Social Activism is my heart’s desire for my life. I hope to improve the quality of life for my family and community by broadening awareness of natural medicine. I will earn my Doctor of Natural Medicine certification, become a physician, open a practice and advocate the licensure of naturopathy in Illinois, New York, and Indiana before fighting for national licensure. I will support the growth of this branch of the medical field worldwide by making it more assessable to the general public and dispelling myths. I want to encourage government health programs to include more naturopathic avenues for patients to explore. The future of naturopathic medicine is in the hands of its physicians. Naturopathic and allopathic (conventional) medicine should be used together to have the most positive impact. Naturopathic medicine has proved to be cost effective and environmentally sound. I hope to visit naturopathic facilities abroad and strengthen networks of naturopathy worldwide. I want to add to the future of this healthcare method by giving patients options, and doing as much good for as many people as possible.
I've spoken of naturopathy many times on this blog and more times than not people assume I don't advocate conventional med. That's silly, I just don't think its the be all end all of healthcare, and leaving natural medicine out of the spectrum of common discussion is nonsensical. There are many myths about it, some one actually asked me if it has to do with crystals and light. NO, that's not it, its science and mental health among other things. I think anyone who would advocate one without the other is slow. I also feel its my duty to advocate its use. Not that its completely synonymous with allopathic medicine but i AM against over medicating people and charging them for that malpractice.
People who only value conventional healthcare are stupid.
By mai - Posted on December 26th, 2008
Tagged: healthcare access
• Broad prosperity
And if the title of this blog is true, then I am one.
I value only evidence-based medicine. And it is my contention that for the most part naturopathic medicine is not that.
Your blog is woefully incomplete. Unless the reader already knows what naturopathic medicine is, then she will have no idea what you are advocating here.
Let's remedy that ... Naturopathic medicine is one of many complementary and alternative medicines (CAM). Reports vary on how many people use CAMs in conjunction with or in some cases, instead of conventional evidence-based medicine. CAM supporters tend to say the results are between one and two thirds of the patients out there employ CAM approaches while sources from conventional medicine put the figure at about one fifth of the patients. Both numbers however reflect the fact that a huge number of people use these therapies.
In 1991 Congress mandated the establishment of the Office of Alternative Medicine. In 1998 this became incorporated into the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).
The vast majority of medical research is funded by NIH. The NCCAM being one of the 27 institutes of the NIH has ensured that research into efficacy of CAMs has money allocated for that purpose. In the ten years that NCCAM has been around slightly over 1 billion dollars has been diverted to that research.
The result has been that numerous papers have come out supporting the efficacy of CAMs but almost all these reports have been published in low tier journals. Not one single CAM modality has been shown to be scientifically efficacious.
Problems abound at NCCAM. They include:
(1) scientific fraud ... for instance in one well-publicized study it was found that the herbal concoction was "spiked" with prescription drugs.
(2) claims for which there is no plausible mechanism ... NCCAM funded research by the discredited researcher Elisabeth Targ, into to "remote" healing by prayer .
and (3) ideological agendas of the Advisory Councils. There are two Advisory Councils that set the agenda on research that comes out of the NCCAM. They are (1) the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NACCAM) and (2) the Cancer Advisory Panel for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAPCAM). Twelve of the 18 members are mandated to be leading representatives "of the health and scientific disciplines in the area of complementary and alternative medicine." As a result these 12 have been advocates for CAM instead of scientists with a commitment to objective study of the phenomenon.
Members of these Advisory Boards have included:
(1) Anna McIntosh, a naturopath who advocates "Gerson's Therapy" (detoxification with coffee enemas and huge quantities of juices made from fruit, vegetables and raw calf's liver. She advocates this despite the fact that the National Cancer Institute (NCI; another institute of NIH) has shown this to be ineffective back in the 1950's.
(2) Konrad Keil (another naturopath) and (3) Ralph Moss who both advocate homeopathy ... a technique in which serial dilutions of a bioactive compound are made -- often to the point where NO molecules of the substance are left in the mixture -- and then administered to a patient with claims that the potion is as effective as the full dose without any of the side-effects.
and (4) Marilyn Schlitz, an "astral voyager" ... in other words someone who claims they can see things remotely by using ESP.
Now with that background on CAMs in general, what is naturopathic medicine in particular?
The goal of Naturopathic Medicine is to use "natural" techniques to stimulate the body's intrinsic ability to heal and maintain itself. Naturopaths believe that this is a better approach than surgery or synthetic medication.
