Research testimonies: individual responses
to noni juice and other nutritional supplements.

Research testimonies: as you research nutritional supplements, it's important to know about the limits of individual peoples' responses.

One person's positive experience may not necessarily be experienced by another.

"My friend took aloe for IBS and it helped her a lot. I have IBS and took aloe, but it didn't help."

"My father took noni juice for his arthritis. I told my friend about it. It didn't help her in the same way."

If one individual testimony reports benefit from a particular supplement, does that mean it will benefit another person with the same problem? Not necessarily.

If you've experienced failure of a vitamin or mineral to help, this brief discussion may explain why.It may not be a case of "It doesn't work..." but, rather "This one doesn't work for me, can I find one that does?"

I discuss this issue in more detail in the "Why 'Natural'?" section. There I describe thebasis of the alternative approach: treat the body as a whole, not the disease. Understand the body's individual needs and make those needs the basis of individualised treatment.

Better evidence is conducted by pooling the results of individual research testimonies into surveys ... but more of that later.

You can certainly do a little to help by researching groups of people. You may find a local self-help group has some experience of the nutritional supplements that interest you.

Barbara's vitamin doesn't work for her friend. Why?

Let's consider a story I've heard a lot from patients in my homeopathic practice. I've tended to see more 'Elizabeths' than 'Barbaras'. You'll see why.

Barbara used to have PMS and period pain. She heard about the benefits of vitamin B6 and began to take the supplement.Within two cycles she noticed that the emotional symptoms that preceded her period were much better.

She also noticed her cramps were slightly less. She continued to take the supplement and found that the menstrual cramps were markedly better in a few more cycles.

She recommends B6 to her friend Elizabeth - who suffers from the same problem - but her friend experiences no benefit.

What's likely to be happening?

Barbara was deficient in B6. As a result of this deficiency the body does not work so effectively and becomes 'distressed'. It's struggling to function properly. The deficiency means it fails physiologically in some way ... and the symptoms of PMS are the result. Barbara has not discovered a new 'treatment' for PMS (that will work for most people), she has discovered her own deficiency and 'treated' it.

If her friend's PMS and cramps aren't due to a B6 deficiency, she will not experience the same benefit. Her friendmay well benefit from a different supplement, like oil of evening primrose, for example.

Problems like this can arise in using research testimonies.

We're all individuals

I hope the above example explains the difference between how a drug works compared with a supplement.

Medical science bases its treatments on a specific diagnosis - of the disease process. In this example, drugs may be given that impact on mood, that provide pain relief or that reduce the severity of uterine muscular cramping. All these approaches target the local symptoms, rather than the body as a whole. There has been no underlying diagnosis of the individual physiological needs of the patient.

This means that (ideally) drugs work similarly for a wide variety of people. Benefit in one person is a better indicator of benefit in another person with the same diagnosis.

The effectiveness of supplements is based on supporting the body as a whole, so that it functions more healthily and the symptoms disappear as a result of restoring normal physiology.

What does this mean for me?

I think this is likely to be particularly true in the case of single supplements that you intend to target a specific condition.

I quote some individual research testimonies in the noni and cancer section. I do believe you have a rightto hear these stories and that they should be widely known.

However, I would be very uncomfortable making that information available in an uncritical way. You need to be aware of the limits of this kind of research.

I hope to promote choice - and that requires knowledge and information.

I also want to help you manage your expectations ... to help you to make choices with your eyes open.

So, you also need to consider the limits of individual research testimonies.

That becomes even more important if you are facing a grave or distressing illness.

When a large number of individual reports are grouped together into surveys, they become a much more powerful research tool. Click here to go to information about Dr. Solomon's research on benefits to noni users.

If you would like to read about the limitations of surveys, and how they are more powerful than individual research testimonies, please click here.

Return from 'Individual Research Testimonies' to 'Health Benefits of Noni'