Why do you use alternative medicine?
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at
4:48 pm
Nathan P asked:
I am writing an essay for a humanities English course on alternative medicine and would like to get some input from people who choose alternative treatments instead of (or in addition to) mainstream medicine.
I am writing an essay for a humanities English course on alternative medicine and would like to get some input from people who choose alternative treatments instead of (or in addition to) mainstream medicine.
The overarching criticism of alternative medicine is that much of it is simply not backed by enough (or any) evidence. How do you respond to these critics? What standards do you use to determine which alternative treatments are reliable, safe, and effective? What are your biggest concerns regarding “mainsteam” medicine?
I really appreciate your comments.
Tagged with: Alternative Treatments • Mainstream Medicine • Medicine
Filed under: Alternative Medicine
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
I do. But I do my own research, not just taking some herb willy nilly on anecdotal evidence. I check out the known interactions and so on. But so far, I have been able to treat successfully all manner of medical problems. Although I have medical insurance, I only use it for accidental injuries these days. My blood pressure, cholesterol, etc., are all managed by natural medicines, so I definitely am in favor. If I were taking what my Dr. would put me on for these same things, I would be on 5 prescriptions.
the pharmaceutical industry’s main goal is to make money. it doesn’t even seem like they care how they’re making that money, even if innocent(yet ignorant) people’s lives are at risk. i’m sure you’ve seen the countless ads they put on tv and in magazines. over half of the advertisement is them warning you of all the horrible side effects, including death! i don’t see why anyone in their right mind would take any substance, knowing there is a small chance there could be horrible consequences. with alternative medicine, or natural cures, you know what you’re getting because it’s coming straight from the earth. don’t be fooled by all the “vitamins” you see in places like wal mart. while they do contain vitamins that are good for you, a lot of them have additives and dyes that are bad for you and completely unnecessary. you’re better off going into a health store and reading the ingredients to make sure what you’re buying is natural and safe, not only for you, but for the planet. and in my opinion, the best medicine is preventive medicine!
There is not much documented research on alternative medicine because you can not patent and profit from these methods. It makes sense to pay millions to study a drug that you will have exclusive rights to for the seven to twelve years it takes before the generics are available. It does not make sense to spend millions studying a plant that can be bought for sunshine, water, and dirt.
It is estimated that 25% of prescription medication is derived directly from plants.
Here is a partial list of drugs derived from plants. Don’t recognize any? Think they are exotic and seldom used drugs? The very first one listed is digitalis (heart medication) which is derived from the common Foxglove flower.
I don’t know how many more are synthesized to behave like plant derived chemicals, but when you add those the percentage of plant based medicine skyrockets.
So0 how can a person know what is safe with so few clinical trials?
The same way you would when dealing with allopathic medicine, by crosschecking and getting second opinions. I have more than once been prescribed contraindicated prescriptions by doctors after giving them a full list of my prescriptions. That’s why I always check with the pharmacist and ask them to fully explain my medication to me.
Before taking serious treatments of any sort I always get a second opinion. I have avoided unnecessary surgery twice by doing this and saved myself a lot of other headaches.
There are over 1 million unnecessary deaths caused by malpractice in the US each year. So the idea that mainstream medicine is somehow less risky is a little silly.
Ideally mainstream medicine and alternative medicine should be used together to get all of the full advantages. It’s unfortunate that so many people make it into an emotional debate rather than look at it with an objective or scientific perspective.
The idea that there has been no evidence of alternative medicine’s effectiveness is also faulty. Evidence comes in many forms, not just clinical trials. For hundreds of years people used “alternative” medicine before there was an alternative with effective results. Mainsteam medicine calls these results “anecdotal evidence” as if to imply that these results are a joke.
To determine which methods are safe and effective I look to people who are knowledgeable in the method I am researching, and I also look at European research and practices. Because their health system is socialized they integrate whatever works rather than running on a profit based model like here in the states. Germany especially uses many practices that are considered alternative in their mainstream practices.
