Tag: alternative medicine

Rebuilding Trust in our Doctors: An Option for our Broken System

Dec 6, 2019• 6

By AMITA NATHWANI, MA

This week’s impeachment hearings show what a crisis of trust we live in today. 69% of Americans believe the government withholds information from the public, according to recent findings by Pew Research Center. Just 41 % of Americans trust news organizations. We even distrust our own health care providers: Only 34% of Americans say they deeply trust their doctor.

One important way doctors can regrow that trust is to become educated about the types of medicine their patients want, including alternative therapies.

People are seeking new ways to care for their health. For instance, the percentage of U.S. adults doing yoga and mediating—while still a minority– rose dramatically between 2012 and 2017, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Likewise, the number of Americans taking dietary supplements including vitamins, minerals and natural therapies like turmeric, increased ten percentage points, to 75% in the past decade, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition. As Americans increasingly seek out non-pharmaceutical ways to address wellness, they need doctors who can talk to them about such alternatives.

Unfortunately, this is rare. As a provider of an holistic approach to health called Ayurvedic Medicine, I often see people who tell me their physician dismissed them when they asked about treatments they’d read about on the internet. In many cases, clients tell me their doctor has actually chastised them for entertaining an alternative approach to their existing illness. This leaves them disempowered. They wanted to make choices to improve their own health, but found they were not acknowledged, supported or even understood by the doctor.

Traditional Chinese Herbalism at the Cleveland Clinic? What Happened to Science-Based Medicine?

Apr 29, 2014• 34

By David Gorski, MD

I don’t recall if I’ve ever mentioned my connection with the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF). I probably have, but just don’t remember it.

Long-time readers might recall that I did my general surgery training at Case Western Reserve University at University Hospitals of Cleveland. Indeed, I did my PhD there as well in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.

Up the road less than a mile from UH is the Cleveland Clinic. As it turns out, during my stint in Physiology and Biophysics at CWRU, I happened to do a research rotation in a lab at the CCF, which lasted a few months.

OK, so it’s not much of a connection. It was over 20 years ago and only lasted a few months, but it’s something that gives me an obvious and blatant hook to start out this post, particularly given the number of cardiac patients I delivered to the CCF back in the early 1990s when I moonlighted as a flight physician forMetro LifeFlight.

Obvious and clunky introduction aside (hey, they can’t all be brilliant; so I’ll settle for nauseatingly self-deprecating), several of my readers have been sending me a link to a story that appeared in the Wall Street Journal the other day: A Top Hospital Opens Up to Chinese Herbs as Medicines: Evidence is lacking that herbs are effective.

I also noticed that Steve Novella blogged about it and was tempted to let it pass, given that I had seemingly lost my window, but then I realized that there’s always something I can add to a post, even after the topic’s been blogged by Steve Novella.

Whether that something is of value or not, I leave to the reader. So here we go. Besides, if this article truly indicates a new trend in academic medical centers, it’s—if you’ll excuse the term—quantum leap in the infiltration of quackademic medicine into formerly reputable medical centers.

It’s a depressing thing, and it needs to be publicized.

That Vitamin There Could Kill You

Feb 25, 2014• 20

By James Salwitz, MD

Once-upon-a-time, when a patient said they were taking a vitamin, most doctors would simply shrug their shoulders and say, “well, I guess its OK, it couldn’t hurt.” There was little research to judge the affect of vitamin supplements, so there was no reason to take a stand. That is no longer true.

Now we have published data on many vitamins and we can say that for most people they do not work. More importantly, there is increasing research that says manufactured, chemically synthesized nutriment compounds in a pill, can be deadly.

For this reason, I am likely to ask my patients if they are taking a vitamin and, if so, which fabricated additive and how much. Therefore, I asked Bill, while he was in the office receiving chemotherapy for Hodgkin’s disease, what alternative therapies he was using.

When he informed me that he swallowed a multivitamin (MVI), large doses of Vitamins C and E, as well as a B complex preparation, I advised him to stop.

