Alternative Medicine
June 20th, 2010 | 
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Basic Principles of Complementary/ Alternative Therapies
JUST AS MAINSTREAM MEDICINE has a fairly consistent approach to illness, so does al-ternative medicine. Most prevalent in alternative medicine are the six naturopathic principles. In one form or another, these principles are revisited again and again throughout Section Two of this text. The following principles are described by Dr. Catherine Downey and excerpted from her chapter on naturopathic medicine.
1. The Healing Power of Nature (Vis medicatix naturae)
The body has the inherent ability to establish, maintain and restore health. The healing process is ordered and intelligent: nature heals through the response of the life force. The physician’s role is to facilitate and augment this process, to act to identify and remove obstacles to health and recovery, and to support the creation of a healthy internal and external environment. In short, give the body the appropriate tools and it will heal itself.
2. Treat the Whole Person (The multifactorial nature of health and disease)
Health and disease are conditions of the whole organism, involving a complex interaction of physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, genetic, environmental, and social factors. The physician must treat the whole person by taking all of these factors into account. The harmonious functioning of all aspects of the individual is essential to recovery from and prevention of disease and requires a personalized and comprehensive approach to diagnosis and treatment.
3. First Do No Harm (Primum no nocere)
Illness is a purposeful process of the organism. The process of healing includes the generation of symptoms, which are, in fact, an expression of the life force attempting to heal itself. Therapeutic actions should be complementary to and synergistic with this healing process. The physician’s actions can support or antagonize the actions of the vis mediatrix naturae; therefore methods designed to suppress symptoms without removing underlying causes are considered harmful and are avoided or minimized. Therapeutic actions are applied in an ordered fashion congruent with the internal order of the organism.
4. Identify and Treat the Cause (Tolle causam)
Illness does not occur without cause. Underlying causes of disease must be discovered and removed or treated before a person can recover completely from illness. Symptoms are expressions of the body’s attempt to heal, but they are not the cause of disease; therefore naturopathic medicine addresses itself promptly to the underlying causes of disease, rather than symptoms. Causes may occur on many levels, including physical, mental-emotional, and spiritual. The physician must evaluate fundamental underlying causes on all levels, directing treatment at root cause rather than at symptomatic expression.
5. Prevention (Prevention is the best “cure”)
The ultimate goal of naturopathic medicine is prevention. This is accomplished through education and promotion of lifestyle habits that create good health. The physician assesses risk factors and hereditary susceptibility to disease and makes appropriate interventions to avoid further harm and risk to the patient. The emphasis is on building health rather than on fighting disease. Because it is difficult to be healthy in an unhealthy world, it is the responsibility of both the physician and patient to create a healthier environment in which to live.
6. The Physician as Teacher (Docere)
Beyond an accurate diagnosis and appropriate prescription, the physician must work to create a health-sensitive, interpersonal relationship with the patient. A cooperative doctor-patient relationship has inherent therapeutic value. The physician’s major role is to educate and encourage the patient to take responsibility for health. The physician is a catalyst for healthful change, empowering and motivating the patient to assume responsibility. It is the patient, not the doctor, who ultimately creates or accomplishes healing. The physician must strive to inspire hope as well as understanding. Physicans must also make a commitment to their personal and spiritual development in order to be good teachers.
Posted in Healthcare
i love Keri Hilsons make up she is really pretty
@mrpatrickreborn OMG I was reading the comments when I came across your arguments about “gay people”. Why does it matter to you if they gay? I mean if they is gay then more pussy for you right? If you think gay people are a disgrace to mankind then you need to reconsider your way of judging people. I personally think rapists, molesters, murderers, drug addicts, child abusers, men who hit women without a valid reason, free loaders, and liars & thieves that prey on people are worst than gay ppl.
There are no alternative treatments for HBV. Okay, that's not quite true…there are lots, but none of them have been actually proven to do anything, thats why they are "alternative"
Testing positive for HBV is not the same thing as having active disease. The most common testing just looks for immunoglobulins your body makes when you have been exposed to the virus, and those will always test positive.
@darkjamal23 hmmm good point
I go to a great natural doctor, he saved my life and I went to 20+ doctors who sat around saying there was nothing wrong with me and I was just imagining feeling sick and come to find out I had a severe vitamin deficiency that they should have found then there was another time that one prescribed a medicine that they knew I was deathly allergic to. Natural doctors go to school just as long as a regular doctor does and they can run all the same tests, they just can't prescribe medicine. I know from my experience 9 out of 10 regular doctors don't care about people they only care about prescribing meds. that don't even solve a problems only mask them, but some people do need medicine. People think their doctors care and some doctors do but most are just waiting for the 15 mins to run out on the clock and they don't even know your name. Natural doctors treat the whole body instead of just one part which Hippocrates the father of medicine strongly believed in. So unless you want to be on meds. I would recommend going to a natural doctor who will not put you into a statistic and actually sit down with you and listen and help you. Plus natural herbs really do work as well or better than perception meds. without the bad side effects. Once I was going to a regular doctor that everyone recommend was so great and come to find out he got his medical degree down in the Caribbean at a medical school that does not require a bachelors degree, so you never know what your getting with a regular doctor.
