Infomercials are the crack cocaine of local television stations… and some stations, including one near and dear to my heart, appear hopelessly addicted to it. For instance, there’s this fellow, Kevin Trudeau, author of “Natural Cures They Don’t Wa…

But, the way I look at it is that he’s not really selling cures at all. What he’s selling is an antidote to people’s frustration with modern medicine. He’s selling a philosophy or viewpoint wherein doctors aren’t in charge of your health - you are. That’s going to mean that people make lots of mistakes, buy lots of phony cures, etc. But it’s also going to mean that people are going to become more educated about their options, and more aware of the motivations of big business in medicine.

More than likely Trudeau’s work isn’t going to provide anybody with a balanced longterm healthy lifestyle plan. But it is going to provide people with a much needed kick in the pants which will certainly lead people down better paths once they’ve broken out of the prevailing mindset. Of course, that isn’t really specific to Trudeau at all, but could be applied to pretty much anybody who become popular in alternative health.

i think a lot of these modern herbalists are also interested in the subject as a business, and it has a certain appeal to our ‘want-a-fix-now’ culture. we have a headache, we take aspirin, so we think that since ginseng is supposed to ‘increase one’s energy,’ we can toss it back and feel invigorated. but, it doesn’t work that way. the ‘energy’ that ginseng increases isn’t physical energy of the sort we increase by drinking coffee, it’s essential energy (chi). and, popping a ginseng tablet or drinking out of one of those little bottles one morning won’t do a damned thing– but, doing it over a long period of time (weeks even) gives one really amazing results.

trudeau et al miss the point by prescribing herbs as ‘quick fixes’ outside of an holistic system based on a philosophy, and i think that can be dangerous. better someone go the complete allopathic route than down a bunch of herbal cures that might harm them in the long run just ’cause some dude told them to.

of course, i’m not completely opposed to allopathy, either– but using herbs in an allopathic model only does what allopathy does in the first place, which is to fix the symptoms without addressing the root causes.