Posts Tagged ‘natural health products directorate’
Today’s post is a guest contribution from a Canadian pharmacist who is writing under the pseudonym Sara Russell: Every morning I open up Facebook and expect to see the usual sharing of my friends’ latest adventures in pseudoscience, but it wasn’t until this morning that I felt compelled to write about something. A friend had […]
Filed under: guest post | 3 Comments
Tags: health canada, homeopathy, insect repellents, mozi-q, natural health products directorate
Weekend Reading
It’s Family Day weekend in several provinces in Canada, and President’s Day weekend in the United States. Here’s what I’ve been reading:
Filed under: articles, Weekend Reading | 2 Comments
Tags: fluoridation, health canada, homeopathy, natural health products directorate, transparency
For a blog established to examine the role of science in pharmacy practice, I’ve given a disproportionate amount of attention to homeopathy. Which is frustrating, because homeopathy is not something that pharmacists, or the pharmacy profession, should even need to discuss. Unlike herbal remedies, and some supplements, there isn’t even any science to discuss. As […]
Filed under: articles | 18 Comments
Tags: health canada, homeopathy, natural health products directorate, pharmacy ethics, pharmacy practice, pharmacy regulation, university of Toronto
Given their visibility in the pharmacy, a recurring topic of this blog are the category of products deemed “natural health products”. My philosophy towards their uses has changed over the years, and what was an “evidence-based” approach is now firmly a “science-based” approach. A central principle to science-based medicine or pharmacy is that all health […]
Filed under: articles | 5 Comments
Tags: dietary supplement health and education act, health canada, insect repellents, mozi-q, natural health products directorate, natural health products regulations
I’ve been blogging for over three years and Cold-fX, a popular Canadian ginseng supplement, was one of the first topics I tackled. The omnipresent Canadian advertising, huge pharmacy presence, and impressive-sounding efficacy claims made it an ideal case study. Perhaps not surprisingly, when I reviewed the data, the results didn’t hold up: I concluded that […]
Filed under: articles | 2 Comments
Tags: cbc marketplace, cold-fx, ginseng, natural health products directorate
Online discussions on the merits of alternative medicine can get quite heated. And its proponents, given enough time, will inevitably cite the same drug as “evidence” of the failings of science. Call it Gavura’s Law, with apologies to Mike Godwin: As an online discussion on the effectiveness of alternative medicine grows longer, the probability that […]
Filed under: articles | 2 Comments
Tags: drug regulation, DSHEA, homeopathy, natural health products directorate, natural health products regulations, nhpd, thalidomide
This weekend has seen the “10-23 challenge” occur, where science advocates worldwide are “overdosing” on homeopathic products, to demonstrate that they contain no active ingredients and have no therapeutic effects. This builds on last year’s event in the UK and Australia, which was a success: absolutely nothing happened to any participant. This year, overdoses have […]
Filed under: articles | 11 Comments
Tags: #ten23, homeopathy, james randi, natural health products directorate
Working in pharmacies where supplements are sold alongside traditional (over-the-counter) medications, I’m regularly astonished at the different perceptions consumers can have about the relative efficacy and safety of different types of products. Once, speaking with a customer about a medical condition she wanted to treat, I indicated that there were no effective non-prescription therapies — […]
Filed under: articles | 13 Comments
Tags: adverse events, cam, drug safety, natural health products directorate
One of my earliest lessons as a pharmacist working in the “real world” was that customers didn’t always act the way I expected. Parents of sick children frequently fell into this category — and the typical vignette went like this for me: Parent has determined that their child is sick, and needs some sort of […]
Filed under: articles | 7 Comments
Tags: #ten23, boiron, cbc marketplace, cold, cough, homeocan, homeopathy, natural health products directorate, pediatrics, pharmacy practice
As has been repeatedly pointed out on this blog, homeopathy is an elaborate placebo system, with most remedies diluted so greatly that not a single molecule of the original material remains. The final product sold to consumers is quite literally, water – drops of which are dried on sucrose or lactose tablets. The fact that […]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 10 Comments
Tags: cbc marketplace, health canada, homeopathy, hyland's, hyland's teething tablets, natural health products directorate
