Drug Efficacy

I had lunch with my mother yesterday, and we were talking about my grandfather, who has in the past had prostate cancer and recently learned he had a cancerous mass in one of his kidneys. He had the kidney removed last week, but he was still feeling a little under the weather and had developed a fever, so the doctor prescribed antibiotics and stressed how important it was for him to take them with food so they absorbed effectively, now that his remaining kidney has an extra burden of absorption.

At this point in the conversation, I realized I hadn't taken any vitamins, and I pulled out the little baggie of 19 pills I'd brought with me. I told my mom about the vitamin and herb cocktail I'd started, and she joked, "Why are you taking all that? To make really expensive pee?"

We laughed, and I explained how I have been careful to always take them with food and spread them out through the day so they can be absorbed properly. She insisted that the body doesn't absorb supplements and a person just pees them out.

While I disagree with my mother and wonder where she got her cynicism from, it did give me momentary pause. How do I know any of this is doing anything?

With prescription drugs, even if they weren't achieving their intended effects, I was sure the drug was getting into my system because I felt so completely different in every way when I took them. If I took my antidepressant a little late in the day, there was a noticeable difference, and if I missed a day, I would faint. Two days, and I had a seizure. (This is part of the reason I'm leery of psychopharmaceuticals - I don't like something having so much control over my entire body).

However, with herbal supplements and vitamins, I'm less sure. I like that ginseng doesn't make me feel like I'm on speed, but I wonder if it really boosts my energy. I feel like I'm concentrating a little better with ginkgo biloba, but I can't say for sure that I have better circulation to my head and extremities because I don't feel gushes of blood and all that. And similarly with my One-a-Day, I feel a little better all over, but I can't say what vitamins are helping which processes.

For the first two years of my undergrad, I majored in Neuroscience, and probably my favorite class was Neuropathology. In the pharmacology unit, we studied specific drugs and why they did what they did at a molecular level, then expanded it to understand what happened on cellular, systemic, bodily, and psychiatric levels. Because I could say exactly what the drug molecules did in the brain, I could believe that they had the effects they were supposed to, and I understood how to monitor a patient's treatment.

I don't have that kind of knowledge of vitamins and herbs, and I'm not 100% confident that the people who harvest and package herbs do either. Yes, the history of pharmacology is one of adapting substances from nature with observed effects to controlled and standardized units packaged in pills, powders, and the like, and marketed as cures. But how do we know what they do? Is it okay to simply say ginseng gives you energy, just like caffeine or cocaine, and I don't have to question how and why? I want to research these further and understand them at a chemical level before I put all my faith in them.

For now I have chosen to trust these pills and see what they do. I'm not so naive as to say anything from nature can't be bad for me, but I trust the amount of research that's been done in the three herbal drugs I'm taking, as well as the efficacy of a multivitamin and vitamin C in maintaining a healthy immune system.

I would really appreciate it if anyone could point me in the direction of some more concrete data on St John's Wort, Koren ginseng, and Ginkgo Biloba. And if you have anything on chromium picolinate, I'm all ears for that too.