The problem with western medicine (and I speak as a practitioner of it*) is that it tries to separate the body from the mind and the environment and deal with it in isolation. Problem is, illness typically encompasses all facets of a person and I feel like we do patients a disservice when we fix the physical problem and tell them that the rest is just in their head. Humans are social animals with social needs and when those needs aren't being met, or they are in conflict, these problems are often expressed as illnesses. People end up in the ER literally daily with physical complaints, but where the real underlying problem is homelessness or mental health issues or abusive living situations or even just loneliness. Nearly every physical ailment has a mental, emotional, and environmental component to it, but "scientific" medicine refuses to recognize these and our health care system is extremely poorly equipped to deal with them. The reason alternative medicine works for many people where conventional medicine has failed is that it's practitioners are generally better equipped to handle the non-physical aspects of the problem. Alternative practitioners tend to not only see their patients more often, but also spend more time with them during each session. The patient is more likely to feel like their problems are being heard and that they are cared about than with a mainstream doctor. In many cases having a compassionate person to talk to for an hour who actually cares enough to learn what's really bothering you and who follows up regularly is worth thousands of dollars worth of drugs and tests. There is a well documented case from a major metropolitan fire department somewhere (Texas maybe?) that took a look at the emergency medical call volume and realized that something like 15-20% of their calls came from a group of about 50 patients. Ask anyone in emergency medicine and they will tell you this is pretty common, we all have our "frequent fliers". What this department did was to assign injured firefighters who were on light duty to go and visit these 50 patients on a regular basis and just check in on how they were doing. The results? That department saw their medical call volume drop by 10%. That's thousands of fewer calls per year. The visiting firefighters helped relieve some of the patient's loneliness and they were able to deal with small problems before they escalated into emergency ambulance calls. My point, to the extent that I have one, is that I believe that holistic medicine not only has a place, but has a lot to teach mainstream medicine in how we view patients and their problems. If mainstream doctors took the time that alternative practitioners did with their patients and looked at the whole patient instead of just the slab of meat, healthcare would work a lot better. *I'm an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) and have worked both as a volunteer firefighter and as a full time EMT.
You guys should meet my dad. Every couple of months he has some new 'thing' that is supposed to make you feel better. I have no idea what he started with, but the most recent things were products that were made from aloe vera that supposedly had the vitamins in them that we are deprived of, because the fruit and veg we eat is picked too early and they don't have time to form (I don't know how true this is) People that were taking this 'medicine' said it fixed all sorts of problems ranging from cancer to infertility. Next was a machine called Scio (I think). This read your bodies energies and converted the data to readable form on a computer which then told you what was up with your body. From that the program would create a profile for you which then sends out specific waves that are targeted at you that are going to heal you, supposedly wherever you are as long as the waves were from your profile. At the moment it is music. This music is created to specifically target your bodies energy and make you feel better and let your body heal itself. Each of these methods always have people saying that they work, but they are all pretty expensive and I myself am not really into these things. My dad is a firm believer in alternative and body energy focused healing methods. (At least he does not constantly try push it onto people) So yeah, each to their own I suppose...
We have found a similar pattern with A&E visits in the UK: of the 12000 attendances, about 150 patients visit 50-200 times a year. I said before that making people feel safe and cared for is the cornerstone of medicine since the days of witch doctor shamanism. Unfortunately it is paid much less attention to nowadays. As Cthippo says, people are attached beings. Attachment dynamics are a huge part of how patients engage with the health service (and my job is, in part, to continually remind medical professionals and hospital managers of that; another part is to work with that attachment). If people cannot get their attachment needs met socially, they'll try and find other ways. Are we not the 'caring professions'? Holistic therapy is an answer to the same attachment needs. If it works, it works; as long as we know what to expect from it.
Surely this whole body and mind approach can be done without all the nonsense that surrounds alternative medicine. Edit: The CPR standards is an excellent example of scientific medicine. Start with a theory, implement a technique based on the theory, record results, analyse, adjust the approach based on analysis, then repeat the cycle. Eventually you end up with something which will have significant results. You also have to realise that you can't get a few hundred people that require cpr together for an experiment. Give some of them cpr pretend to give others cpr and do nothing to the remainder. It wouldn't be top of the ethics list. So you are left gathering huge amounts of uncontrolled data which will eventually start showing a trend once enough sample information is gathered and parsed.
