Most useful things are a tradeoff. It's hard to argue that self-treating a DEBILITATING condition with an herb which, through quite substantial historical experience, seems not to have negative effects, and which LACKS the same side effects that accepted medical drugs cause...would be a bad thing.

It's true that there is NO "built-in" safety feature with modern drugs: Researchers create something that seems likely to work, they test it for the effect they want, and then they perform a small but reasonable trial to find out if it's dangerous. From a rational and objective point of view, that is NOT nearly as thorough a test as one that involves generations of large numbers of users--as is true of the herbs under discussion.

I think the idea of modulating use--taking off periods when it doesn't seem needed, etc.--seems rational and wise.