Mona Zaki supports alternative medicine and refuses to vaccinate children.. Can medicine be dispensed with in exchange for herbal treatment?

Actress Ola Rushdy published a new episode of her program "The Destination of Mazar" on her YouTube channel entitled "Alternative Medicine".

Rushdie used the argument of excessive use of medicines without prescriptions by some, to defend herbal treatment. In her interventions, she even touched on treating the Corona virus with lemon and ginger, grandmothers’ recipes, and resisting the high temperature of children with a mixture of water and vinegar.

In her program, Rushdi presented a group of tubes that believed in the possibility of treating them from burns, chicken pox, stomach and dental diseases, and ear infections. At the end of the episode, she advised the need to believe in "alternative medicine", and to resort to an alternative medicine therapist to determine the treatment based on the child's personality other than the symptoms of the disease.

What is alternative medicine?

The National Health Service (NHS) defined alternative medicine as a treatment based on the use of potentially toxic substances diluted in water, in the belief that this turns them into medicine, and practitioners claim that it heals the body, despite the failure of scientific studies to prove the effectiveness of alternative therapies Or prove the ability of alternative medicine treatments to prevent future diseases, as practitioners claim.

These treatments are used for many conditions, including physical and psychological, and some patients may see an improvement in their health as a result of a phenomenon known as the "placebo effect".

In their definition of alternative medicine, the US Department of Health and the National Institutes of Health (NCCIH) explained that alternative treatments are plants such as “red onion, mountain arnica, poison ivy, belladonna or killer eggplant, nettle,” or minerals such as “arsenic.” The products are often made in the form of sugar granules placed under the tongue, and they may be in the form of ointments, drops and tablets.

And the US Food and Drug Administration warned against various products bearing the alternative treatment label.

For example, in 2017 it alerted consumers that some alternative teething tablets contain excessive amounts of the toxic substance belladonna, and in 2015, it warned consumers against relying on over-the-counter asthma products labeled alternative treatment, because they are unsafe. It is not subject to the Law on Regulating Medicines and Combating Commercial Fraud.

Alternative medicine is a treatment based on the use of substances - which may be toxic - diluted in water, according to the belief that this turns them into a drug (pixels).

Brief history of alternative medicine

Alternative medicine has been described throughout the ages as imposter, marginal, or complementary medicine, and has always been a rich source of allegations and accusations of fraud, especially with the amazing development made by certified medicine during the second half of the 20th century, and despite that alternative medicine continued with a few believers.

Before 1850, practitioners of alternative medicine spread, and claimed their ability to heal, and most of them were illiterate, and worked in other professions, such as blacksmithing, grocers, butchers, and mechanics, and often claimed the belief of the wealthy and good in their healing abilities, and they rarely visited the same neighborhood twice to avoid exposure.

This class of quacks soon disappeared, and were replaced by educated practitioners who read books, established what we know today as "alternative medicine", and rebelled against traditional medical sciences, introducing a series of therapeutic forms such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, and massage therapy, and relied on the legacy of the physician and alchemist. German Samuel Hahnemann, who believed that small doses of snake-venom herbs could provoke symptoms of diseases he seeks to treat, prompting the immune system to develop tools to defend itself against these diseases, but his experiences on his family were making them sick.

Subsequently, alternative medicine branches proliferated, incorporating ancient Chinese herbalism, cupping, and acupuncture. Practitioners concerned themselves with the whole mind and body and were not diagnosed on the basis of isolated symptoms. They believed that personality, emotional relationship, and energy spread through the channels of the body, connecting organs to functions.

Alternative therapies today are a huge business around the world. The production and shipment of traditional Chinese medicine has become a large industry worth $60 billion annually, with an annual growth rate of more than 10%, according to a statement by the Scientific Advisory Board of European Academies.

Recently, alternative medicine products have spread due to the globalization of markets, but the goals of their users differ. The population in the Italian region of Lombardy has the right to choose among different treatment methods. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the result of a survey that stated that 20% of the population take alternative medicine products. Regularly, of these, 60% use these products for their well-being, but only 34% use them for self-medication.

Another survey by the British National Institute for Health Research revealed that the number of patients with alternative treatments, such as acupuncture, massage and orthotics, increased from 12% of the population in 2005, to 16% in 2015, and women and the wealthy class were more likely to resort to alternative medicine.

These alternative treatments are not tested the same way drugs are tested hundreds of times before doctors prescribe them to patients (pixels).

Dangerous placebo

These alternative therapies are not tested in the same way as drugs are tested hundreds of times before doctors prescribe them, as a safe drug travels up to 12 years on average, and only 5 out of every 5,000 drugs are tested in humans, and one in 5 drugs reaches pharmacies After drug regulators approve, prove the drug is effective against the target disease, and evaluate the drug for safety, it takes another 3 years, while alternative medicine practitioners and herbal users make claims of their drugs’ efficacy without tests.

In 2019, the French government announced that it would stop paying social security insurances to patients who chose alternative medicine as of 2021, after a major study by the French National Health Authority concluded that alternative medicine had no proven benefit.

While other public health systems in Sweden, Belgium and Austria still support alternative medicine, other countries followed the French approach, such as Germany, which registered about 7,000 doctors treating alternative medicine, and then opposed alternative medicine, and before it was Britain when the National Health Service decided to stop funding Alternative medicine patients in 2017, and challenged the decision to renew the accreditation of the Association of Alternative Medicine Therapists, after they caused a decline in the percentage of children submitted to receive vaccines, and claimed that they had discovered a cure for autism.

There is also cause for concern among practitioners of alternative medicine, other than the danger to the general public from anti-vaccination, which is the growth of the alternative medicine market, and the reliance on incompetent people, and certainly, there is nothing wrong with resorting to traditional remedies such as herbs that may help us, but it must be understood that such Alternatives have not proven effective, and the opportunity for proper treatment is lost.