It would be a simple thing to get all the anecdotal evidence you may want to claim that this approach is a good thing. Evidence-based medicine is not infallible. Surgery is sometimes not appropriate and a patient will improve on his own. The same goes for medication, which is also expensive. So there will always be patients who improved from this technique.
So what is the problem? The problem is two-fold. (1) These patients who did improve would likely have improved if NOTHING was done for them. So doing nothing would have been a cheaper and just as effective as naturopathic medicine. And (2) anecdotal evidence tends to accentuate the "hits" and ignore the "misses". Not all patients improve. Some get worse and delaying surgery and medicines can be harmful and potentially fatal.
Historically naturopathy has fostered a number of claims that have proven to be not only untrue but downright dangerous. For instance, one of the "founding fathers" of naturopathy, Benedict Lust, in 1918 wrote:
Lust is saying that vaccines are a bad thing. He uses small pox vaccines as an example, but small pox vaccines have been perhaps the most successful vaccines ever made. While it is true that Lust wrote this in 1918 and one may argue that evidence for its success was not available at the time, naturopathic medicine held onto this canard at least as late as 1948 when the evidence was most certainly available.
A good case of smallpox may rid the system of more scrofulous, tubercular, syphilitic and other poisons than could otherwise be eliminated in a lifetime. Therefore, smallpox is certainly to be preferred to vaccination. The one means elimination of chronic disease, the other the making of it. . . .
Naturopaths do not believe in artificial immunization
That attitude continues today. Harold Buttram is an MD who is also a proponent of Naturopathy. He is also one of the people who claims that vaccines cause autism. That claim rests on thimerosol which was used as a preservative in measles vaccines. Modern evidence-based medicine has examined the claims and found them wanting.
(1) Contrary to claims children who received the vaccines containing the thimerosol did not develop autism at a higher rate than did children who didn't receive the vaccines.
(2) Thimerosol is no longer used in the vaccines and there has been no decrease in the rate of autism since the change.
(3) There is no difference in the rate of autism between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.
Thus, vaccines are NOT the culprit behind the increased rates of diagnosed autism. But the evidence has not stopped the anti-vaccine hysteria. Instead the anti-vaccine hysteria has promoted new outbreaks of measles and to at least 8 deaths which would have never occurred if kids had received the vaccine.
One of the techniques that naturopathic medicine still advocates is homeopathy (referred to above). In one naturopathic protocol used to prevent diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, influenza, tuberculosis, and pneumoccal pneumonia (ie a substitute for vaccination) it is recommended that one use homeopathic NOSODES (serial dilutions). In this case it is recommended that one make 200 serial dilutions of the active ingredient in a 1 to 100 ratio. That means take one part of active solution, dilute it in 100 parts of inactive solution, then take one part of that and dilute it again in 100 parts of inactive solution, and then keep on doing it until you have done it 200 times.
Er ... this is a bit of overkill. After the twelfth dilution there should be no molecules of the active substance left. So all that will be injected into the patient is the inactive solution. Homeopaths (which includes a large number of naturopaths) claim that it still works, but there is simply no way that it can.
Naturopathic Medicine also advocates "natural" medicines, herbs etc. I am not impressed with this. The implication is that natural medicines are somehow better than synthetic ones. But this is not so.
Evidence-based medicine has long known that herbs contain some healing chemicals. But what evidence-based medicine does is to isolate what these healing chemicals are. Once it does that then it determines what an effective dosage would be. And then it formulates a delivery system that ensures you get that dosage and not something else.
That is better. If you give something in an herb, you don't know the dosage you are giving. Did that particular herb have more than normal or less than normal of the active ingredient? Furthermore, there are other chemicals in the herb. What do they do? They can have unwanted side effects just as easy (some would say easier) than the synthetic drugs.
Being "natural" does not ensure safety. Tetrodotoxin (found in the skin of newts and puffer fish) is natural, but if you happen to eat an amount less than the size of the head of a pin (as some unfortunate partakers of fugu -- a Japanese delicacy of specially prepared puffer fish -- have been known to do) it will kill you.
Thus, to summarize. The evidence for the efficacy of naturopathic medicine in particular and virtually all CAM therapies is in dispute. Evidence-based medicine (ie conventional medicine) may not have the right answer all the time, but it is the best option we have and because it depends upon the scientific method for its results it will get better in the future.
So for me ... when it comes to my health or the health of anyone I love ... show me the evidence and I'll chose what has been demonstrated to give the best chance of success.
DB
I was going to say something like "Your blog is ... incomplete. Unless the reader already knows what naturopathic medicine is..." But you already said that and then you go on to talk about me "then she will have no idea what you are advocating here." I did have no idea what she was advocating for and I fear I am more confused now then I was before.
