Self Education Tips / Complementary Health

Complementary Health

Not too many years ago in the early 1990s, I looked at complementary health
practitioners and advocates as nuts - perhaps well-meaning and caring, but still
a bit off their rocker. After all, MDs are more extensively trained and schooled
than almost every other professional and make some of the highest professional
salaries. Why should I follow the advice of some tie-died hippie who mixes up
herb combinations in his or her kitchen as opposed to a health care professional
who wears a white coat, has hospitals and multi-million dollar labs at his or
her disposal, and was schooled for 10 or more years in the profession?

A revelation came to me in the early 1990s. It was due to a minor item in the
local news. It said that results from a university clinical trial showed that
kudzu root worked much better to treat alcoholism than the most commonly
prescribed medication, and did it without the harmful side effects. It went on
to mention that the Chinese had used kudzu root for this purpose for thousands
of years.

I thought, "What the $%^& hell? Don't doctors consider remedies that have been
around for thousands of years before prescribing ones that are less effective,
more expensive, and have harmful side effects? I thought I was paying them the
big bucks to prescribe the BEST treatment! Do *I* have to learn this kind of
stuff on my own? Why the hell do you make so much money if you don't know these
things? Weren't you trained to use what works best for the least cost and with
the least negative side effects?" If doctors were held to the same standards as
other professionals such as engineers, 99% of them would be fired.

I was finally getting around to reading on complementary health matters a few
years later when a family member was diagnosed with a serious illness. My casual
interest in this matter suddenly turned into an intense drive to learn as much
as possible in the shortest amount of time. The speed at which I learned could
literally mean the difference between life and death. My true schooling began.

This was no easy task. The hardest part was determining the therapies and
products that offered some benefit from the ones that were mostly hype. Like any
good scientist, I wanted to first determine what the proven therapies were. Sure
there are many books and articles by Michael Murray, Durk and Sandy at lef.org,
and to a lesser degree, Balch, chock full of clinical studies proving their
complementary recommendations but most books offer no proof of their
recommendations except for some anecdotes, and these from a biased source.

Lucky this was in the early days of the internet. For the first time, people
from different backgrounds who shared a common interest could easily converse
with people from all over the world. You did not have to be in a clinical
practice or speak to book authors to ask about their anecdotal sources, you
could often find these people who had no financial interests in offering their
stories. Also, instead of asking a doctor something like "Is there any evidence
that this wacky therapy has any benefits?" and being told "there have been no
clinical studies to prove its benefits", you could find many people who had
tried it with varying degrees of success.

You might find some complementary therapy that offered a great deal of benefit
to all the people who tried it, and there was a "health professional" MD telling
you there is no evidence of its effectiveness, even warning you away from
simple, effective, and inexpensive solutions. Hell, you may even find a therapy
that was 100% successful in all cases you could find, like Cansema for skin
cancer, magnesium and other minerals for restless legs syndrome and a host of
other maladies, or a black walnut antiparasitic combination for endometriosis,
and here was an MD instead recommending you use some conventional therapy that
was less effective (or not effective at all), more expensive by hundreds,
thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and full of harmful side
effects. Who do you blame? The MD? The school that educated him or her? The AMA?


----------------------------------------------

Of course, people interested in complementary health are much more receptive than those who get on a newsgroup looking for the latest conventional medicine palliative. I used to feel obligated to read some of the non-alt health newsgroups and respond to those who needed help, with simple, cost-effective regimens for diseases with which I am most familiar. This was very ungratifying, and I suggest only counseling people who have the wherewithall to consider complementary health measures. Do not waste time trying to save the world. Do the most good with the least work by only suggesting regimens to those likely to heed them. A Chinese quote: "When you have wisdom that another person knows that he needs, you give it freely. But, when the other person doesn't yet know that he needs your wisdom, you keep it to yourself. Food only looks good to a hungry man."

http://www.electroherbalism.com/Naturopathy/SelfEducationTips.htm

I am really interested in alternative modes of medicine, but I also think getting so entrenched in that side of things that you discount/ignore more mainstream medicine can be dangerous too.

For me, I think the use and understanding of drugs is more of the problem than the drugs themselves. Are most of them poisons? Yes. But many forms of medicine throughout history have been poisons. Its a question of dosage and exposure.

Consider belladonna. This plant is so interesting, and has a very long history in natural medicine. Its used to help with symptoms of colitis and acts to lower the secretions of many glands so it helps with excess stomach acid and bile production. But at the same time, this is in very, very low doses. The tropane alkaloids in the plant are some of the most dangerous of any plant on earth. They are anticholinergic and if enough is ingested you basically shut down the parasympathetic nervous system. For example, eating just one leaf off this plant is enough to kill most adults. 10 berries would do the same. But in very minute doses, it is medicinal. Its the same with prescription drugs, we just don't treat them that way. We treat them as long term, safe solutions instead of having the respect for toxicity that we should.

