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."
That's just Western prejudice (Score:5, Funny)
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. 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. Western medicine is just jealous and probably racist and sexist against peoples like me.
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like they should do some tests on this "placebo" stuff to see what makes it as good as ginkgo.
Re:That's just Western prejudice (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yep, the Placebo effect is well documented so there's really no need to test it in every study.
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But the problem with Ginko (and stuff like it) is that the people who really need it
forget to take it
Thank you, I'll be here all day.
Now what were we talking about? (dang)
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Another thing is, we shouldn't expect it to be able to do anything.
If I give you a sugar pill and tell you it will cause tachycardia (and, if needed explain what that means), and give it to people, I would expect a significant number to report racing hearts. However, you can feel your heart, so there is a feedback loop, and its beat can be effected by mood, thought etc. (to some degree even consciously controlled)
However, if I say it "increases blood flow in your calf"... I might expect you to report strang
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.
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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 perc
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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.
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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.
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Tests like these are flawed from the beginning, and I am sure that these scientists know this. The trick that is always played by supplement manufactures are to set the dosages much lower than what is required to reduce side effects. Meaning, for any "drug" to work, there will always be side effects.
For Ginko, the effective dosage is around 600mg per day, and I can tell you from years of experience that it works quite well at this dosage. There are many side effects in some people at this dosage, however
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?
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Too. Damn. Funny.
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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 t
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I think you should probably just get a new sarcasm detector. Yours may be beyond repair.
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Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:5, Insightful)
People say the same about crystal meth
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in fact, forget the motivation ...
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As does pharmaceutical methylphenidate, amphetamine, or methamphetamine.
Re:Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that or you just assume that's the effect it will have on you, and so you behave accordingly.
But, hey, who am I to argue with a placebo effect that works for you?
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It's true, but it's harder to get motivated enough to exercise. It's fairly easy to get motivated enough to take a pill.
Maybe he should take the pill to get motivated to exercise...
Re:Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:5, Funny)
I just can't get up the energy to take a pill every day. Do you think they could make a pill that makes me motivated to take pills?
Re:Ginko has a different effect on me (Score:4, Funny)
I think that your father's boot is used for that. It's an anal suppository.
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I get up out of my chair and do stuff
Playing a video game while standing is hardly takes any motivation.
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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.
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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?
So what exactly then... (Score:2)
Re:So what exactly then... (Score:4, Insightful)
The same thing that the color black is good for. Selling stuff to people.
Re:So what exactly then... (Score:5, Funny)
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Made me lol @work. Wish I had mod points. :)
Re:So what exactly then... (Score:5, Funny)
Ginkgo Balboa is clinically proven to improve your boxing skills...
And Ginko Bilboa is clinically proven to get you there and back again.
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ginkgo biloba , HUH!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing!
Say it agian.
Medical conspiracy! (Score:5, Funny)
Yes but was it ORGANIC Kinkgo?? That is the question! This test was obviously conducted by real doctors who don't want us to know the truth about the power of eating weeds that grow in exotic jungles.
Re:Medical conspiracy! (Score:5, Funny)
No, first you need to grow the Ginko organically. Then you need to increase the potency by diluting it homeopathically. Next, you form it into an ear candle [discovermagazine.com]. Once you do that, the the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot will contact the aliens from Vega 7 who will beam increased memory skills and ESP into you. But if any of this is attempted by "Western medicine", it will all fail.
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Well, not to speak for ginko or non-science, but it's not like eating weeds that grow in exotic jungles hasn't helped save a life or two.
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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 kn
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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
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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
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I concur. They also need to make sure that they're using ALL NATURAL ginkgo.
I find it comical that the "ALL NATURAL" movement has any weight behind it when countless varieties of "all natural" plants are quite poisonous, whilst tons of completely chemically derived artificial medicines will save your life.
Heck I literally remember one stupid infomercial that was on a while back where the guy (one of those typical hyped up dorks who always appears on such shows) was proclaiming that we shouldn't eat anythin
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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 exampl
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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 s
"Americans spent $107 million on it" (Score:3, Funny)
Holy shit, that's a lot of placebo.
But just wait until I convince everyone to eat my lawn. I'll be rich!
Oh wait ... http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/pages/product_detail.asp?pid=138 [hollandandbarrett.com]
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Holy shit, that's a lot of placebo.