I had considered naturopathic medicine and homeopathic medicine to be the same thing but Its not. I would think as a nursing student I should know this.
I do think they are moving modern medicine toward a more holistic approach and that their is some natural remedies that medical personel are using. Instead of going straight to tylenol or morphine they start with hot and cold packs. The move towards prevenative medicine is also a very valuable thing that stems in what I though naturopathic/ homeopathic medicine meant in Mai's blog.
Thanks DB for doing that research and clarifying some things.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.~- Anais Nin
you brought up the vaccine controversy. i go *nuts* when I hear pseudo educated hippies talking about not getting their kids vaccinated. i want to scream at them.
Seriously, in southern CA we are bordering a third world country. Their kids are walking targets for biochemical warfare. I won't let my kid around theirs, I don't care how nice they are. Viruses mutate easily and if a dormant ones finds a new live host, i fear it could easily infect people whether or not they have been immunized.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
You know, I'm not sure what to make of you. On one hand, you seem all gung-ho about natural remedies. This isn't bad in and of itself, but you also seem to reject conventional medicines, which, as DB points out, are derivatives of plants. Then you claim that you don't reject conventional medicine and that people are merely assuming this.
I can agree that Doctors of Osteopathy are equivalent to Doctors of Medicine, but I can't buy into the idea that a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine is equal to either.
~C
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I am all in favor of listening to your own body, but sometimes it can be stupid. Case in point me. I suffer from heat headaches they are worse then migraines. Well to correct the problem I started to take the medicine that the doctor gave me. They were little pills that I washed down with soda. After the medicine was all gone I started to drink more soda then normal no problems I thought. My heat headaches did not come back. I changed my drink of choice to Mountain Dew which has a lot of caffeine in it. Caffeine is a drug that many doctor prescribe to people that have migraines. I was self medicating myself. Before I cut caffeine out of my life was drinking anywhere from 12 to 16 cans a day. I am numb to pain in many forms because of it. I have a long deep cut down the length of my hand and 4 inches of my waist and I never felt it. I noticed that I may have a problem when I was being moved from working at night to days and then evenings. I need help to go to sleep so I took sleeping pills. For those who do not know many sleeping pills contain high levels of caffeine because high levels will make your body want to sleep. I took the pills and I was wired for sound. The pills had the opposite effect on me I had screwed up my body’s natural ability. I have been caffeine free for almost 6 month and I am still numb to pain. Conventional medicine and natural medications do work to together that well. I was using a drug that was naturally found in something I drank but the side effects were something I did not plan for or know about. Now if your body is telling that you need to eat broccolis and you do not and then your poop get backed up and you have to take e-lax or some other form of it. Just remember your body tried to tell you what you needed before it became a problem. Now I think that doctors need to look closer at patients to see if they are medicating themselves without their knowledge. When I went in to the doctors for the cut on my hand instead of just fixing me up he had asked me why I do not feel any pain and asked what have I eating or dank today he would have heard I drank 5 MT. Dew mind you I went to the doctors around 11:00 am. He could have looked more in to that pattern or at least at my medical records and found that I had headaches and asked if I was taking anything for them. He did not. It took another doctor I went to 5 years later to inform me of what I have done to myself. Many doctors need to be more observant and they need to understand where the drugs they prescribed come from.
"Something given has no value"~Robert Heinlein
"Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749
how you managed to get off of caffeine. When I was 14 I had a one in a billion case of intracranial hypertentsion as a result of taking tetracycline for acne. They also called it a "pseudo-tumor."
I had a blinding (literally) headache. The fluid on my brain cause my optic nerve to hemorrhage, so one of my eyes drifted to the outer rim. I was seeing double and couldn't walk straight. If I tasted a drop of water I profusely vomited buckets of water, where it came from I don't know. I had a 102. temp. The pain was unbearable. If I talked at all it was to moan, "I want to die, I just want to die."
My family is sick. My stepmother was convinced that this was all psychological and I was making myself sick because I was upset about wanting to leave my mother to come live with them and afraid of telling her. They let me go like this for a month. I was spending the summer with them. Incidentally my stepmother, even though she is a brain washed Jesus freak, is a super holistic fanatic who only goes to naturopaths for anything and accuses me of being a drug addict for taking excedrin and giving my kid liquid tylenol infant's drops when she was teething.
When they brought me back to my mother, she took me to the doctor right away. They did an MRI and rushed me into ER as fast as they could. They told my mother I had a tumor and I was dying.
