Slashdot Mirror
Ginkgo Doesn't Improve Memory Or Cognitive Skills
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."
People say the same about crystal meth
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)
The same thing that the color black is good for. Selling stuff to people.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
You know what they call alternative medicine that works?.... Medicine.
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
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_Biloba
&c, &c
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
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.
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?
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
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.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
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.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
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?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
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?
*sigh* back to work...