Posted by Mark S. Davies on November 01, 1999 at 09:48:20:
In Reply to: Isn't personal well-being more the point? posted by Graham on November 01, 1999 at 00:00:16:
Graham said:
"Regardless of whether Noni's a quack medicine or not, the people I know using it have a far greater feeling of well-being for doing so, so isn't that enough?"
I guess the main question here is what is a diabetic looking for in response to drinking this? If it's a "feeling of well-being", that's fine, as long as they can justify the expense and don't suffer any adverse health effects. If they're looking for a benefit in their glucose control, however, they have to be very careful of the placebo effect as well as watching for the usual effect that drinking a fruit juice. As far as I know, there have been no proper (i.e. double-blind) studies as to the effectiveness of this stuff in lowering blood glucose levels.
In response to the question "And the diabetic person honestly feels it has helped in a very major way, so why throw up barriers to its use?" please realize that these people were brought to court for making claims that the juice had medicinal effects, which is illegal. Noni juice is _usually_ sold by people involved in a Multi-Level Marketing scheme, and I believe that most of them are more concerned with profit from signing up new distributors than helping diabetics get better control.
Mark Davies