My biggest concerns regarding mainstream medicine is that doctors are so overwhelmed with the paperwork the insurance companies require, there isn’t enough time to actually practice medicine. Doctors are also influenced by the rewards that pharmaceutical companies give for the amount of prescriptions they write. People are over medicated even by main stream medicine’s own standards.
My other concern comes from personal experience. With most prescription drugs, the side effects make me sicker than the ailment being treated.
Don’t fall for the premise that if an herb or a dietary supplement worked, it would be part of a doctors armament. The truth is, is that drug companies are a business and their goal is to make money. Fair enough. Even if a drug company saw the proof positive that ginger works very well for indigestion, they would not be interested to sell it. It cannot be patented and the income from its sales would not be worth the effort. Herbs have worked for thousands of years in every country on the planet, and that should give some credibility for its use in many instances. But it costs a zillion dollars to run a “drug” trial for an herb for the FDA. So even the biggest herb supplier cannot afford to have hundreds of herbs go through all the expensive phases for FDA approval. Alternative medicine has a place in healing. No one group has all the answers oh healing the body, be they doctors or faith healers.
The delusion that ‘it can’t be patented’ is of course complete rubbish.
If something worked, then Big Pharma would extract the active ingredient, patent it and then sell it by the truck load. As they know these supplements don’t work, they cover all bases by producing most of the vitamins and supplements out there (alties struggle to admit this, but most of the supplements they cherish come from major pharmaceutical manufacturers!)
What standards are used to determine which are reliable, safe and effective? Good question that you won’t get an answer to. As little or no research exists, alties rely on ‘guessing’ based on anecdotal evidence or ’something they read on a website, once’. A prime example is colloidal silver: it’s mildly anti-bacterial so many alties assume then it’s a panacea that can be used internally, externally and ‘cures’ everything from waxy ears to cancer. This bizarre and incorrect extrapolation is an indication of the poor level of basic cell biology and health knowledge most of them have. Their idea of ‘research’ is Y!A and frequently you’ll see people advise harmful and dangerous practises, even pretending to be ‘natural doctors’ !
I use them because as long as one knows what they are doing and uses good high quality herbs in the right form (organic tinctures), I have never seen them fail.
They are way less toxic and invasive than most drugs or medical treatments. They treat the cause and not the symptom that the doctor often calls the disease. They go to the root cause & that cause may be causing several (diseases) or symptoms and this is why many herbs help so many seemingly diverse diseases.
Taking garlic as an example compared to antibiotics.
First unlike antibiotics which are for bacterial infections, garlic (and other things like organic olive leaf tincture, grapefruit seed extract and oil of oregano) is good on bacterial, viral, fungal, and protozoan infections, so it is more full spectrum.
Unlike prescription antibiotics, it kills 100% of the bacteria (etc). Antibiotics only kill about 99% of them and the remaining 1% of bacteria virus etc become super viruses or super bacteria and these become resistant to antibiotics making it harder or impossible to kill some strains.
Using these antibiotics in such large numbers in filthy feedlots on animals to minimize cost and clean up filthy conditions which cause rampant disease in the animals and meat products, these also contribute to the growth of these super-viruses. If we keep going this way, one day we may be left with no medical antibiotics that work on these new resistant and mutated bacteria that came about by surviving the antibiotic (that 1% not killed).
Also unlike medical antibiotics, garlic is germ specific. It only kills the bad bacteria leaving the good ones alone. Because medical antibiotics kill the healthy bacteria in the gut or vagina, this leads to things like yeast infections or diarrhea. It may take a long time to replenish these so while it is helping it is also hurting but something like garlic gives one stamina and energy and other benefits in addition to killing antigens and pathogens.
They are safer and though sometimes slower more effective in the long run. Because they are organic substances (natural) they work better than the inorganic drugs which the body struggles to deal with.
