Taking a plant extract for something the label does not specify?!

Taking a plant extract for something the label does not specify?

Okay, so my friend did some research on acne, and he said:

"These are foods and herbs we're talking about here! Not medicine! They aren't designed for a specific use. Saw palmetto is marketed for helping the prostate, but it is not limited to that.

And how does it help the prostate? It limits the amount of dihydrotestosterone in the body. This synergistically benefits your acne!

Remember, most people in the medical industry have been trained to think in the mindset of 'you must treat a specific problem specifically.' In other words, theres one medicine designed to treat one problem.

However, in natural healing, overall health prevents and fights disease. Your body has the ability to cure itself without the use of medecine. Remember, you're alive! Not some machine that needs to be repaired by using medecine. Therefor, anything that supports your body's ability to repair itself will help with a wide range of diseases.

2 months ago
This includes food. Most people don't think of food as medicine (or poison for that matter). What I meant was that saw palmetto is an herb. It benefits most of your body when you take it, not just the prostate. Specifically, its function is to lower dihydrotestosterone in the body, and anything that is being negatively affected by too much dihydrotestosterone will benefit.

So my question is, is he correct?

2 months ago
The label of saw palmetto extract is specified for prostate health, but could it really help acne and all that stuff?

Snaox,

Your friend's position is absolutely right! And you put it together very concisely and direct to the point: it is our ill-conceived idea of allopathic medicine which prevents us from understanding how health happens inside our bodies, in the first place, and second how our body responds to disease.

I will not put conventional medicine down, because I studied medicine, and also understand it is very important for emergency and health crisis management. But when it comes to health, life quality, or endorsing the principle of biological regeneration as applied to the innate healing ability of the body, conventional medicine has no clue whatsoever.

Doctors are trained to use drugs that usurp or arrest the normal physiology of any given organ, while at the same time robbing the body the opportunity to heal itself. In the same way the skin heals itself when assisted properly, so our internal organs have the ingrained biological capacity to regenerate and recover from damage, to certain extent.

As per the way herbs and foods work inside the body, there is not doubt that both have bio-active and pharmaco-active ingredients capable of assembling and working with specific nutrients and substances inside the body which will ultimately reinforce the body's ability to fight degeneration and disease. And it is so true that the whole is always more powerful than any given ingredient separated form the whole.

In today's world, Natural Health's marketing techniques are as aggressive as those of any other industry sector, and sometimes such measures lend themselves to almost deceiving approaches to nutrients and herbs. One single herb has so many naturally-occurring ingredients that few more centuries will not be enough to study them all.

In order for Saw Palmetto to help with acne it has to be combined with Red Clover or Soy-flavonoids.

Regards and good luck! :)