You forgot the "school medicine is bad, but pharmaceutical industry is the incarnation of evil" - statement that often is implicit or explicit stated by followers of unconventional medicine or nutritional products.... (As for the moral character of the pharmaceutical industry, the statement has some truth in it... which is yet another reason to fund research independently of the industry, but I digress.)


A little word of caution: If something works it will have side effects. The herb St John's wort (wikipedia link) is documented to work for a lot of conditions including depression - but it has also serious side effects and all kinds of nasty interactions with other medicines.


For those things without documented effect - I am absolutely for a little healthy dosage of placebo: The very idea of improving one's situation by actively exploiting the human minds capacity to fool itself is absolutely amazing. Moderation is the key here as in other aspects of life - a little placebo can only do you good, too much and you start to refuse medical treatment for serious conditions. Now I don't like the way many players in the "herbal industry" lie, fool and cheat people in to spending way to many money on their products and treatments. If only there was a way to induce placebo without actually fooling people...