Hey All

Hi,

Thought I'd comment on a couple of things you mentioned.

Diet is a big part of mainstream medicine, there are dietitians in every hospital in the country. Your GP can refer you to one as well.

The difference between mainstream medicine and alternative medicine is that one tests if what they propose actually works and the other doesnt bother.

In Canada, hospital food is not very nutritious. Jello, ginger ale, etc. My chef son with diabetes landed in one a few years back, and wondered how people are supposed to get better on the food provided. My choice is to consult with natural-focused nutritionists.

My integrative natural doctor tests - blood work, hormones, live cell microscopy, and on and on. But the best test, imo, is whether the treatment works. He has miles of files and patient satisfaction that say his treatments are effective. 

Hi,

I think you're confusing hospital food - which they have to provide for free presumably - and trained dietitians. Trained dietitians have a degree in their field and use evidence to base what they tell you. They also have a good working knowledge of disease and, with your input, can tailor diet plans to help improve a patient's health towards intended goals.

Of course, he has miles of files, all saying the placebo works. The placebo does work. Unfortunately it doesn't really help when your life's in danger and something with a substantial and immediate effect is required. 

The good thing about conventional medicine is that it asks does this new treatment work better than placebo. It will randomise two groups, one takes a placebo (alternative medicine) and the other takes the new treatment. If it doesn't work better than placebo it's scrapped. Alternative medicine asks did you get a placebo effect from this, and the answer is always yes.

Whenever alternative medicine is tested against placebo, it never works better. If it does work better, it becomes conventional medicine and is actrually used by doctors. Aspirin, quinine, etc etc all came about this way. All are from natural sources. We have now thankfully gone past the point more or less where we have to root around in shubbery to find the next cancer treatment and can design them ourselves. Not to say nature doesn't give a helping hand now and again.

My bowel problems were real for five years. So how does successful treatment within a few months constitute a placebo exactly?

When I went to my dental hygienist three months after I started my healthy diet changes, he took one look in my mouth and said, "What's different? Your tissues are much healthier." (I'd gone to him for years.) He called in the dentist to take a look. Placebo? Don't think so.....  THREE MONTHS.

I definitely wouldn't go to my integrative practitioner with a heart attack. But I would go to find the right diet, natural medications and lifestyle choices to prevent a heart attack.

The mainstream guys actually pooh-pooh all these efforts, when in fact I'm paying for this stuff myself because there is no equivalent proactive treatments to be found in mainstream practices. According to the way my body was feeling when I had bowel issues, I was on the road to major health problems for which mainstream doctors would have (eventually) given me drugs to alleviate symptoms. None of them ever suggested a nutritionist, btw. In any case, I chose to go elsewhere after a long time of waiting for results that never materialized.

Hospital nutritionists work in hospitals, where patients are served inadequate food. That's bad advertising for them - bad choice of venue I'd say. Based on my better experiences elsewhere, I've switched allegiance to practices that have worked for me, and that's away from hospitals wherever possible.

I've had excellent nutritional advice from my practitioner who has studied for years as well - on a molecular level - who is also a GP but recognizes the limitations of that practice within our province/country. He offers way more than just nutritional advice, and I'm happy with the results.  His work provided me higher energy levels, no more achy liver, no more systemic yeast, no more systemic acid levels off the charts, no more allergic skin reactions, and healthier tissues throughout my body. That's *evidence* enough for me. Mainstream institutions would do well to look into more of that kind of evidence, imo.

I consider myself very lucky indeed to have found this practitioner.