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at suggested sites to disprove AltMed you will find info provided by an unlicensed psychiatrist who posts his worthless opinions.
some Con to Altmed are,
few, if any double-blind crossover studies. these do not prove much for any substance except the researched product does have an effect on humans. those studies gave us Vioxx and Reglan and many other poisons…but "science" said they were good for us!!
Edit
More horrible news stories…100,000+ die in hospitals each year due to prescribed medication errors (Journal of the American Medical Association)
More than a 100,000 die each year from properly prescribed medications (Recent Time mag article)
16,000 die each year from arthritis durgs
and it is truly sad when a child dies from any cause….to bad the judicial system believes it belongs in health care….a real horror
Last time I checked: None.
Herbology is not taught outside of Berkeley or Brown.
Go to Dr. Siegried – he is a close personal friend of mine and a great alternative Doctor. Best.
Well, it certainly is popular. Lots of people use it as an adjunct to science based medicine. Relatively few people use it exclusively. I am not aware of any people who seek out AltMed when they have an actual medical emergency. It tends to be used for ill defined chronic conditions that tend to have symptoms that wax and wane.
Part of it is a backlash against science. People tend to look at sciences' failures (thalidomide, Vioxx) and generalize that "all science" is bad….conveniently forgetting the huge gains in health in the last century as a result of a scientific approach. (cures for polio, many cancers, treatment of diabetes etc etc) The current generation has no idea how lucky they are to be alive in an era of science based medicine.
It really took an upswing in popularity in the post-hippy era of the 60's and 70's, and that was where a lot of todays' New Age notions were born (crystal healing, therapeutic touch etc)
The 60's generation tended to reject everything of the "establishment", and that seemed to have included a rational approach to health. There was more of an interest in Eastern mysticism, people took up transcendental meditation, took an interest in acupuncture etc.
It has been very heavily promoted by unscrupulous practitioners who discovered there was a lot of money to be made when you could sell "wellness" without the pesky regulations, or requirements of efficacy or safety that doctors and pharmaceutical companies have to abide by.
It has gotten much worse in the internet age, when any idiot can set up a webpage offering dubious health and wellness advice. People think they can diagnose and treat themselves by looking up their symptoms on a checklist. It is just as bad here in Canada where everyone has access to healthcare as in the US where 40 million people don't.
Science is poorly taught in schools and poorly understood by most people. I think proper science education would go a long way towards diminishing peoples misguided attachment to SCAM.
"There is no such thing as alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence based medicine supported by solid data, or unproven medicine for which scientific evidence is lacking"
(Journal of the American Medical Association 1998)
In spite of SCAM generally poor attempts to actually do science in the last couple of decades, there has yet to be a large, well designed study that conclusively shows any form or SCAM to be superior to that of a placebo. There happens to be well understood, biochemical, physiological and psychological mechanisms of the placebo effect. So by Occam's razor, or the principle of parsimony, all SCAM effects are likely as a result of activating placebo mechanisms.
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his clothes r just de best
you could compare the records of so called "scientific" medicine to that of altmed.
newsweek recently had an article documenting that properly prescribed pharmaceuticals are the 4th leading cause of death in the US.
more than 100,000 people die in hospitals each from drug errors
htere is your starting point
good luck with the paper
plies oooooooooooo plies i think ii need my medicine
Here is a list of some herbs and their healing properties:
http://www.linsdomain.com/herbs.htm
Or if you want to look up a specific property such as antibiotic and find examples of antibiotic herbs this website is quite useful:
http://www.holisticonline.com/Herbal-Med/Hol_Herb_glossary.htm
Or on the same website you can search for herbs alphabetically:
http://www.holisticonline.com/Herbal-Med/Hol_Herb_Directory_Index.htm
Herbs: medicinal uses and herb pictures:
http://altnature.com/gallery/
The Rain-Tree website is a great one for rain forest herbs. It has an extensive database and each herb is well researched with links and covers more of the science if you are interested :http://www.rain-tree.com/plist.htm
For articles on Alternative Medicine:
http://www.worldwidehealth.com/
For short articles on basic ailments:
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=60185
For articles on any topic of interest, search this database:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_259-260/ai_n10299307
If you want real science abstracts:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/
Real science abstracts specifically relating to Complementary/Alternative Medicine:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=PubMed&orig_db=PubMed&cmd_current=Limits&pmfilter_Subsets=Complementary%20Medicine
If you type "altern med rev" into the above link it will come up with a list of the Excellent Alternative Medicine Review articles. You can use the pull-down list next to 'Display' to view the abstracts. Not all have abstracts but this will give you a more detailed list. Or you can view the full article because these articles are free to view by the public and they are usually an excellent read. They are quite scientific but not ott on science compared to many other articles on the PubMed website in case you haven't got a science background. I do highly recommend these reviews if you are keen to get more in depth knowledge on certain topics.
Just for fun: here is a list of some herbs and flowers and their meanings:
http://www.victorianbazaar.com/meanings.html
Hope this helps and have fun learning
.
Best wishes.
there is science to some alternative medicine and many are attempts at extracting the ingredients yourself, which is silly if you can buy better stuff for your needs but is a tradition that should be remembered like moon shining and home brew. .