To my astonishment he responded, “Well, you only want me to do that because you make a lot of money on chemotherapy, and vitamins might put you out of business.”

Bill’s response, he lack of trust in my advice, disturbs me at several levels. He fails to understand and does not wish to learn the present state of science regarding nutrition. In addition, there is a major problem regarding his perception of my motivations and therefore the veracity of my guidance.

Let us be clear; in the absence of malnutrition, malabsorption and a few uncommon medical conditions, there is absolutely no reason to take a multivitamin. They do not prevent or fix anything. Originally developed for starving populations and hungry soldiers during the Second World War, they have no place in a society with access to a broad range of foods.

More importantly, there is increasing data that people taking a multivitamin may become less healthy.

Please Don’t Feed the Morons!!

Feb 9, 2014• 7

By DAVID KATZ, MD

With the exception of rare and particularly bleak days, I don’t tend to think of myself as a moron — nor, as far as I can tell, do those who know me well and love me. I will hazard a guess that neither you nor those who love you think of you as a moron, either.

So let’s be bold, proffer one another the mutual benefit of any disparate doubts, and declare: We are not morons!

I propose, then, that this be the year we stop ingesting as if we were. Still with me? Let’s find out.

On the matter of morons, I think they are very much the exception rather than the rule. I have met a lot of people over my years. I’ve taken care of many patients over decades and come to know their intimate thoughts as the privilege of doctoring uniquely allows and requires. So I know firsthand that most of us are endowed with our fair portion of both sense and sensitivity. Formal education, the color of a collar, degrees and credentials don’t distinguish us nearly as much as some might like to think. In most ways that matter, most people have that practical brand of folksy wisdom and intelligence that serve most handily on any given day.

And yet, as a matter of routine we are fed a steady diet of both food and food for thought as if we were abject morons. That’s how it’s served to us — but of course, only we get to decide whether or not to swallow such insalubrious slop. It’s a New Year, and time for new chances. Here’s our chance to stop the slop.

On the matter of common sense, I have been driven many times over the span of my career to lament the fact that it isn’t nearly common enough. But as just noted, I think it really is — in most areas. We apply it routinely to finances, home care, our careers and our families. We just turn it off when captivating promises about effortless weight loss, miraculous vitality, or age reversal waft our way. The result, of course, tends to be that even as we get fatter, sicker and older, we get poorer — spending our sensibly earned money on a senseless parade of false promises.

Choosing Alternative Medicine

Feb 13, 2013• 116

By James Salwitz, MD

After a terribly painful and debilitating illness, Steve died. He had been treated for Stage 2 Hodgkin’s Disease with a series of intense therapies including German enzymes, American antineoplastins, Mexican naturopathy and Chinese Herbs, complemented by focused meditation, innumerable vitamins, extreme diet modification and acupuncture for severe pain. He fought the cancer with every ounce of his being, doing everything to survive, except the one thing that had an 85% chance of cure; chemotherapy.

I was struck this week by a comment on my website, which bemoaned the highly disorganized state of “alternative medicine” in this Country and in particular the “paltry sums” for alternative research funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The writer suggested that not only could the quality of health be improved with alternative medicine studies, but would go a long way towards saving health care dollars.

It seems to me that the idea that we need more Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research goes right to the core of the confusion between so called “conventional medicine” and CAM. There is a major difference between the medicine practiced by board certified, classically trained physicians and that of alternative practitioners. That difference is research and data.

If an MD or DO is treating a cancer patient and that patient asks to see or understand the basic science and clinical studies which support the recommended therapy, that published data is readily available. Standard oncology treatment goes through 10-20 years of research, from the test tube, animal studies and through a series of supervised human multi-phase trials, until it is approved and offered to patients. Each step is refereed by competing and critical PhD and physician scientists and must be published in peer-edited journals for general review and criticism, all of which is public and transparent. Where it is not, and when people attempt to manipulate or falsify the system or data, massive blowback eventually occurs.