 

This contest between conventional medicine and putative alternative therapies is bound to be contentious. I do not think that it is wise to have unfailing faith in pharmaceutical medicine because there are serious questions that have been raised about how reliable some are in treating the conditions for which they are prescribed. Sometimes they simply do not work. There are also questions that have been asked about the design of clinical trials and whether the results can be trusted. The main problem with treating a medical condition with drugs is due to the diversity of our genetic makeup. In an ideal world drugs would be designed to match the patient's DNA profile but this is a fantasy at the moment and I suspect that this will be the case for many years. As I understand the phenomenon, the placebo effect is a cultural construct, and it has been argued that there would be no placebo effect experienced by someone who had no previous experience of "westernised" medicine. Your doctor is a GP so he should be well qualified to detect recognised illness and disease. I say this because it is potentially dangerous to accept treatment from someone who simply claims to have the knowledge. It is positive to keep an open mind and important to question the mode of action of alternative therapies. I think that it would be easy to be mis-diagnosed by a charlatan. I am not trying to draw a general point from the following illustration but it certainly made me think. A contact of mine had been complaining of symptoms like bloating and decided that she was intolerant of wheat. She removed gluten containing foods from her diet and said that she felt much better. Three months later to died from cancer.

'She removed gluten containing foods from her diet and said that she felt much better. Three months later to died from cancer.'

So sorry to hear about this.

I've heard similar stories - people listening to well-meaning friends. I know someone who got malaria on a trip to Jordan. She keeps herself alive and thriving with natural meds - she's educated herself to a very high level. But she also has decided she's qualified to be a consultant for everybody else's problems. And you're right - that's dangerous.

I guess my point about my doctor is this. He had to fight the system and the hostile biases for years, despite the fact that he really does have eminent qualifications to help people. Fortunately, he's now gaining credibility with the mainstream. For instance, he is now recognized by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons because he has developed a program that actually helps autistic children. He is being invited to lecture mainstream practitioners on how he does it.  Only a few years ago, he was paying lawyers $400/month to keep the College off his back!

How many really excellent integrative practitioners would be willing to go through that in order to come out the other side?

More cooperation, more opening up to different ideas, less uninformed bias, less bad journalism, would make a difference. And the opening up, outreach and acceptance has to come from mainstream because they have the *power*.

There are very few of my kind of doctor around. As I said, I count myself very lucky.

why have you capitilised three months. You've changed your diet and you feel healthier - that's great.

Why wouldn't you go to your integrative practitioner with a heart attack? You realise you have now taken a position of deciding who knows more about every medical condition, a doctor (any doctor) or a practitioner (with no formal qualifications and little supervision). So the doctor knows more about heart attacks, the practitioner knows more about diet for heart disease, what about leprosy? What criteria are you applying to decide this? Why would the doctor know more about how to treat a heart attack but then, using exactly the same way to acquire information, be completely in the dark about how to prevent it? Do you see how this is confusing?

Another theory, of course, is that if you had a heart attack you'd know pretty fast if the person looking after you knew what they were doing: you'd be in pain for no reason, and your chances of surviving would decrease substantially (if you don't believe me have a look at this paper showing how the death rate from heart attack has gone down with better medical understanding: http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d8059. This paper shows the death rate has halved from 2002 to 2010 in the UK - yep halved in 8 years).

If it's advice on diet or something like that though it's not so immediately obvious. He could tell you to eat more beetroot, or reduce time in the sun, or some other completely unsubstantiated old wive's tale, and if he convinces you he's right - truly convinces you - one would feel invigorated, healthier and probably, even, in more control of their life.

When I say placebo effect I'm not saying it dismissively, it works on everyone. 

If I told you - and you completely believed me - later today you would win the lottery. And I told one of your friend's their house was going to  burn down. If you both completely believed me, could you not imagine that having a substantial, overbearing even, affect on the rest of your day? Placebos work the same way.

The thing is medicine is based on science. Science works. It's all around you, it's how your talking to me now. There's plenty of evidence that science works because you use it everyday. Medicine is based upon the same principles. The drive to better understanding that saw people watching tv in black and white 50 years ago and over the internet in Dolby surround sound today is the same process that medicine uses to improve. Hypothesise, test, repeat, use the results to improve.