CAM
March 2nd, 2008 at 05:13pm
Under CAM+ Food & Nutrition
The days of the kindly old family doctor who would come to your house whenever called and prescribe medications compounded by your local pharmacist (who likely knew you by name and also dispensed penny candy from the case) are long gone. For many of us, we are either going to a public clinic or attached to an HMO for our basic medical care. That care is, for the most part, cookie-cutter and limited to 15-minute sound bytes.
To blindly place our trust solely within the realm of conventional medicine is often a poor choice. We all know of and can attest to unfortunate results from not exploring alternative options. We need to ask specific and often difficult questions in order to make the most informed decisions, and if a doctor is alienated during that process, perhaps he/she is the wrong doctor.
But neither should we trust only in alternative methods … delaying proven treatments have also resulted in serious consequences. It’s clear there is room for both conventional and alternative treatments in our health care.
While conventional medicine certainly has its uses (I recently had abdominal surgery and am thankful for my competent surgeon), many doctors openly admit to treating disease or illness “symptomatically” rather than holistically. It’s not their fault … it’s how they are trained by our medical schools.
“What’s wrong with that?” you ask. Well, nothing on the face of it … an illness can usually be identified by its symptoms. The doctor will then hand you a prescription for a best-guess medication to treat that symptom and tell you to come back in two weeks if you don’t improve. And if that drug doesn’t work, they’ll prescribe another. So they are basically telling you to get sicker before they can help you!
To me, there seems to be a fundamental flaw in this concept, and that is: Understanding and interpreting symptoms has its place, but if you’re invested in only treating the symptoms, you aren’t really looking for a cause and/or prevention. The medical establishment (at least here in the U.S.) may give lip service to prevention of illness and disease, but in reality they’re saying to just trust them to eventually figure it out. In the meantime, you are also supposed to believe that they know what they’re doing … after all, you are only the patient. And as they plod through their protocols you may get worse before you get better.
This is how folks end up taking a whole sack full of prescription drugs. Take for example, high blood pressure. Wouldn’t it make more sense to first look at the possible causes as to why an individual has developed high blood pressure in the first place? (These things seldom happen overnight). Once the reasons are understood, you can explore avenues such as changing diet and lifestyle habits, eating certain foods, or taking supplements that will more naturally keep the arteries and veins elastic and healthy.
I believe, as the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, so I feel it important that we do all we can to help our body take care of itself. It has a remarkable capacity for self-healing and regeneration, given half the chance, and that help doesn’t always come in the form of a prescription drug with a myriad of negative side effects (and a high price tag).
But then the medical establishment (and the drug companies they service) couldn’t keep prescribing more drugs and tests, could they? And that’s the real name of the game.
Yours in health …
By admin
February 24th, 2008 at 06:34pm
Under CAM
Tom Sawyer declared to Huck Finn that warts could be cured by spunk (stump) water and a magic chant … Huck maintained it was better to use a dead cat.*
While we laugh at such odd notions today, the fact is, many “old time” remedies should have a permanent place in our home medicine cabinet. In fact, a friend recently advised me that soaking with common vinegar will indeed (over a few day’s time) remove a wart.
Some time-tested, common cures and treatments are now being seriously investigated under laboratory conditions with interesting results. Grandma didn’t know exactly how or why they worked, she only knew that they did.
One of the most useful items in our cupboard is ordinary, humble honey. We might expect honey to be useful for soothing a sore throat when added to hot herbal tea (or brandy), but its medicinal uses are many.
Due to its wound-healing properties, it was used extensively during the Civil War. Doctors in battlefield hospitals, known more for butchery than for surgical success, used honey as both an immediate field dressing and for post-surgical treatment of wounds. As well as needing no refrigeration, honey also had the advantage of being readily available (a short scouting trip of the surrounding countryside usually could produce a “honey tree”), and it could be put into jars or oilcloth packets and easily transported.
The notion of “germs” was still rather vague back then, so they couldn’t have known that honey has natural antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties derived from enzymes in what my uncle called “bee spit”. They only knew it was useful.
Those same properties also make it helpful for treating minor burns. One old-time method was to slather butter or fat on the burn, a treatment we now know does more harm than good. The reason is, you want a wound of any kind to “breathe” and not be sealed … butter can trap bacteria and actually encourage infection. I was always taught to just use plain ice on a minor burn, then pat dry and cover with a clean bandage.
But additionally, according to a blurb in the Health section of the New York Times*, scientists have now found that honey may be a quick and easy treatment to soothe and promote healing of minor burns. One study in 2006 examined results of more than a dozen previous studies and found that small, non-serious burns healed faster when treated with gauze and a dash of honey, on average, than those treated with antibiotic creams and other dressings. A separate report published earlier found similar results.
So take the honey jar on your next camping trip … you might just find it comes in handy.
Yours in health …
* Tom Sawyer; Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain)
* “Honey Can Soothe a Burn” by Anahad O’Connor; NYTimes, Feb 19, 2008
By admin
February 19th, 2008 at 01:21am
Under CAM
Both Grandma’s home remedies and native peoples’ healing materials appear to have curative values that science is only now “proving” through more sophisticated technology.
We are beginning to see articles in magazines, on newstands, and through mainstream media about everything from the health benefits of honey to recent studies touting the potential of rice bran as a treatment for diabetes.
The basis of many modern medicines are often rooted, so to speak, in common plants or their components, and food and dietary factors relative to health (and disease) are now beginning to be at long last recognized and studied.
This is certainly gratifying, but altruistic aspects aside, there is also money to be made. Big money.
According to the New York Times, in a study by the European Commission, natural plant substances generate more than $75 billion in sales each year for the pharmaceutical industry, $20 billion in herbal supplement sales, and around $3 billion in cosmetics sales. The Times article states, “Although the efficacy of some of the products the herbal ingredients go into is hotly debated, their popularity is not in doubt. Thirty-six percent of adults in the United States use some form of what experts call Complementary and Alternative Medicine, CAM for short, according to a 2004 study published by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health.”*
Indigenous “medicines” are showing great potential in eventually leading to cures for some of our most devastating diseases … and what company wouldn’t like be the one to find a cure for cancer or any of the other Holy Grails of the world of medicine in a commonly found plant? This is exciting and heady stuff, but at what eventual cost? According to the article, Big Business and Big Pharm are joining hands and beating a path to remote areas as diverse as the Amazon rain forests and the Andes in Peru in aggressive searches for the latest discoveries. It’s telling that the aforementioned article was found not in the Travel or even in the Health sections, but in the Business section of the New York Times.*
Whether the indigenous peoples (and their fragile environments) will benefit or be on the losing end, victims of both the so-called “biopirates” (those who steal traditional knowledge and don’t give back to the local community) and the drug companies who are investing large sums in the hope of lucrative profits, remains to be seen.
* “On a Remote Path to Cures”; New York Times; Jan.1, 2008
By admin