The Best, and Worst, of Natural and Alternative Medicine

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The Best, and Worst, of Natural and Alternative Medicine

JoAnn Guest

Jan 18, 2005 23:15 PST

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Joseph E. Pizzorno, Jr., ND

President, Bastyr University

 

The Best

 

Many might point to the gratifying dramatic increase in public awareness

and utilization of natural medicine as one of our greatest

accomplishments. However, I believe far more significant is the

remarkable advancement in the quality of our practitioners and the

health care they provide.

 

Several factors have contributed to the increased efficacy of natural

medicine practitioners. Four are especially significant: burgeoning

research in nutritional and other specific natural medicine therapies,

improved quality of education, increased availability of high quality

natural medicines, and newly available laboratory assessments that allow

more objective evaluation of our patient’s health and function.

 

The quantity of good quality research supporting natural medicine

interventions has increased substantially the past two decades. Many

conventional and natural medicine educational institutions are actively

engaged in research and the US Congress’s elevation of the Office of

Alternative Medicine to an NIH Center and increase in budget to $70

million is providing ever more funding and opportunity. The newest

edition of the Textbook of Natural Medicine now cites over 10,000

peer-reviewed research studies documenting much of our practice.

 

Education in natural medicine has been dramatically improved by

accreditation. This was accomplished by the willingness of the natural

medicine professions to engage in the onerous process of establishing

accrediting agencies of sufficient quality to meet US Department of

Education standards and then subjecting natural medicine institutions to

the rigors of the process.

 

Also of importance to improving practitioner quality has been national

standardized professional examination boards, increased numbers of

states establishing licensing and the continuing efforts of the

professions to establish standards of care.

 

Product quality has been significantly improved by the increased

utilization of pharmaceutical production standards by many of the

manufacturers of natural medicines. The relatively recent availability

of standardized botanical extracts has greatly facilitated more

objective research.

 

Equally important has been the internet and other electronic tools which

have made all this information much more readily accessible.

 

Finally, I am especially excited by the great increase in number and

quality of laboratory methods for assessing patient function and health.

For so long the only laboratory tests available were only for the

detection of diseaseóuseful but too late!

 

Instead of having to guess, we can now detect physiological imbalances

long before they progress to far more difficult to treat pathology.

 

Systemic toxic load, bowel toxemia, efficacy of the liver’s

detoxification enzymes, immune dysfunction, all these age-old natural

medicine treatment precepts are now measurable.

 

Public access has also been greatly improved through both political and

financial progress. Insurance companies now compete with each other to

offer alternative medicine benefits to attract enrollees while more and

more state legislators now mandate insurance equality.

 

Public officials and legislators, after successfully using natural

medicine themselves, no longer blindly believe the medical political

lobbies. They are systematically dismantling the system of special

privilege for medical doctors that created so many barriers to public

access to natural medicine.

 

Especially significant has been the establishment and funding of

demonstration projects such as the landmark King County Natural Medicine

Clinic. Fully funded by a combination of Federal, State and County

funds, this innovative program demonstrated that natural medicine and

conventional medicine practitioners could work together in a public

clinic for the benefit of their patients, Their pioneering successes

engendered tremendous media attention.

 

The public is voting with their feet and their pocketbooks. They want a

new health care system. They want respect, personal control and better

health. They want what we are offering.

 

 

The Worst

 

Despite these important advances, serious problems plague the continued

acceptance and utilization of natural medicine. I am especially

concerned about the misunderstanding that natural medicine is simply

substituting herbs and vitamins for synthetic drugs, the inconsistent

quality of natural medicines available to both the public and

professionals, the health damage caused by unqualified practitioners,

and the inadequate funding for research of the precepts and therapeutic

protocols of natural medicine.

 

The growing public enchantment with natural medicine is exciting. Yet to

many, natural medicine is no more than green magic bullets.

 

The fundamental precepts of our medicine, the promotion of wellness

through healthful living and supporting the body’s own natural healing

processes, is lost in the rush to ever more glamorous “miracle herbs”

and “breakthrough” nutrients.

 

Our deeply insightful understanding of health and healing is why we have

so much to offer in developing a true health-care system rather than our

current disease-treatment system. Let’s not lose our way.

 

Several formal and informal studies have publicized the inconsistent

quality of the therapeutic agents we use. So many of the manufacturers

are responsible and work hard to ensure the quality of their products.

 

But what do we, as practitioners, do to recognize and align with them?

How do we decide which products are of sufficient quality to recommend

them to our patients?

 

When are the responsible manufacturers going to stop being intimidated

by those whose only interest appears to be how profitable they can make

the label, regardless of the actual contents of the product?

 

I am especially concerned that the lack of public sophistication in

natural medicine makes them very vulnerable to uncredentialled fakes and

those promoting nostrums which not only have no efficacy but are at

times damaging.

 

Even medical doctors, credentialled and skilled though they are in

conventional medicine, have no business presenting themselves as natural

medicine practitioners without proper training.

 

And how about states with no licensing? Lack of licensing means no

standards allowing anyone who feels like it to use a title they did not

bother to earn through education and credentialling. While some are well

intentioned, I have sadly interacted with far too many whose only

interest was their ego and their income.

 

We can be proud of having developed a much better understanding of the

activity of many natural therapeutic agents, e.g., Gingko biloba.

However, there continues to be essentially no research on systems of

healing or the multifactorial protocols we all actually use in our

practices.

 

Yes, fish oils will help the patient with eczema, but how about the

combination of food allergy control, zinc supplementation, HCl

supplementation and, (add your favorites here)?

 

We believe our patients are healthier from following our therapeutic and

lifestyle recommendations, but where is the data? Virtually all of the

very limited funding available is allocated to researching the treatment

of diseases with specific natural medicine agents (e.g., St. John’s Wort

for depression). While valuable, this is not the most important research

we should be doing. It fits the medical model of treating disease. It

does little to advance our understanding of how to improve health.

 

Some Thoughts for the Future

 

Natural medicine has so much to offer to improve the health and

wellbeing of the human community. Yet, we will never fulfil our full

potential until we mature yet another step.

 

We must help the public understand our foundational concept of living

healthfully in the world, we must establish mechanisms to ensure product

quality, we need to ensure that when our skilled care is sought that the

practitioners are safe and effective, and we must advance the state of

our art through research that evaluates the validity of our precepts,

not just the efficacy of specific products.

 

 

 

http://www.tldp.com

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© 1983-2002 Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients

 

_________________

 

JoAnn Guest

mrsjo-

DietaryTi-

www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest/Genes

 

 

 

 

AIM Barleygreen

" Wisdom of the Past, Food of the Future "

 

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