Re: Re: "Alternative" medicine?
shack said:
I'd say that you've been fortunate in your natural/alternative experiences. Fortunate in the sense that you've tried them for a non-life threatening malady. There are thousands of horror stories of people who have relied on these therapies for very serious conditions and failed miserably.
You will not find proper double-blind studies because the people who promote these products do not believe in proper scientific method. By definition, that is why they're alternative. That is also why you will not find what you're looking for in scientifically established publications as the New England Journal or Lancet.
Scientific method has been developed over centuries to provide the most reliable, although admittedly imperfect, methods for determining how and why things happen in the world. It is a way to establish that an occurance is repeatable and verifiable under consistent conditions.
As such it is no surprise that your best result has come from tradtional, established medicine. A product has to be rigorously tested under strict standards to be put on the market. Unfortunately because modern medicine cannot cure everything some people take that as a reason not to trust it for anything and turn to naturopathic or holistic methods. Granted there are some cases where alternative methods have worked where nothing else did, but nobody can explain why, because there are no proper studies and they only work for a very limited few.
The human body is very complex and it often does things that no one can explain even with the most advanced research. However scientific method explains things properly and predictably way more often than any other method and should only be abandoned when it cannot cure what ails you and there's nothing left to lose or if you're dealing with an inoccuous (sp?) situation. Doing otherwise is putting yourself at risk.
I'll admit that if I had cancer and the doctors couldn't cure it I'd try anything after that. But I most definitely would not put my initial faith in current-day voodoo witch doctors, which is basically what these holistic practitioners are.
That is absolute nonsense.
Doctor-induced illness takes 10,000 lives every year in North America. The number of people that die as a direct result of using alternative medicine and/or natural approaches in the 100's.
These are facts.
Double-blind studies are currently being done on almost every major natural remedy on the market, many of which take ten years to complete.
There are maybe three or four natural remedies that governments in various countries have found "dangerous" or contraindicative to well being. That list includes ephedrine, kava kava (in massive doses of course) and perhaps two others I know of. Natural substances are not free of risk, but compared to mainstream drugs, it's a joke to even compare them.
Meanwhile, the side effects of common drugs are massive and enormous, hence warning labels filled with mice type that goes on for days.
To say that the best results come from "established medicine" is simply a confirmation of your worldview, not the fact of the matter. If I tree falls in the forest does anyone hear it? which in other words means: if there have been no massive studies actually completed on a natural product or therapy, how would anyone other than those who use it know that it works!
By the way, why are there so few completed studies on natural medicine?: They're expensive, and only drug companies can actually get a return on such studies by, suprise, selling a drug! Natural remedies are wholly inexpensive COMPARATIVELY, to drugs, therefore few companies will do studies on their effects becaus they rarely get their money back.
Mainstream doctors, have, on average, less than 20 hours of nutritional training during their years of training. The result: they are uncomfortable prescribing what they know little about, and their worldview develops accordingly.
Another example: heart disease, huge killer, all about reducing cholesterol and bypass surgery.
Dean Ornish MD, Clinton's physician for a time, and a leading expert in heart disease, found that meditation, yoga and/or a low fat diet--just those three things--reduced heart disease and bypass surgery by 30% or more!
He wrote a fascinating book linking hostility and early death from heart disease. He quoted study after study from the mainstream.
Traditional medicine views the heart as merely a pump. Emotions are "voodoo". We have a zillion metaphors in our psyche about the heart as an emotional realm, but when it comes to modern medicine, it's just a pump.
It took Ornish literally ten years to be taken seriously. If you have heard him speak or read his books, he is no quack.
I could go on for days.
(con't)
.............I am not a Doctor..