One needs to be sure they are potent herbs though by making sure the herbs are organically grown as these and wildcrafted herbs )picked form the wilds away from highways) are 7-10 times higher in the pytochemicals that cure and prevent disease.
Also most people take herbs in capsule form which is the least or even non-effective. They are not absorbed well in this form and sometimes the herbs are burnt in the powdering process. One wants instead to take herbs in the form of herbal tinctures as the alcohol extracts so many of the potent and healthy phytochemicals that cure and prevent disease. Next best are teas made with distilled water as it is empty and absorbs more phytonutrients. But the alcohol extracts some things water can’t but both are better than capsules.
The best is making your own herbal products.one can save up to 90% making them very inexpensive as well as far more effective than most things on the market as manufacturers skimp to save money doing things like buying herbs from third world countries where toxic chemicals and methods are used to save money as workers are so cheap, not letting the tincture sit long enough, using to few herbs to- menstrum (alcohol).
One should not look on herbs and alternative medicine the same way as drugs as in give me a pill to fix me after I lived a decadent lifestyle drinking, smoking, drugs, eating junk and low nutrition food, not exercising, hating etc. The real solution is to stop doing the things that hurt you and start doing new healthy thins to help you in a comprehensive health building program.
People take an herb often poor quality and when it does not work then blame alternative health when in truth they are harming themselves faster than herbs can fix them, continuing to eat badly etc and not doing enough alternative health. One goes to a doctor with the attitude doctor heal me but with alternative health, one hopefully starts taking responsibility for their illness realizing they helped create it and thus can fixed it by changing things like their habits, diet, environment and thinking.
This chart should be helpful for you to include with your paper and shows the difference between alternative healing and medical intervention.
One must realize that scientists are not the the only ones practicing science. We are when we practice observation of what works and does not work with ourselves and others, when we run into class action lawsuits of people harmed using medical drugs or see how they might have affected us in the past and when we realize that hundreds of thousands die every year from drugs and medical errors and only a few from herbs generally by those who did not know what they were doing.
I was reading a book by Victoria Boutenko last night who cured her and her family from several serious and even incurable diseases with alternative health and a 100% raw vegan diet and she said in her book “green for life” that observation constitutes the foundation of every science” and that we all have “the right to make observations and draw our own conclusions” including testing our own hypotheses on ourselves and loved ones asking our help with some illness and then observe the results.
No scientific data can substitute for our own experience. She gives the example of a child told not to touch a hot stove, the warning means little until the child actually touches the stove and learns from the observation of experience what the consequences are. Only through observation can “we learn to connect consequences with causes, to become aware of what to expect” If we overeat late at night, we can expect not to feel fresh in the AM and the advantage of this awareness helps “us achieve the goals we desire through conscious actions” Instead of constantly and blindly following the advise of “experts” or somebody “who knows better”
Boutenko goes on to say that as we try and search for new answers, we gain from our personal experiences.. We feel confident then when we need to make critical decisions. “If we only have a compilation of someone else’s instructions, the best we can hope for is to hope and pray that the authors of such instructions were efficient in acquiring their knowledge and honest in their intentions. In other words we hope that someone else cares for us more than we care for our own selves” (page 3 green for life)
She goes on to say when we let others observe and reason for us”… even if such things do not make sense to us…when we submit to other’s authority, we give our power away.”
It is our birthright to observe and do what we feel is best for us as nooe cares as much for our health as we do. She goes on to say that she believes “our own conscious observations are a thousand times more important than any rigid scientif cliam,” and talks of how cut off from scientist the average person is as one must often pay hundreds of dollars to read their research which is all in technical terms hard for the average person to understand and how scientists are cut off from us.
Few scientist understand all the branches sticking within their small area.She talks of how when such a vacuum is created, people seek their own knowledge via books on health that often contradict each other. She recommends those following in her healing footsteps, try a raw food vegan diet for 2-4 weeks and see how they feel..in other words observe and do their own scientific study on what helped them/effects or lack of effects.
