WHY CHOOSE NATURAL MEDICINE?

Because it works, aims to build and restore function of the body, is based on Wholesome medical theory, and is generally without negative side effects delivered by qualified people in their respective fields.  Treating and restoring health using Integrative modalities may be the answer for patients to turn the corner back to health for many chronic health conditions.

Respect for these healthcare workers is appropriate, as there are often no other answers for many chronic, degenerative and hopeless cases presented to holistic practitioners.

Naturopaths, Acupuncturists, Remedial Massage therapists, Nutritionists, Chiropractors, Herbalists and Natural Healers have usually undergone extensive training in their chosen field. Check with the registration authorities and relevant certifying associations, such as ANTA (Australian Natural Therapists Association) who ensure their practitioners undergo regular Continuing Education and are registered Professional Practitioners. Phone your local certifying Colleges to find out which body are the current registration bodies.

Please ask your doctor or primary physician for a referral to an Integrative Practitioner if you seek quality Complementary Care. We can, and recommend working with your General Practitioner. This is appropriate, and if they say “I don’t believe in them” perhaps consider changing Doctors, because it is NOT about their belief, it is about  YOUR body, YOUR life.  What I have found is that many doctors (GP’s) seek alternate care when they are finally faced with life and death decisions personally, because at that cross roads they realise that they do not have all the answers. This is even after years of their criticizing Alternative Health Care providers!  Some even go so far as studying acupuncture after they personally have experienced its benefits.

It is unfortunate that some standard Western Medical Doctors really have no clue when it comes to natural medicine– they do not understand what these modalities are, or how helpful they can be. It is actually somewhat embarrassing  to read their uneducated reviews that ridicule these professional fields, as they display such ignorance apparent when they confuse spelling, terminology and definitions of holistic therapies.  The most common mistake I read in my histories received from other medical professionals is “this patient is receiving homeopathy from their primary practitioner”.  Obviously their interpretation is Holistic= don’t understand=must be homeopathy=this is water and doesn’t work!  No folks, read a Wikipedia definition at least! Homeopathy is not the same as Holistic Medicine; Homeopathy is a particular branch of Holistic Medicine, and unless you have studied 4 years of Homeopathic Medicine you are not qualified to make any statement about this form of Medicine.

This is perhaps why the term Integrative therapies is a more acceptable term than Holistic, you think standard practitioners might understand that? Well, we are seeing a positive answer to this–sometimes. My guess is that eventually most practices that are “Medical” will eventually have several “Alternative” or “Complementary” Therapists on board.  We live in hope.

Complementary and Holistic Medicine is occasionally on the receiving end of verbal abuse by a small group of Skeptics . This is unfortunate as the public may be persuaded by this group of essentially naive and uneducated (at least in the modalities that they are choosing to ridicule) vociferous few.  Their standard catch cry is that there is “No Evidence”. This is a lie.

We all agree with   EBM (Evidence Based Medicine) studies. It is, however, incorrect to state that Holistic Therapies are without EBM studies.  Scientific “discussions” centre on the fact that they ignore  levels  of EBM already in place with most of the Complementary Therapies. Case studies, literature reviews and even double blind placebo control studies exist. It is easy to set up this straw man and fool the public, if the public doesn’t know how to refute this basic fact.  One needs to know how to research and look, and where to go for this information. Pub Med Entrez is a great source. Google that and put in specifics in their search engine.
Herbal medicine, for instance, has data supporting Essiac in its entire formula (via PubMed  Oct 2005 a prostatic cancer patient was cured)*and the  individual components of eg Burdock root (Arctigenin etc) have many scientific articles reviewed on this and its antiinflammatory, anticarcinogenic effects.

Acupuncture articles cited in a pubmed entrez review numbered over 5,000.

The Skeptics choose to ignore this. Their bias in reviewing the articles is sincere but inaccurate. For instance the review of the article on acupuncture and placebo for Rx osteoarthritis –reached an  incorrect conclusion, that there was no difference between the sham and acupuncture group.  This was interpreted  that acupuncture did not work. In fact the article
showed that the myofascial relief was significant in both cases and that there is no such thing as placebo acupuncture!  Sticking a needle in an area that is NOT  a specific recognized acupuncture point might just mean that this is a new acupuncture point.

In Veterinary medicine we have many EBM’s of the lower levels, eg case histories etc. and we
are constantly given chronic cases for which traditional western medicine has no answers. We can also cite many level 2 (other species–eg humans!). This is not even to mention the double
standards that are imposed on our specialities, when most of the medicine practiced in a vet clinic using so called allopathy is really of a low level of EBM indeed. Some drug therapies commonly used in Veterinary practices have not had decent clinical trials at all! Vetmedin, for instance, known to kill people, came to us after clinical trials of only 6 dogs.  It has, over the years, been shown to be very useful in the longer term management of cardiac disease.

In conclusion I think its time we all worked together on publishing more about Holistic Modalities and that standard Western Practitioners embrace Holistic methods by referring to qualified practitioners as part of their Integrative Medicine.

Remission of hormone-refractory prostate cancer attributed to Essiac.