One of the unfortunate things that has happened in our marketing and sound bite heavy culture is that many things are often thought about in simplistic terms. This affects the way we think about the food we eat and how we think of medicines and herbal supplements.
The obvious examples of this are when you mention certain foods to people. For example; coffee is just caffeine, milk is just calcium, bananas are a source of potassium. In herbal supplements, ginseng is only for energy, ginkgo is for memory, and echinacea is for the immune system. These simplifications are misleading and at times cause people to make inappropriate decisions.
In many ways this type of thinking comes from the science that helps us determine what we should be eating. When you set up a research study on a food or a drug, you have to limit the variables and ask specific (simplified) questions. Often when results are reported, the media and the public latch on to the cool science terms, or miss the reason behind the research. Research is often used not to answer questions but to further define what questions to ask. Very little research is geared toward generating information that can be used by the common person when it comes to making decisions about food and supplements. As a result, scientific information is misunderstood and sometimes used inappropriately to market various products.
The Southeast Wisconsin area is full of various health food stores and multilevel marketing people selling all kinds of interesting “healthy” things. Health food stores are a business and they have to stock what people want. ( is the “organic” can of soda really “healthy’?) This creates and encourages a culture of people who are chasing various products that will make them healthy. These people will often emphasize the marketing provided science behind what they are doing.
Being healthy is not a factor of what new-organic-antioxidant- superfood/supplement you are taking, but rather how you live your life. Eat healthy tasty good for you food, exercise often by being active and enjoying your activities.
For more information about the details of how to use foods and herbs appropriately as medicine see these links; Herb safety guide, Herbal medicine history, general articles about herbal use
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