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Coffee and such
Jan. 18th, 2003 09:23 pmWell they are proably going to do it. It may be a very short span of time before we actually see Chinese Ephedra or Ma Huang Ephedra Sinica banned in this country. On some level it frustrates me. It makes me disappointed that an herb, a very important herb, that humanity has been using for over five millenia throughout Asia, especially within Chinese medicine, and been using it successfully - will be lost. The loss is directly the result the gross abuses of the diet industry and an ignorant and ill-educated, irresponsible public.
"Between bodybuilders , dieters, asthmatics, suffed-uppers, truck drivers, and ravers, Americans consme three bilion doses of ma huang or ephedrine based products, annually. The DEA and the FDA have pushed restrictive laws and the health establishment a great deal of newspaper publicity over the dangers of the drugs. Some two-score deaths are noted, and that ephedrine ia an "amphetimine-like stimulant." - Dale Pendell, "PharmakoDynamis"
For years I shouted at telemarketers that would call me, promoting fast weightloss through ephedra products. I have never approved of the use of Ephedra sinica in weightloss products or as "legal speed". If you take enough of it for long enough you burn out your system - your immunity goes to hell and you tax your adrenals far more than you should be doing. Why would anyone WITTINGLY do that. Oh yes, I hear the objections, "hey its my body!". Most people haven't got two clues about what their own bodies are telling them. Far too many I have met, either think they are impervious to anything and everything or they have no idea about thier own body's signals, pain or fatigue thresholds...add to this that most American's diets are just plain outright overprocessed and nutrionally valueless crap and you have a disaster waiting to happen. Those who are not trying to compensate for asthmatic or allergy conditions probably should be thinking twice about taking ephedra or any MAOI. And if there is absolutely any indication of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes of thyroid dysfunction etc. it needs to be avoided completely. Deaths because of the abuse of the herb? Hell yes! When you have usage of anything, that reaches to the point of critical mass, of course you increase your chances that someone, somewhere will have an adverse reaction, and yes..people will die as a result of that. That isn't a heartless comment, that is reality. With the use of anything, any drug, any herb, comes the responsibility to know what you're doing with it and what ingestion of it will do to you.
With all this over promotion of ephedra, I saw all of it comming as many as ten, eleven years ago. Never mind the fact that ephedra is used as a stabilizing agent in the manufacture of methamphetamine. That is one of the very real reasons why the company I work for stopped selling it altogether. The discontinuation of it was not well recieved.
Law enforcement would like to see this plant gone. I can see in the latter case, that yes, it needs to be closely regulated. I also know that it took alot of education to get law enforcement to see that everyone who used goldenseal, for example, was not trying to get the edge on drug testing. Some of us were using it as a good cheap antibiotic that is very successful. Besides other than in the most archaic and out of date drug testing systems, that little "trick" of using goldenseal to mask the results of cannibis use didn't work anyhow. I DO blame goldenseal's horrible overcultivation that particular urban legend, however. Thankfully Frontier and United Plant Savers and others have gotten involved in making sure we save such an important herb. But what about ephedra, which has been probably the world's oldest known plant ally? Time will tell I guess.
Well, here is something controversial:
If it were up to me, I'd take every ban off of every botanical substance and let it be as it should be. If you abuse it, then you get to pay the consequences of your aubses. Its that way with alcohol and cigarettes now. Why should it be any different for ephedra, kava kava or some of the other plants that have been cultivated for illicit use? If you did you would remove the demand for the drug trade potentially. Yes, I know it isn't that simple. We took several centuries to need to legislate our society because of humanity's lack of discipline and predeliction for overindulgence. Somehow, however, in some way we have to become responsible for ourselves, our health and our own lives. Having to do it by legislation just makes us more and more like babysat children and less like thinking adults.
"Between bodybuilders , dieters, asthmatics, suffed-uppers, truck drivers, and ravers, Americans consme three bilion doses of ma huang or ephedrine based products, annually. The DEA and the FDA have pushed restrictive laws and the health establishment a great deal of newspaper publicity over the dangers of the drugs. Some two-score deaths are noted, and that ephedrine ia an "amphetimine-like stimulant." - Dale Pendell, "PharmakoDynamis"
For years I shouted at telemarketers that would call me, promoting fast weightloss through ephedra products. I have never approved of the use of Ephedra sinica in weightloss products or as "legal speed". If you take enough of it for long enough you burn out your system - your immunity goes to hell and you tax your adrenals far more than you should be doing. Why would anyone WITTINGLY do that. Oh yes, I hear the objections, "hey its my body!". Most people haven't got two clues about what their own bodies are telling them. Far too many I have met, either think they are impervious to anything and everything or they have no idea about thier own body's signals, pain or fatigue thresholds...add to this that most American's diets are just plain outright overprocessed and nutrionally valueless crap and you have a disaster waiting to happen. Those who are not trying to compensate for asthmatic or allergy conditions probably should be thinking twice about taking ephedra or any MAOI. And if there is absolutely any indication of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes of thyroid dysfunction etc. it needs to be avoided completely. Deaths because of the abuse of the herb? Hell yes! When you have usage of anything, that reaches to the point of critical mass, of course you increase your chances that someone, somewhere will have an adverse reaction, and yes..people will die as a result of that. That isn't a heartless comment, that is reality. With the use of anything, any drug, any herb, comes the responsibility to know what you're doing with it and what ingestion of it will do to you.
With all this over promotion of ephedra, I saw all of it comming as many as ten, eleven years ago. Never mind the fact that ephedra is used as a stabilizing agent in the manufacture of methamphetamine. That is one of the very real reasons why the company I work for stopped selling it altogether. The discontinuation of it was not well recieved.
Law enforcement would like to see this plant gone. I can see in the latter case, that yes, it needs to be closely regulated. I also know that it took alot of education to get law enforcement to see that everyone who used goldenseal, for example, was not trying to get the edge on drug testing. Some of us were using it as a good cheap antibiotic that is very successful. Besides other than in the most archaic and out of date drug testing systems, that little "trick" of using goldenseal to mask the results of cannibis use didn't work anyhow. I DO blame goldenseal's horrible overcultivation that particular urban legend, however. Thankfully Frontier and United Plant Savers and others have gotten involved in making sure we save such an important herb. But what about ephedra, which has been probably the world's oldest known plant ally? Time will tell I guess.
Well, here is something controversial:
If it were up to me, I'd take every ban off of every botanical substance and let it be as it should be. If you abuse it, then you get to pay the consequences of your aubses. Its that way with alcohol and cigarettes now. Why should it be any different for ephedra, kava kava or some of the other plants that have been cultivated for illicit use? If you did you would remove the demand for the drug trade potentially. Yes, I know it isn't that simple. We took several centuries to need to legislate our society because of humanity's lack of discipline and predeliction for overindulgence. Somehow, however, in some way we have to become responsible for ourselves, our health and our own lives. Having to do it by legislation just makes us more and more like babysat children and less like thinking adults.