During that time when I was sick I discovered Excedrin. My dad bought it for me because it worked on my grandma's migraines. Migraines run in the family he said. Excedrin has a lot of caffeine. When I took it I had enough relief to not be in so much pain and to talk to people. It worked well at first, but I went from taking it every 8 hours, to every 6, then every 4, until it only provided the same relief for an hour at a time.
The doctors found out I had excessive cerebral spinal fluid on my brain, and put me on prednisone, and drained me with a spinal tap. The fluid was clear and negative for meningitis. The best answer they came up with was the tetracycline. They told me had I waited another day or two without coming to the hospital I would have been dead or blind forever. My eyes are fine now, there was no lasting damage.
However, after that I suffered with a constant headache and Excedrin is the only thing that works. I tried to get off it when I was pregnant because it has aspirin. My doctors gave me amitriptyline (Elavil), Imitrex and Midrin. None of it worked. The Imitrex locked up my neck and made me feel like I had a vice around my head.
The elavil actually gave me a TIA (transient ischemic attack) which I had to figure out on my own, because when I told the nurse practitioner about the rapid tingling sensation that ran down my arm and made my entire right arm paralyzed and I couldn't speak right, telling my husband, "I theek umm haafing a theisure," she just said, "Hmm, do you have any neurological problems?" I said, "No," and she shrugged and did nothing.
I went home and reviewed all my meds. Sure enough in reading the side effects of amitriptyline I read, "can cause stroke." So I stopped it. Then all of a sudden I felt okay. I kept getting weird spells throughout the day where I would see lights all around me and lose focus, and feel like my head had an expanding balloon inside it that was going to pop in my skull. I thought it was a side effect of pregnancy.
Within a day of not taking it I felt so much better.
Anyway, when none of those pills worked I decided to try Excedrin Tension Headache, which is only Tylenol and caffeine, without the aspirin. Wow, no more headaches! It was the caffeine all along. I tried one day not taking my excedrin when I first found out I was pregnant. I couldn't get out of my bed. I felt like I did when I was 14 with the pseudo tumor. I called my doctor, she said, "don't go off it yet, go see a neurologist." (that was before, and the neurologist put me on the migraine stuff).
Also, it was the aspirin intake in my first trimester that caused the concern that made my doctor refer me to a neonatologist for super hi-def ultrasounds to make sure the baby's heart was ok. When I first spoke to the neonatologist and told her about the excedrin she yelled at me, "What do you think you are doing? You are a nurse, you should know better, you might as well be taking cocaine!" I was shocked because I had done my research and everything I read said aspirin had a minor impact during the first trimester but was absolutely contraindicated in the third trimester.
The hi-def ultrasound showed a perfect heart, but the nazi doctor found aqueductal stenosis in her brain and told us our baby would be hydrocephalic and suggested we consider termination. For the rest of that story, see my blog, "Okay, It's My Turn; Exercising My Right to Choose, Life." To ease any suspense, my daughter was born perfect.
So to conclude, I agree with DB about being skeptical of naturopathy, but in my experience, doctors and medicine have f***ed me up. Yeah, they save my life in the end, but Jesus, how much does one person have to suffer? This wasn't the only such experience. Throughout my entire labor and delivery and baby's birth things were screwed up unnecessarily. There are others too. I guess I have stepped onto my new theme for my next few blogs. I've been wanting to get this out here on ProU. I am glad DB and mvenus929, and you all took the time to comment here.
And oh yeah, I remain addicted to Excedrin, so I need to know how you got off Mountain Dew.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
I came across a great blog on the subject of kicking the habit by one of my favorite Bloggers. http://www.progressiveu.org/233518-logic-1-caffeine-harmless I quit by means of the step down and supplementation method. As a psych nurse you could use the same method that you would use to get someone off of heroin. Not the same drugs but method. I think that will help you. Let me know how it goes.
"Something given has no value"~Robert Heinlein
"Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is." Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richards Almanack, 1749
because I hate seeing accusations of stupidity directed at an unknown audience in a blog title. I'm glad I bothered though.
"Consistency is not a human trait" - Maude, from Harold and Maude
For all your comments and interest in my blog. NONE of the above negates that NOT giving the general public knowledge and therefore the option and ability to choose the melange of healthcare for themselves and their family is stupid, slow, prejudiced, and irresponsible. Simply writing a blog with the words "naturopathic healthcare" and "allopathic healthcare" should incite anyone interested to learn more. Advocate On! Enlighten On! Blog On! Rock On!
peace blessings respect
MAI