The CDC's latest report shows dangerously high lead levels in children who live in households that contain spices, herbal remedies, and ceremonial powders -- in other words, the sort of things we associate with alternative medicine and other "natural" or "traditional" practices.
herbal remedies
Many natural remedies do not work. Despite those who swear by herbal medicines and other traditions that stretch back, in some cases, thousands of years, modern science often cannot verify the claimed benefits. But that isn't always the case. Occasionally, scientists confirm that a traditional remedy indeed does work, and one such example has been reported recently in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
"Natural is better." That pervasive and pernicious myth, despite being soundly refuted by things like arsenic and hemlock and rattlesnake venom, has become a mainstay in 21st Century conventional wisdom. Who needs Western medicine when the Chinese have been eating and boiling weeds for 3,000 years?