an autodidact meets a dilettante…

most efficacious in every case

So here’s an interesting story. When I was laid up with a bronchial virus (RSV) a few weeks ago, coughing my lungs up and having difficulty breathing, with a distinct, audible wheeze, I was offered advice, as you do, by a very well-meaning person about a really effective treatment – oregano oil. This person explained that, on two occasions, he’d come down with a bad cough and oregano oil had done the trick perfectly where nothing else worked.

I didn’t try the oregano oil. I followed my doctor’s recommendation and used the symptom-relieving medications described in a previous post, and I’m much better now. What I did do was look up what the science-based medicine site had to say about the treatment (I’d never heard of oregano oil, though I’ve had many other plant-based cures suggested to me, such as echinacea, marshmallow root and slippery elm – well ok I lied, I found the last two on a herbal medicine website).

I highly recommend the science-based medicine website, which has been run by the impressively-credentialed Drs David Gorski and Steve Novella and their collaborators for years now, and which thusly has a vast database of debunked or questionable treatments to explore. It’s the best port of call when you’re offered anecdotal advice about any treatment whatsoever by well-wishers. Not that they’re the only people performing this service to the public. Quackwatch, SkepDoc, and Neurologica are just some of the websites doing great work, but they’re outnumbered vastly by sites spreading misinformation and bogus cures, unfortunately. It’s almost a catch-22 of the internet that you have to be informed enough to use it to get the best information out of it.

As to oregano oil specifically, Scott Gavura at science-based medicine proves a detailed account. I will summarise here, while also providing my own take. Firstly people need to know that when a substance, any substance –  a herb or a plant, an oil extracted therefrom, or a tablet, capsule or mixture,something injectable or applied to the skin, whatever – is suggested as a treatment for a condition, they should consider this simple mantra – always chemical. That’s to say, a treatment will only work because it has the right chemistry to act against the treated condition. In other words you need to know something (or rather a lot) about the chemistry of the treating substance and the chemistry of the condition being treated. It’s no good saying ‘x is great for getting rid of coughs – it got rid of mine,’ because your cough may not have the same chemical cause as mine, and your cough in February 2007 may not have the same chemical cause as your cough in August 2017. My recent cough was caused by a virus (and perhaps I should change the mantra – always biochemical – but still it’s the chemistry of the bug that’s causing the problem), but no questions were asked about the cause before the advice was given. And you’ll notice when you look at naturopathic websites that chemistry is very rarely mentioned. And I’m not talking about toxins.

Gavura gives this five-point test for an effective treatment:

When we contemplate administering a chemical to deliver a medicinal effect, we need to ask the following:

1. Is it absorbed into the body at all?
2. Does enough reach the right part of the body to have an effect?
3. Does it actually work for the condition?
4. Does it have any hazardous, unwanted effects?
5. Can it be safely eliminated from the body?

The answer to Q1 is that oregano oil contains a wide variety of chemical compounds, particularly phenolic compounds (71%). It’s these phenolic compounds that are touted as having the principal beneficial effects. However, though we know that there’s some absorption, we don’t have a chemical breakdown. We just don’t know which phenolic compounds are being absorbed or how much.

Q2 – No research on this, or on absorption generally. Topical effects (ie effects on the skin) are more likely to be beneficial than ingested effects, as the oil can maintain high concentration. This would have no effect on a cough.

Q3 – According to one manufacturer the oil has ‘scientifically proven results against almost every virus, bacteria, parasite, and fungi…’ (etc, etc, but shouldn’t that be bacterium and fungus?). In fact, no serious scientific research has ever been conducted on oregano oil and its effectiveness for any condition whatsoever. So the answer to this question is  – no evidence, beyond anecdote.

Q4 – There have been reports of allergic reactions and gastro-intestinal upsets, but the naturopathy industry is more or less completely unregulated so you can never be sure what you’re getting with any bottle of pills or ‘essential oils’. As Gavura points out, the lack of research on possible adverse effects, for this and other ‘natural’ treatments, is of concern for vulnerable consumers, such as pregnant women, young or unborn children, and those with pre-existing conditions.