There was a study done (google it yourself, I'm feeling lazy) that showed that placebos work better when they're expensive (the target must know of the great value of the placebo).
Mind over matter, and keep your mind on the pricetag!
Actually works to their advantage (Score:5, Funny)
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And they are conspiracists; they assume that any "scientific study" was rigged by Big Pharma or some other enemy to discredit herbals.
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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: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?
can't buy me love (Score:3, Interesting)
What herbal remedies do you recommend?
My drug recommendations all come with the serious urging that you research deeply on your own. That includes my recommendations for plant-derived or synthetic, brand-name drugs. Do you think gobbling down Tagamet and aspirin, just because you can buy them off the drug store shelf, without an understanding of drug metabolization is a good idea?
For difficulty sleeping or resetting a sleep schedule, for antioxidant effect, plant-derived melatonin. As such a fundamental neurochemical, you'll want to be caref
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any sort of logic won't get absorbed by their brain.
Prolly because they don't take enough Ginko Biloba...
Re:Actually works to their advantage (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, St. John's Wort has been proven as effective at treating depression as Paxil. So you can't lump all the herbals together. Just because Ginko doesn't work doesn't mean no herbs work.
Re:Actually works to their advantage (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, St. John's Wort is effective. However, you should always consult with your doctor before taking it, as it can interfere with other drugs (specifically, I have read that it prevents or retards the mechanism of absorbing drugs into the bloodstream).
However, do keep in mind that the effectiveness of a single herbal medicine does not change the effectiveness of other herbal medicines.
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St. John Wart has no constant ingredients or ratios.
Just so you know.
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If they work, they eventually become medicine. Otherwise they remain snake oil.
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So that means that Paxil is equally ineffective?
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No it hasn't, stop lying.
Many medicines come from herbs, that's not an issue. The issue is 'herbal remedies' that are herbs that have not been shown to have any medicinal effect above placebo.
You test an herb, if something shows up you testi ti in better contralloed conditions an so on. Either it is shown effective and replicate it, or you toss it away and get on to the next study.
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Source: NIH/NCCAM [nih.gov]
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.
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On the other hand, St. John's Wort has been proven as effective at treating depression as Paxil.
...which is why you should stay far, far away from it. A proven psychoactive substance with no regulation or standardization? That's a recipe for disaster.
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memory no... blood flow very much so (Score:4, Informative)
Aspirin or Ginko?
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/ginkgo-biloba-000247.htm [umm.edu]
Better concentration (some subjects thinking that that is one of the memory functions) could be a side effect of them not having headaches due to hypertension. Sample set yadi yada and so on.... statistics and damned lies.
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Wow, that link is full od things that have been shown false about Ginko.
the Alt-Med* people seem to have infiltrated that school.
*by alt med I mean idiots that will hurt and kill people.
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:Untested drug found useless... wonders never ce (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks to DSHEA [fda.gov], the FDA legally can't do jack about it unless they have direct evidence of a given product causing serious harm(and their budget for going on epidemiological expeditions for that sort of thing isn't much to write home about).
Whether you consider this a shining beacon of freedom, or an ignoble nest of quacks, it seems likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.
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"FDA legally can't do jack about it"
Thanks Reagan!
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"Hopefully herbal viagra is next, and some day spammers will be emailing about things people actually can use..."
that is like waiting for the world to change, spammers have plenty or subjects, porn, money scams, pyramid scams, i could go on, but it's better if i don't. charging for email would solve the scam problems by at least 75%
Explains things... (Score:2)
Well that explains why I can't remember where I put my Gingko.
Seriously though, I had a suspicion 10 years ago when I took it, I couldn't see any difference either.
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"Seriously though, I had a suspicion 10 years ago when I took it, I couldn't see any difference either."
Tha';s a horrible way to evaluate something. It's the same type of thinking that gives these idiots power in the market place.
Yes, studies show it does nothing, but using that to do bias confirmation is a bad thing.
Back to the real thang (Score:2, Funny)
All I know is .... (Score:2)
Wait, what were we talking about?
How can we trust the results (Score:2)
Interesting fact (Score:5, Insightful)
Supplements industry group replies with BS (Score:5, Informative)
Cue the "but it worked in my case" replies...
