Mainstream intensive care's Waterloo?

[Guest guest]

" WC Douglass " <realhealth

 

 

 

Mainstream intensive care's Waterloo?

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 15:07:04 -0500

 

Daily Dose

 

Tuesday January 11, 2005

 

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Napoleonic clues to moronic practices

 

I love it when I'm able to write about two of my greatest

passions (medicine and history) at once. It doesn't happen

often, but today is one of those days. Here's what I'm talking

about: An intriguing, yet somewhat bizarre study being

launched by scientists at London's University College is

exploring why multiple organ failure — the most common

cause of death in intensive care units — kills some patients

but not others…

 

And they're using historical data gathered from the battle of

Waterloo to help them do it!

 

According to a recent BBC News article, the study's authors

were impressed with survival statistics from that brutal,

pivotal battle which took place on June 18th, 1815 in what is

now the Netherlands. Although the carnage from the battle

— which involved nearly 200,000 French, British, German,

Prussian, Dutch and Russian troops — was enormous (nearly

one in four participants of the one-day action perished as a

result of it), a large number of severely wounded soldiers

survived and recovered. This fact is what caught the attention

of University College's scientists.

 

For example, one particular detachment of British soldiers,

the 13th Light Dragoons, sustained 52 wounded by sword,

musket or cannon. Yet of these, only 2 subsequently died —

despite the lack of medical advancements like antibiotics,

blood transfusions, defibrillators, life-support machines,

lasers, microscopic surgery and the like. They healed more or

less 100% naturally. (Hmmm, imagine that!) It was exactly

this kind of remarkable statistic that led this group of London

doctors to wonder:

 

Are we (meaning mainstream medicine) doing the right

things nowadays to help the critically ill to recover — or are

we standing in the way of nature's own brand of intensive

care? Do we truly understand how modern ICU treatment

impacts a patient's immunity, inflammatory response,

hormone balance and other factors — along with his or her

ability to heal?

 

For example: Is it really best to artificially lower a feverish

person's body temperature instead of allowing the fever to

cook to death whatever pathogens are causing disease?

 

And as shocking as this sounds: Is it really best to try to

counteract something like multiple organ failure? Keep

reading...

 

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Failure of the thinking organ?

 

The idea that modern medicine might be adopting and

implementing procedures that hinder true, natural healing is

nothing new — at least not to me! But the fact that a group of

mainstream scientists are giving this notion the time of day is

encouraging. Let's hope their theories aren't dismissed out of

hand by the medical establishment, especially once they hear

this novel notion:

 

Multiple organ failure may not be an extreme symptom of

trauma or infection, but rather a body's calculated last-ditch

effort at defeating it.

 

As support for this theory, the University College docs cite

the fact that in those patients who survive multiple organ

failure (not terribly many, granted), the organs themselves

nearly always recover their full functioning — without

apparent, lasting damage — within a few days to several

weeks. In other words, the organs shut down long enough to

beat whatever's threatening them, then restart before they

sustain permanent damage from their dormancy...

 

This suggests that they may start and stop by some design,

not as a result of stressors.

 

The UCL team plans to launch a large-scale study of ICU

patients with multiple organ failure as a result of sepsis (an

infection which kills approximately a third of all intensive

care patients in the UK) to try and learn whether new

treatments and therapies can be developed that complement

instead of controvert these and other natural healing

processes.

 

Unlike so much of the research I read about every day — like

the body odor study I wrote about a few weeks ago — this

sounds like a noble goal for a study...

 

 

Always studying (and listening to) the lessons of history,

 

William Campbell Douglass II, MD

 

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