Q5 – At low doses, there’s surely no concern, but nobody has done any research about dosing up on carvacrol, the most prominent component of oregano oil, which gives the plant its characteristic odour. Other organic components are thymol and cymene.

So there’s no solid evidence about oregano oil, or about the mechanism for its supposed efficacy. But what if my well-wisher was correct, and something in the oregano oil cleared up his cough – twice? And did so really really well? Better than several other treatments he tried?

Well, then we might be onto something. Surely a potential billion-dollar gold-mine, considering how debilitating your common-or-garden cough can be. And how, if not cleared up, it can leading to something way more serious.

So how would a person who is sure that oregano oil has fantastic curative properties (because it sure worked for him) go about capitalising on this potential gold-mine? Well, first he would need evidence. His own circle of friends would not be enough – perhaps he could harness social media to see if there were sufficient people willing to testify to oregano oil curing their cough, where other treatments failed. Then , if he had sufficient numbers, he might try to find out the causes of these coughs. Bacterial, viral, something else, cause unknown? It’s likely he wouldn’t make much headway there (most people with common-or-garden coughs don’t go to the doctor or submit to biochemical testing, they just try to ride it out), but no matter, that might just be evidence that the manufacturer was right – it’s effective against a multitude of conditions. And yet, it seems that oregano oil is a well-kept secret, only known to naturopathic companies and health food store owners. Doctors don’t seem to be prescribing it. Why not?

Clearly it’s because Big Pharma doesn’t support the stuff. Doctors are in cahoots with Big Pharma to sell attractive pills with long pharmacological names and precise dosages and complex directions for use. Together they like to own the narrative, and a multi-billion dollar industry is unlikely to be had from an oil you can extract from a backyard plant.

Unless…

Our hero’s investment of time and energy has convinced him there’s heaps of money to be made from oregano oil’s miraculous properties, but that same investment has also convinced him that it’s the chemical properties that are key, and that if the correct chemical formula can be isolated, refined and commercialised, not only will he be able to spend the rest of his life in luxury hotels around the globe, but he will have actually saved lives and contributed handsomely to the betterment of society. So he will join Big Pharma rather than trying to beat it. Yes, there would have to be a massive upfront outlay to perform tests, presumably on rats or mice at first, to find out which chemical components or combinations thereof do the best job of curing the animals, who would have to be artificially infected with various bugs affecting the respiratory system, or any other bodily system, since there are claims that the oil, like Lily the Pink’s Medicinal Compound™, is ‘most efficacious in every case’.

But of course it would be difficult for any average bloke like our hero to scratch up the funds to build or hire labs testing and purifying a cure-all chemical extract of oregano oil. Crowdsourcing maybe, considering all the testimonials? Or just find an ambitious and forward-thinking wealthy entrepreneur?

Is that the only problem with the lack of acceptance, by the medical community, of all the much-touted naturopathic cures out there? Lack of funds to go through the painstaking process of getting a purefied product to pass through a system which ends with double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled human studies with large sample sizes?

Permit me to be sceptical. It’s not as if the chemical components of most herbal remedies are unknown. It’s highly unlikely that pharmacologists, who are in the business of examining the chemistry of substances and their effects for good or ill on the human body, haven’t considered the claimed cornucopia of naturopathic treatments and the possibility of bringing them into the mainstream of science-based medicine to the benefit of all. Yes, it’s possible that they’ve missed something, but it’s also possible, indeed more likely, that people underestimate the capacity of our fabulous immune system, the product of millions of years of evolution, to bring us back to health when we’re struck down by the odd harmful bug. When we’re struck down like this, we either recover or we die, and if we don’t die, we tend to attribute our recovery to any treatment applied. Sometimes we might be right, but it pays to be skeptical and to do research into a treatment, and into what ails us, before making such attributions. And to do so with the help of a good science-based medical practitioner. And remember again that motto: always chemical.