Herbal Supplements: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Godofredo U. Stuart MD

If you are a regular radio listener or tele-radyo viewer, station-scanning will inevitably bring you to one selling herbal or dietary supplements, likely touting a cure-all for many of the aches and pains and maladies of daily life: headaches, tiredness, dysmenorrhea, asthma, arthritis, hypertension, asthma, high cholesterol, diabetes, etcetera, some claiming disappearance of cysts and regression of tumors. Listen a little bit longer and you will likely hear a testimonial or two, one boasting to have discontinued all prescription medicines in lieu of their newly discovered herbal miracle.

The adverts will be embellished with words like “pure, 100% natural, and safe”; many will throw in “antioxidant!”; maybe a claim of “FDA approved”, real or not; “holistic” is a favorite; one or two, a money-back guarantee. And you’re slowly getting hooked, and thinking: “Wow! Maybe this is worth a try!. . . ” Then you hear this:

Mahalagang paalaala, ito ay hindi gamot at
hindi dapat gamitin sa ano mang kasakitan.

In English, it translates into: An important reminder. This product is not a medicine and should not used as treatment for any kind of ailment or malady. It is the obligatory disclaimer, which, almost always, will speed through with an unintelligible Tagalog garble. (If there is a “speed law” for talking, this will merit a speeding ticket.) It’s not meant to be clear, but just to fulfill the requirement of law, to replace the “No Therapeutic Claims” or “No approved Therapeutic Claims” disclaimer. It matters not, anyway; by that time, you’re hooked, and ready to shell out your hard-earned money on this wow-of-a-product.

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Digong Under Oath

It was unexpected, that Digong showed up and under oath admitted, among other things, to stuff that Sen. Bato denies, joke lang daw LOL. The real joke is that Bato and Sen. Go, the ones named by witnesses re Duterte’s drugwar operations in QuadComm House hearings, were allowed to be part of the investigating panel rather than made to sit with Digong to be investigated, questioned, too, under oath.

Laguna Rep Dan Fernandez noted that Dela Rosa ended up “interrogating resource persons” when “common sense dictates (that you) cannot be part of any investigation that you yourself are involved in.”

“He is one of the accused, but he is also part of the jury?” he added. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1999082/house-members-hit-leeway-given

That the Senate was at once bashed by anti-DDS social media pundits for giving the former prez a platform yet again to rant and curse and be bastos — thank goodness for Sen. Risa #bullyforher — was expected. Unahan kasi na mag-livestream with immediate “analysis” na mostly kneejerk reactions, na usually full-of-oneself if not highly biased for or against whatever whomever.

Senate Prez Chiz was quick to respond: https://legacy.senate.gov.ph/press_release/

While noting that the testimonies made by Duterte during the Senate committee hearing were largely the same as when he was still in power, Escudero said the difference now is that he provided the latest utterings about the war on drugs under oath.

“Ang pinagkaiba kahapon, lahat ng binitiwan niyang salita kahapon ay under oath. Pinanumpahan at sinabi niya na ‘yan ay totoo abot sa kanyang nalalaman na pwedeng magamit kung saka-sakali pabor o laban sa kanya,” Escudero said.

He said the statements of Duterte were recorded and transcripts of the public hearing will be released for the reference of whichever party is interested and for the general public to peruse.

Unlike before when the spokespersons of former President Duterte defended his strong statements about the killing of drug personalities as merely words said in jest, Escudero said Duterte cannot claim the same now because he testified under oath.

I wonder now if this is Digong’s way of getting charges filed against him in court to somehow preempt the ICC. Nothing to lose? But if this be so, QuadComm is the way to go.

“Calling Filipinos resilient is an insult”

As Luzon again suffers deadly floods brought by Typhoon Kristine atbp., this piece by Ninotchka in the aftermath of Yolanda 2013 (that I then only partly posted with link to the Yahoo page that’s no longer there) has been getting hits. Posting now the rest of it that I found on Scribd.

By NINOTCHKA ROSCA

It was difficult to see and hear those words repeated, in media reports, articles, military and even White House briefings: “The Filipino people are resilient.” A characterization which should raise anyone’s hackles, with its image of a jelly blob, quivering when punched, then quieting back to what it was before the rain of blows: sans sharpness, inert and passive, non-evaluating of what happens to its self.

No, we are not resilient.

We break, when the world is just too much, and in the process of breaking, are transformed into something difficult to understand. Or we take full measure of misfortune, wrestle with it and emerge transformed into something equally terrifying.

It is what is…and what isn’t

This is in sync with our indigenous worldview, expressed by our riddles, the talinhaga, on which every Filipino child used to be raised: an understanding of reality, including ourselves, as metamorphic (or, capable of transformation).

A leaf by night; a bamboo by day – is how we look at our buri mat. It is both what it is and isn’t.

And because this is a worldview which has to be lived in situ, it is unfathomable to the outsider, despite scholarship and analyses, which come up with nothing but the label “resilient.”