Where I think Western medicine fails us is not in prescribing drugs, but in treating drugs and their long-term use as THE answer to health. Instead of promoting lifestyles and diets and supplementation that promote long-term health, the money-machine is satisfied with keeping people on a prescription medication for years or their entire lives.

Drugs should be treated like any other form of medicine, they should be used short-term and in the most minute dosage possible to achieve the short-term effect you are after, all while trying to intervene and make changes in the patient's life that will eliminate the need for the drug. I think they should be treated like a band-aid. And I do think that the regulatory bodies that discern the safety of the drugs leaves a lot to be desired. It also concerns me about food additives as well.

Knowing that the dollar controls our system of medicine, the responsibility lies on the patient (unfortunately) to become educated and make the decision for themselves how they will treat the concept of prescription medicine. I think it can be a useful tool if applied with discretion, but must consider the appropriate overall changes that need to be made to prevent that drug from becoming a permanent fixture in the patient's life. So for me personally, alternative medicine always provides me with perspective on the "long term change" side of the equation. At the same time, I don't discredit anything that comes from mainstream medicine either. I just take it for exactly what it is and try to discern where information about a given drug is being twisted/exaggerated by financial interests.

This is a subject that I feel is shrouded in mystery at least to a degree of its true severity.

Prior to '92 I had the attitude/belief that whatever mainstream cooked up was the latest and greatest. And had an animosity towards any natural/herbal route, thinking that they were "inferior" and "outdated" techniques with no real proof.

15,000 patients later, I discovered that for the most part, the opposite is true.

With exception to emergency medicine and certain elective procedures/trauma, etc....the conventional/mainstream model is an epic failure beyond what most people outside this industry can possibly fathom.

Let's quickly examine the why, before the how of it...

Within Academia careers are on the line...so beyond the propaganda, those who know the science directly cannot speak out without risking their jobs/careers. After all, it is the medical/drug cartel that runs the schools. A lot of them do not even care about tuition as much as the significant financial contributions.

Of course the 'protective agencies' also run the party line with their contributors. There are good people in these organizations too, however again, they cannot speak out the truth without risk of losing their career.

In most cases though, trained medical people are just that...they are trained/conditioned to believe/trust their training is correct. When physicians are in the know, and often they are not, there is a conflict of interest.

A surgeon knows surgery, they will recommend surgery.

A few common lies (propaganda) that most people believe about medicine.

(1) Vaccinations improve immune response (the opposite is true, they worsen it).
(2) The germ theory is true and we need to sterilize everything (We're sick because society fixates on destroying it)
(3) Drugs are necessary to control high blood sugar (False, they are good for test scores only)
(4) Drugs are necessary to control high blood pressure (Mostly false, they are only important for the upper extreme ranges).
(5) Health screens are an important annual event (In most cases, an asymptomatic visit for health screening will create more problems than prevent).
(6) Early detection for cancer saves lives (Not true, just kills people faster).
(7) All those cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer, etc organizations will find a cure (Oh no, that will stop the cash from rolling in!)
( 8 ) A cure for a disease, such as hair loss, cancer, heart disease, etc will be just around the corner or maybe in ten years (If it costs a fortune, maybe, but it's probably not going to be safe).
( 9 ) Testosterone causes hair loss (Low testosterone does)
(10) Talk to your doctor to see if "X" is right for you (Swallow this propaganda to see how quickly you get sick).

The most dangerous things you can do in a professional medical environment:

(1) Getting a blood transfusion.
(2) Getting surgery
(3) Visiting the dentist (virtually everything they do is potentially destructive, with a few exceptions).
(4) Taking an antibiotic for a non-chronic infection.
(5) Radioactive health screens

So much more to tell, but have to end somewhere.

Great Post CausticSymmetry! I couldn't agree more!

Here is more good information in this link for those interested.

http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/socialsciences/ppecorino/MEDICAL_ETHICS_TEXT/Chapter_3_Moral_Climate_of_Health_Care/Reading-Death-Rate-Doctor-Strike.htm

I do have to agree that when the companies manufacturing the drugs are in control of how the "diseases" ought to be treated, there is a blatant conflict of interest. What follows is that insurance companies, who I agree are part of the picture, will only pay if you take the treatment as the drug companies see fit, then what we have is a medical system rigged for making money for big business, not with a priority for actually curing anything.

Again, I might be a bit more in the middle than others, but I don't think it means every drug out there is absolute evil and has nothing to offer. Rather I just think the practitioners aren't trained to "practice" the way a doctor should. They don't leave medical school with the perspective of a real health practitioner. If drugs were used responsibly, things would be different. But again, its about volume, the docs are trying to fill as many prescriptions as possible and the patient's interests are on the back burner.

