When it comes to illnesses, you are often presented with many alternative treatments or even alternative cures. The more common among them would be alternative diet plans and herbal treatments. You also hear of alternative treatment practitioners who herald the advent of a universal alternative cure for serious conditions.

This alternative cure would be based on the miraculous rejuvenating properties of a vitamin or chemical they personally discovered, or some new type of medical treatment popularized by the press. At the other end of the spectrum are alternative practitioners who use their personality and religious beliefs to attempt faith healing, or healing through meditation.

For various reasons you may be among the many people who are interested in searching for alternative solutions to traditional Western medicine. There has been an endless parade of miracle alternative cures touted for various diseases. The reasons you may have pursued these alternative treatments may be for considerations of cost, easy over-the-counter access, or the general perception that because these compounds are more natural they are safer.

There are alternative approaches that have furnished documentation to prove they work. The research methods in many, if not most of these, however, are not reliable enough to give sound assurance of their effectiveness or safety. For only a few dollars a month, some of these alternative cure supplements are being advertised as non-toxic and natural.

It is good to be aware of inherent problems in natural concoctions. It is difficult to get consistent components for natural products, so the ingredients in the alternative cure concoctions, especially the active ingredients, may have high variability from one production batch to another. In addition, quality control practices are often inadequate and may result in inconsistent quality of production — which can imply inconsistent effects and other unpredictable toxicities.

Most of these alternative cure products are sold in the form of dietary supplements, not as medicine, thus the manufacturers do not have to undergo rigid FDA testing to prove the effectiveness of products or the absence of toxicity. It is possible that the natural ingredients may in fact deliver the desired results, but the results may vary widely from batch to batch. No one may really know what ingredients are active in the mixture or how much of each are present in a given production batch.

It is also commonly assumed that since they are natural, the ingredients in alternative cure products cannot be harmful. That is not quite so and there are documented cases of people getting overdosed on some ingredients of herbal medicines. Because intensive toxicity studies have not been conducted at all, no one knows of potential harmful effects until these subsequently happen.

There also are claims by alternative cure publicists that the products have been awarded a patent. Remember that patents do not guarantee the medical value of a drug or treatment, only that the combination of ingredients or processes is unique, and that no one else can legally make it unless there is prior permission from the inventor or patent owner.

In general, diet plans, herbal treatments and meditation do the least harm to patients. The most harmful may be the miracle alternative cures. They often encourage false hopes, and when the expected results do not occur they blame the patient and family for the failure.