We don’t spring back, we transform

Across oceans and throughout the five continents of this Earth, we carry the tales of our old heroes and muses, our elementals, who confront, in each re-telling, tests of strength and spirit.

Some break, like Mariang Makiling who hides in a thousand-year hibernation; others metamorphose, like Bernardo Carpio who becomes a pillar of stone stopping cliffs from caving in on his village.

We may not remember their old names – names being the first to be erased under colonialism – but we remember how they were and how we are supposed to be: metamorphic.

What have we become after Yolanda?

These two legends represent the twin possibilities for the Filipinos’ metamorphosis. Both are inexplicable outside of the local paradigm. Just as what we’re watching now in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda seems inexplicable.

Who can fathom what drives a woman to open body bags of putrefying corpses in search of a husband, a son, a daughter? At the end of a gaze that has lingered over a hundred dead faces, what is she now?

Who can measure the rage of the peaceable man breaking through the walls of groceries, warehouses, shopping malls? And having pierced both law and walls of Authority, what is he now?

The absence of thousands

To say that Filipinos are resilient is an assurance for those who have imposed upon them – much and repeatedly.

It is to say to themselves that we shake off tragedy much like ducks shaking off water.

It is to ignore the monuments to what has been suffered: matchstick debris of houses, muck and mud of vanished cities, stench of the dead and – oh! – the absence, thousands of absence, of those who used to be in our midst. Who could be so resilient as not to be transformed by that?

In fairness to VP Sara

The DDS camp is, of course, exhilarated by VP Sara Duterte’s revelations re her history with the Marcos sibs, Imee and BBM — she has given vloggers and pundits heaps of new and hot quotable quotes, social media content, to further fuel anti-BBM sentiments.

The anti-DDS naman, whether pro-Marcos or pinklawan or undecided, are mostly rather aghast, if titillated, at certain choice cuts, particularly the threat addressed to Imee in some group chat that if the political attacks on her (Sara) did not stop, “Huhukayin ko ang tatay ninyo (sa LNMB) at itatapon ko sa West Philippine Sea.”  Empty threat?  Matindi just the same because that LNMB burial remains controversial. And then when she started sniffling, the VP was quick to explain, “Hindi ako umiiyak, hindi ako nagco-cocaine, malamig lang yung aircon.” Smooth potshot that.

Everyone’s waiting for Imee and BBM to respond, in their separate ways. But the sibs are on silent mode. Why dignify any of it, is the Marcos style, and it has served them well, it would seem. Especially since pundits are saying that the VP has become “unhinged” if not “emotionally unstable” and need not be taken seriously.

At this point in time, it’s good to be reminded when exactly relations between the Marcoses and the Dutertes started to deteriorate, leading to this unmistakable declaration of war by the VP.

After some browsing I tracked it back to May 2023 when Sara ally, Rep. Gloria Arroyo, was removed as senior deputy speaker, supposedly because she was planning a coup to replace Martin Romualdez (a replay of June 2018 when Arroyo replaced Pantaleon Alvarez) as Speaker. A few days later, “tambaloslos” became part of the public vocabulary, courtesy of the VP. By the new year the Romualdez House was pushing for Charter Change, purportedly to loosen economic restrictions but suspectedly to shift from bicam to uni-parliamentary, no VP needed, and BBM could rule forever as prime minister. That chacha attempt failed, thanks to the Zubiri Senate. But in recent months, Congress budget hearings have been poking into the Office of the VP’s (or is it the DepEd’s confidential fund) 2022 budget, departing from congressional tradition (maybe about time?) exempting the president’s and the vp’s budget from such scrutiny. The VP insists that the Lower House is just fishing for evidence of impeachable wrongdoing on her part, AND says she has a list of 5 impeachable offenses by BBM.

In effect, matagal nang nagti-tit-for-tat ang dalawang kampo. Sabi nga (daw) ni former Sen. Manny Villar, it’s all about 2028. The UniTeam promise, premise, was that 2028 would be Sara’s turn as president, with BBM’s annointment. Now that the prospect has dimmed considerably, I imagine that the VP isn’t going to let up on the diatribes and that the DDS are back to calling on their peeps to do an EDSA before Congress succeeds in impeaching her.

To my mind, that sit-down with media was a declaration of war, a point of no return. There is no taking back any of her claims, allegations, re the Marcos sibs, the same with the promise of more to come vs the Speaker first cousin and the First Lady.

I don’t think she’s unhinged. Rather, she’s on the warpath. After all the Romualdez Congress is demonizing her like hell.  But I do take issue with her claim that the BBM admin has merely tolerated her, or that she has gained nothing from UniTeam.

For one, as VP she is just a heartbeat away from the presidency. For another,  BBM has kept the ICC out. Maybe in the prez’s balance sheet, that’s the quid pro quo. Quits-quits na sila sa bayani burial ni Marcos Sr.