I still believe though if you put a prescription drug in the hands of a good doctor, it can be used for good and sensibly stopped at the proper time, when the lifestyle interventions have been encouraged to eliminate the need for the drug. That said, I definitely don't agree with automatically taking the drug route for conditions that can reasonably be handled without them. The paradigm we have now, that if anything is wrong it automatically calls for a prescription is just absolute bullshit.

I've been re-watching Adam Curtis' documentaries as of late and find they tie in with this stuff a bit. If anyone hasn't seen them I recommend them as far as getting some insight into ways our social psyche has formed.

Century of The Self and The Trap are the main two that come to mind.

Here is more food for thought thanks to Alan from another forum...




...
"The drug companies hire professional writers who are good at lying/falsifying/distorting news because after a century and a half + of distorting the truth they have it down to a (PTP) science.


Science is so easy to distort as it witnessed by what big tobacco did along with thousands of other examples.


BP is so good at it that they have built such an excellent foundation of BS that people just accept that they are truth and rightness in the same way that Coca Cola has built up their brand, despite it being so incredibly unhealthy.


A perfect example was the BS about the infamous 'snake oil' salesman. Turns out an American (I think from San Francisco) decided to see if there was anything to the urban myth (started by Big Pharma in the early days) that snake oil was bogus. Turns out that snake oil was/is a very effective pain reliever brought to North America by the Chinese who worked on constructing the railways in the 19th century. It is the oil from a water snake.


The early BP schemers used a combination of racism (against the poor Chinese workers) and outright lying to dismiss the competition"
....

I really like those documentaries. Well, actually I haven't seen any of them besides The Trap, but if they're like The Trap, then they're probably great.

Its funny, that most of the behavior of big pharma/FDA/insurance companies is all pretty conveniently explained by game theory. But this is also why its absolutely pointless to establish institutions meant to protect the public interest. Its impossible or nearly impossible from that perspective.

Thanks to Phil for this.



Confessions of a pharmaceutical executive

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wIWuEAFlg1Y

CausticSymmetry wrote:
(4) Drugs are necessary to control high blood pressure (Mostly false, they are only important for the upper extreme ranges).
The most dangerous things you can do in a professional medical environment:
(3) Visiting the dentist (virtually everything they do is potentially destructive, with a few exceptions).
So much more to tell, but have to end somewhere.

What is the upper extreme range for HBP? what are the exceptions for the dentist is a simple teeth cleaning bad?

Dental "cleanings" offer an opportunity to promote harm in two ways...(1) It introduces fluoride paste and (2) If one has any amalgams, the high-speed brushing will distribute the mercury vapor faster.

Even some relatively benign procedures introduce BPA (dental sealants).

They (Dentists) will seek an opportunity to reconfigure the mouth in ways that can irrevocably cause harm and they will
show proof that sounds good, but is in fact, correctable through proper nutrition or supplementation.

I have an article on Healthyfixx on blood pressure...only problem is, it's not obtainable at the moment. Until I locate other info (short on time at the moment), I'll just state that the age related blood pressure that is gender specific is much, much higher than what is typically prescribed for people. In other words, it is normal for blood pressure to increase with age and as we age, those numbers have to be awfully high in order to justify an actual benefit from taking them.

The reason is important...it is because a very common side-effect occurs when blood pressure drugs are taken when levels are less than severely high according to age and gender. That side-effect is death from falling on the back of the head from blood pressure too low.

Many physicians forget that blood pressure increases for a reason. What I find astonishing is that basic physiology shows that sodium is necessary to transport electrons into the heart...and some of these anti-hyperintensive drugs poison the sodium pump, creating a heart attack. And to add further weight on that, the AHA (Another Heart Attack...or is it the American Heart Association?) still recommends to cut sodium intake. This is despite over two decades of research that cutting salt increases the death rate and does not elevate blood pressure to any significant degree (in fact, in most cases it increases it).

My personal experience convinced me that conventional doctors with medicine they use regardless of sometimes good intentions weren't able to help me for some of my challanging issues, including hair loss. Medicine they use is not up to date - systematic error and driven by drug selling paradigm which makes it less interested and oriented in long term health, but quick fixxes modern individual needs. ''Hair loss? OK, i need a pill to reverse it''. Pill is a way of minimal efford individual is willing to take to make change in his life. Not very responcible behaviour, imo. We all are lazy and searching for short cuts, it's how we evolved. And once when we apply desired change in our lifes, we take it for granted and make it obvious of how it works. Will talk a bit about this.

