itself basically a disease. If, say, your first choice for addressing depression is an SSRI prescription, you've been infected by advertising.
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:1, Insightful)
Exactly what diseases can be cured by extracting substances with a solvent [thefreedictionary.com]?
FFS the GP spelled it wright, why can't you?
Re:Actually works to their advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
You could consider this as evidence that depression is overdiagnosed and a prognosis of "light-moderate" depression is most likely bullshit.
I don't see how this is insightful. /. has a cadre of people who seem to deny/downplay the existence of mental disorders.
It's like saying that since a band-aid can't staunch a bullet wound, that trauma is overdiagnosed and a prognosis of "paper-cut" is most likely bullshit.
They contribute nothing to the discussion other than to shit on decades of medical science.
Re:Medical conspiracy! (Score:3, Insightful)
This whole herbs thing doesn't make any sense to me.
People eat "herbs" because they think some chemical in the "herb" offers some medicinal benefit. If that chemical can be extracted (or synthesized) in a more pure form and put in a pill, then why would you eat the plant instead? The plant might have the chemical you want, but it also has lots of other (possibly harmful) stuff in it that the pill is free of. Also, with the pill, you know how much of the active ingredient you're getting. There's no way to know how much you're really getting if you eat your "herb".
If the chemical can't be extracted or isolated, that probably means that the medicinal benefit is really the placebo effect. Another possibility is that a chemical was found, but rigorous testing indicated significant side-effects.
Re:Medical conspiracy! (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the problem with crowds listening to someone like that on TV. They will say "we only eat natural stuff." My response is: mercury occurs naturally, so why don't eat it? Or why are you opposed to smoking "natural" tobacco? There are many things that occur naturally that will kill you or harm you.
It's madness out there. People go insane over the Bovine Growth Hormone (BVH) but they don't understand that it's produced naturally in the cow's pituitary gland. We could go on forever with ridiculous examples like this. They don't listen. In fact, they call people like you and I uninformed!
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:4, Insightful)
The placebo effect is the same as the occasional cancer patient that goes into remission when the best medical science said there was no way to survive. It definitely exists, and there is no good explanation for it. It's like a belief that you will recover, or in the case of placebos that some drug will improve whatever function, triggers something in your body to put out a little extra effort, and it is sometimes enough to turn the tide.
For simple things like a memory test, just believing you have a better chance of doing well allows you to do better than you would ordinarily. If you don't think it works, then it probably won't.
You've got to remember that even cognitive processes rely on physical bodily functions - mood depends on more of one type of chemical firing off than another, so even things like a placebo anti-depressant effect is changing the physical responses in your brain. It's quite impressive, when you think about it.
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:3, Insightful)
The second portion of that is unneccessary, because if the drug really works the people who take the placebo will see less of an improvement than the ones taking the drug. There isn't any need to over-complicate it.
If the placebo and the drug both have identical effects, then the drug is actually a placebo also.
Re:No surprise because of the dosage (Score:4, Insightful)
As somebody else above has said, plant extracts are not a concentrated source of anything. Which means you're probably better off comparing the effects of 120mg of freshly squeezed orange juice on scurvy than 100mg of vitamin C.
No doubt, you are correct. Very small dosages of certain vitamins and minerals can affect the body greatly. But very small dosages of naturally-occurring, unpurified, untreated, otherwise minimally processed things probably don't.
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Ginko was doing anything, it should have shown a slight improvement over the placebo even at 120mg. If the results come back essentially the same, then it is obviously not the Ginko improving memory.
The placebo effect is powerful on its own, and had they used another control group who took nothing you probably would have seen the Ginko and placebo groups both averaging better scores than the control group. That doesn't mean the Ginko itself actually does anything.
Even assuming you are right that Ginko will have literally no affect whatsoever until the dosage is above a certain level (which I find ridiculous, btw), if it is unsafe to use at its effective dosage, what's the point?
Re:Actually works to their advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
What herbal remedies do you recommend?
Why do you believe that these remedies are effective?
How do these remedies compare to the drugs that target the same complaints in both cost and effectiveness?
What qualifies you to be making medicinal recommendations to others? Do you have relevant training?
Over-reliance on synthetics created by for-profit organizations is itself basically a disease. If, say, your first choice for addressing depression is an SSRI prescription, you've been infected by advertising.
What would your first choice be for treating depression? And what, exactly, is your decision based on?
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Medical conspiracy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, you have *no* idea what you're getting when you buy a "nutritional supplement".
Let's suppose there is some clinical evidence for a supplement's effectiveness. If you buy it in "herbal" form, it might not contain the same parts of the plant that were studied. If you buy the compound, you might not get the same enantiomer studied.
In fact, in the United States you might not be getting what the label says at all. There was a study cited in Science News a few years back which showed that "dietary supplements" often contained *none* of the headline ingredients, and often had ingredient that weren't listed. I've had this problem with herbal *tea*; I once drank a cup of chamomile tea and had an unmistakable pseudophed reaction -- probably due to contamination with ephedra.
Next year, the FDA will put into effect rules that will require supplement labels to be accurate and for the supplement not to be contaminated with other substances. Believe it or not, this is the first time the FDA has had a policy of enforcing those things. It's no wonder that research support for supplement claims is wanting. Even if the supplement has value, if they are using commercial supplements who knows what they are giving the test subjects. In fact, I'd say it's probably ethically questionable to conduct human research with commercial supplements, until the FDA gets its act together.
Re:Medical conspiracy! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because people might not know which things they need to extract. Cannabis is a good example. Most people focus on THC, yet there are many other similar chemicals that have not been studied to the same extend THC has. In other words, the whole idea of taking plants with benefits and exacting the single chemical that makes them useful to us, then putting it into a pill, may be a waste of time in some cases. Not to mention the complex chemical processes that take place inside a plant that don't happen inside a capsules of extracted plant matter.
As for knowing how much herb you are getting, you can take samples, then you just need some good scales and a bit of maths. This problem has more to do with personal practices and the black market than any problems with plants vs. extracted pills.