For example, I went from diabetes recently to normal reading by changing diet and lifestyle and I observed. I became a vegan but sometime slipped. I noticed when I juice fasted, my blood sugar fell to almost normal readings and my blood pressure dropped 20 points, even if eating fruit juice which my doctor and others say to avoid. I observed when fasting, it did not negatively affect my blood sugar to drink fruit juices in moderate amounts. I was told by doctor to eat no fruits, something my gut did not agree with.
I noticed if I ate meat or cheese (as my doctor recommended), I feel sluggish, crappy and my blood sugar rose to dangerous levels. This observation taught me what was harmful to me and the blood sugarand what helped as books had a lot of conflicting diets for diabetics. I read books and heard testimonies on others curing themselves by going vegan or raw and then I tried it and observed. I ignored the dietitian’s advice and went on my own plan born of research and the testimonies of others and saw it working. I trusted my gut and reasoning more than I trusted my doctor and the trained dietitian being a smart woman. what they said did not ring through, I was motivated as I did not want to get sick and I researched and then tested things out and as usually with alternative health/diet, I got good results..astounding really considering really my high blood sugar readings.
Several times in my life, I have found had I listened to doctors or “experts” I would still be sick or have had worst results. I would be on some drug now the rest of my life if I blindly trusted doctors.
I watched my brother cure himself with gerd that drugs did not help with simple cabbage juice for 4 or 5 weeks and noticed it had not returned in a decade and thus I feel safe recommending others try it with the same problem. If it works for them, they will pass the knowledge on to others in need.
I observed how some of the drugs doctors gave me caused severe harm or the things they did to hurt my mother and the errors at doctors hands. I also observe things they do well like diagnosing
I think a better way to describe alt med. would be an alternative method to treat disease. I believe diet, vitamins, and herbs (supplements) are the best way to prevent disease. western medicine does nothing to determine cause, rather they seek to treat symptoms with drugs which to some degree are successful. however you might ask yourself if it were not for “anecdotal” evidence, or empirical, how much of conventional medicine would have been discovered? unfortunately only the drug companies seem to have the finances to be able to spend the 100 million dollars needed to get approval from the (corupt) FDA, who by the way receives over 400 million a year from drug cos.
Dave could you provide a list of drug co. that make all those vitamins and supplements or could that statement be an illusion you made up
I don’t use it.
It’s only alternative because it hasn’t been proven to work, or it has been proven not to work.
Or side effects, risks, interactions and contradictions aren’t established.
Or its a scam – like detox footpads, ear candles, crystal healing energy or chakra balancing.
Or it’s downright dangerous like colloidal silver.
Or its complete and absolute BS quackery like homeopathy.
Or you have to invoke the supernatural to explain it.
Or promoters use pseudoscience, anecdotes or conspiracy theories to sell it.
Yes there are some concerns with ‘mainstream’ – but one must question everything and when it comes down to health care, I’m sticking with evidence based medicine and properly trained health care professionals.
Why do people use alternative medicine? Mainly because of the following reasons:
1. They lack critical thinking skills and thus will believe anything that sounds good.
2. They want a quick, easy solution to problems. (thus people who refuse to do chemotherapy, a difficult, but lifesaving option, or undergo surgery)
3. They are desperate because modern medicine has either failed them or does not have a solution to their condition. (Cancer patients of Dr. Hulda Clark)
4. Simply deluded into thinking “natural” is better. (It’s not. Snake venom is natural but it sure isn’t good for you.)
5. They have an irrational and bizarre distrust of science and thus will be easy to fool with “natural” stuff. (Believers in big pharma conspiracy theories).
6. They want to take control of their own healthcare. Sadly, this means not following their doctors advice because it seems restrictive and will instead follow the nice herbalist who talked to them about feelings and such.