I still can't paint conventional medicine in just one color as i think they do a good job in treating mechanical damages from injuries and accidents, for there is no alternative. This doesnt make me think i will soon want to go to the doctor again for different reason as described above and maybe for a lab work or so...

It started like ''i have no other options,'' when i last year started journey to help myself. Now, not only i feel better and see enemies of my health more clearly, but also see progress while addresing it properly. I've managed to stop my ''driving me nuts'' hair loss. Well, there are ups and downs depeneded on how i live, and i still really have to be careful due autoimmunity issues, but basically it's not my biggest concern anymore. Speaking about hair loss from the angle of (in/hardly) curable disease, i oppose strong voices on the boards that use their results as the strongest argument to present the conventional aproaches in one color as evil/corrupted or so. I dont think having results, if any, in such conditions is easy task everybody can afford or manage to put in his life to change it's direction towards health, although it looks very easy to do so looking from a distance. Distinguishing between the good info and bad is a task for life spender and not average person with maybe also neurological issues. At least i expected everything to be easier.

As by definition making changes in life is stressful. One can be stuck in oppose direction of his previous lifestyle drived by mainstream so to say paradigms and can see its negative influences very quickly. (For example: Alcohol is bad for me, so i wasn't confident drinking it at all today, but driven by social event in the company. It's stress i created but wouldn't experience a year ago or so. Yes, mind is poweful in productive in counter productive ways.) Thinking that supps will change one's life by not putting his motivation and intention is believing in miracles. And living life is more than taking supps. I hope we all agree on this. Those are the reasons why many sufferers fails or have hard time making any progress.

What i read from the fingers of CS, jdp, Action/reaction, and other great minds of the boards on the subject is that they are talking about are higher standards of health which are unreachable by standard mainstream approaches availible. I agree, but see it less obvious from perspective of a person who need help. I am optimistic that scientific knowledge based on searching the ''truth'' will prevail in the era of information and slowly change the healing by switching the paradigms, etc. When or how, depended on the illnes of the system and ability of individual to do his part.

I couldn't miss the jdp's post mentioning engineering or engineering as area of science as being better compared to medicals. I disagree, being part of this world myself. System is doing bad work also here. Since it doesnt kill people it look less obvious, but i've been in school and would imagine it's the same due authorities with their outdated aproaches or problems. But yes, situation seems less severe.

Speaking about education. Everybody with Internet access on this planet have all he needs to educate himself in direction he wants, if he wants. Books, tutorials, video lectures, lists, forums, blogs, games, as well as acces to science articles can give a person to create his oppinion if he needs it. It's really intention what colors mainstream or it is lack of competitiveness institutions posses on demands of more educated people of this area have? I dont want to think in about conspiracy theories which are always probable with purpose to keep the people small and ill and rather think about the outdated school paradigms which still exist from times when controling the individual was easier due lack if information.

To make example that describes this thoughts I will bring up the memory of demonstrations on PIPA, SOPA and ACTA and censourship of the internet. It was attempt to control people lifes with (near) 0 chances of success, motivated by money and power. And yes, applying the same to the health may be one of the biggest change the world is/is not about to experience. But it sure gives some pressure also on the individual on where he gives his money and contribute to the world. All this makes me remember quote from dr. Jerry Tennant. "The key to making chronic disease better is making a single cell work''. It's big gap between the what i described and how to apply it socially. But to heal democracy or whatever the system is or will be, we have to heal the individual. Internet sure is step forward as one have his chances for knowledge bigger than few decades ago.

For me, you guys are just a few deviations of intelligent population thinking stuff many years before time, but to put it in perspective, also Internet wasn't born yesterday (we can discus about this topic), for some it was already in 80's, but many still dont have it around the globe...

... (I was paid for this, lol)

Anthony- I think Century of The Self is his best one ever. Bet you'll love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTarrgvkjo

As for the Dental Regime I TOTALLY agree. I looked into how teeth actually work and found that what dentists do is TOTAL BULLSHIT!

I confronted some about it in a nice way, just being curious if they could justify their actions. For excample cleaning all my teeth and then if they find a cavity they take the now filthy instrument and poke the bacteria from all over my mouth into the hole to see if I feel it. WTF?!?!? hwo does that make ANY sense? Anyway I jsut used my knowledge of how the teeth re-mineralize and switched toothpastes etc.... Came back a year later and had for the first time EVER the dentist tell me that my teeth were perfect and strong. My small cavities had disappeared and my gums regrew a bit. All this happened by doing pretty much the opposite of what my dentist was having me do. It cost almost nothing too.

Dentists are TOTAL scammers, I frankly think they are either total idiots or total @$$holes for working the way they do. They also can't talk to you about mercury and its dangers because of the way the dental association deals with them if they do.
This was an interesting watch on the subject.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-51ZZpyF8

Dont think that has the whole show but should have the gist.