Focusin! (Score:2)
I recommend the book Natural Causes (Score:2)
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actually, the usual process is something is shown not o work so then it becaome alt-med.
Since there is no dosage control, usually no way to know where the ingredients come from, and are known to be laced with heavy metals, you can't really test the shelf product.
You can test the active item that the claim is made from.
Import herbal medicines have been know to ahve traced of aspirin, amphetamines, caffeine.
Doesn't matter (Score:2)
So what does work? Any advice? (Score:2)
So what does improve memory or cognitive skills? I've heard of rampant use of things like Adderall at universities, any personal stories? What about things like Piracetam? I remember reading about that in Mondo 2000 and always wondered if it was bunk.
Here is a nice write up- (Score:2)
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3235#more-3235 [sciencebasedmedicine.org]
regardless of its medicinal value (Score:3, Interesting)
the ginkgo tree itself is pretty amazing: its the coelacanth of trees
known only from the ancient fossil record, having aspects of a missing link between major plant classifications, and with no other living relatives by a long shot (at least from the perspective of western science). until isolated specimens were located, to western expert's amazed awe, in 1690. it was cultivated in the east, and this probably led to its survival, since the only populations anyone can consider wild are only in a tiny mountain reserve in eastern china... but even this group of trees might only exist because it was tended by monks for millenia, ironically for this story, probably because of medicinal value
in other words, the coelacanth of trees may only continue to exist in this world due to the efforts of ancient man, the inverse relationship between extinction and mankind. either way, if you've ever looked at a ginkgo leaf, you can readily appreciate how ancient and alien the plant is. its like a tiny fan, a completely unique morphology unlike any other leaf you have ever seen on any other plant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba [wikipedia.org]
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
120 milligrams isn't enough for any effect (Score:3, Informative)
Herbal supplement's are not concentrated like pharmaceuticals are.... 120 mg a day won't get you anything. Take 120 mg a day of most herbs that have active drug compounds and you're likely to get no more than a trace of that drug, whereas pharmaceuticals take the active compound and synthesize it - then give you 120 mg of the concentrated compound.
As a laugh, you could take 120 mg of marijuana - even good stuff... and smoke it. That's maybe 1/4 of a joint (you'd get about 2 joints out of a gram of weed if you were conservative). How high are you going to get on 1/4 of a joint? Not very... and THC is a fairly potent compound. Gingko is not nearly as potent.
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I thought about it more over lunch and rephrased, what I'm getting at is:
really small effective dose of something bad like poison, dead before the liver and kidneys even have a chance.
really huge dose of something bad like too much carbs or too much red meat or too much booze, just too much for liver and kidneys to realistically process, and/or they die trying.
That middle-ground, your innards have a fighting chance at saving you, and thru evolution, they seem to be pretty good at it. And that filtration th
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You are completely wrong.
You might want to lok into dosages of pharmaceuticals.
Serotonin reuptake inhibitors can have a dosage between 5mg - 150mg. a day.
It's the dose that makes the poison.
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I think the lethal dosage of nutmeg is about 3 nuts. Hemlock, some mushrooms, and some berries also have low lethal doses.
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Don't try 120 mg of nicotine. [wikipedia.org]
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: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.
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My anti-gullibility crystal isn't humming, so it must be legit.
Just to be sure, what is its harmonic resonance, is it in concordance with the feline music of the spheres?
If so, I'll take three, because I've got three empty chakra points that seem optimal for it. It might even keep my thetans regulated, which has been an expensive issue lately.
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We return to our reporter at the scene where emergency crews are cleaning up the mess left by someone who took an add for a food or drink product literally.
Ginkgo is FOOD. Not medicine. Meaning that all the distributors need to prove is that it isn't poisonous and they can sell it with all kinds of wild claims attached. Perhaps the rules should change to require literal truth. "Our bear makes other pe
Re:You know what else it's good for though, right? (Score:4, Funny)
"Our bear makes other people more beautiful to you"
Is that a Care Bear, or what kind of bear, exactly?
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The republicans forced a bill that removed these items from the FDA purview.
DId you know the Reagan made decisions based on what his wife's psychic said?
So, why did I bring politics? for a very good reason: with the religious groups taking over the republican agenda, it has allowed all kinds of non-scientific thinking and policies to take effect.