Be-Well Information

Introduction    next»
This author has reviewed several representative web sites offering health help. The results are divided into 4 sections, to help reader navigation.

• Part-0: this introduction
• Part-1: Sellers of herbal remedies, non physician
• Part-2: Sellers of herbal remedies, physician
• Part-3: Physicians advising diet & exercise, no pills
• Part-4: Reviewer’s Comments

One of the major topics on the internet and in mass email (aka “spam”) is health, with the major focus on weight loss. The advice ranges from great, through harmless but worthless, to down right dangerous.

If our public education system did a better job of teaching basic biology, chemistry, physics, the worthless and dangerous advice would be harder to peddle. To avoid being taken in by scam artists, we need to acquire healthy skepticism, and to accept responsibility for our own actions.

Here are a few concepts to be discussed.

* Terms “herbal”, “pure”, “natural”, “alternative medicine” are neither all good nor all bad, but mainstream studies have learned from traditional tonics and foods.

* Herbal preparations are totally unregulated, unless obviously the cause of illness or death, so wild claims are legal.

* Possession of diplomas does not guarantee sound advice, nor are all non degreed people automatically to be ignored.

This 4 part series is intended to give useful examples of how to select from proclaimed “experts.”

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Parts |0|1|2|3|4|