Absolutely it can, but have you ever tried getting a doctor to change the way they do things? I think most doctors would like to take more time with each patient and do a better job of patient care overall, but they way they are compensated provides a pretty strong disincentive to this. It's going to take a pretty massive systemic change. To be honest, a more likely outcome is to recognize where non-traditional healthcare is effective and make more use of it rather than universally deriding it. The thing is, evidence based medicine is only 20 years old. Even collecting data on patient outcomes only began in the 1960s. Most medical procedures have not been scientifically validated. The scientific basis for CPR is an exception, not the rule. A lot of the work on CPR specifically and resuscitation science generally has come out of Harborview Hospital in Seattle. Most of the changes we've seen in CPR protocols internationally can be traced directly back to work done there. My fire department was involved on one of those studies. Here's how it worked: We were testing the efficacy of a couple of new devices for use during CPR. Obviously, these types of calls don't happen every day, so getting a large enough dataset and randomizing it was a challenge. All of the fire departments and EMS agencies in at least two counties were involved in this trial and it was supposed to run for 2 years, though it ended early when they ran out of money. We got three color coded bags, each containing different equipment, and a schedule of which bag to carry on the rig each week. If we got a CPR call we opened the attached bag and used what was in it. One bag had a regular mask with a one-way valve and that meant we were doing standard CPR, another had a widget called an Impedance Threshold Device (ITD) which went between the mask and the bag and was supposed to keep some air in the lungs during compressions. The final bag held a device called a Res-Q-Pump which looked like a toilet plunger with handles and the idea was that it would create suction and draw blood into the chest, increasing perfusion. I don't know if the pump worked, but it was really hard on my back while using it from trying to alternately pull up and push down. Patients were randomly assigned to one of the three protocols based on which week they decided to die and then outcomes were tracked at various intervals. I heard that the devices led to better outcomes, but while the ITDs are now pretty common in airway kits, I've never seen a Res-Q-pump since the trial. Another ongoing trial at Harborview is called ALPS, which stands for Amiodoerone - Lidocaine -Placebo Study. Amioderone and lidocaine are the two first line anti-arrythmic drugs used for treating cardiac patients in the field nationwide. Some places use lidocaine, which has been around for years, some prefer Ami which is a newer drug, and some use both. Problem is, no one has ever really studied to see if either of these drugs work at all. The way the study works is that each ambulance crew has a kit with three vials. If they get a patient who meets the criteria of the study they administer the contents of the first vial. If the patient doesn't improve within 10 minutes they give the second vial. The third vial is there in case one of the first two gets lost or broken. They don't know what's in the vials, it might be Ami, it might be Lido, it might be saline. When the patient gets to the hospital the barcode that comes with the study kit goes on the patient record for tracking and the hospital treats them by whatever protocol they would normally use. The hospital does have the ability to call the study hotline and give them the number off the barcode label to find out what the patient got in the field, but this is discouraged because it will tend to interfere with the randomization of the trial and shouldn't actually matter. I think the ALPS study still has another year to run and then we'll find out if the drugs that have been given in the field for the last 30 years have actually been doing anything at all.
To add to the point of changing medical practice to be more holistic (incorporate the addressing of psychological needs into addressing physical ones): clinical health psychology has been doing that since the 70's. We're still at it. Even now I have to teach doctors and nurses the basics of the patient experience of being ill and how to communicate with them clearly, sensitively and reassuringly, and the fundamentals of attachment dynamics that frankly anyone who works with people should be taught. It's not rocket science, after all. Can't blame the medics --they are simply not taught these things in Med school but are left to work them out for themselves in their work experience. Neither are they supported or trained in coping with the human distress, suffering and dying that they are exposed to every day, up close. It's just not how things roll. Medical science and technology has advanced, but we are basically still treating patients as we did in the Victorian age.
To be fair, we tend to lump all things not western MD into 'alternative' or 'holistic' healing. I have had a lot of chiropractic work done, and it helps. Often my GI tract has a rather abrupt response to a lower back adjustment. Chances are there was a pinched nerve or lowered blood flow to my tubes. Massages work for relaxing, pets work for old people and their joints. We can measure the response in the subjects. We have seen clinical studies that show Chinese herbal teas can help fight some cancers. Chamomile settles the tummy and nerves. Honey fights bacteria. It's not all voodoo. It's just not all well understood. All that said, the OPs cousin sounds like a nut job.
I've had chiro in the past, and all I can say is that I felt much better for it. Regardless of whether it's "quackery" (as asserted by Tracy King in a recent issue of CPC) or not, then that's good enough for me. PS: Johnny, we need more Catalina updates, man! Those make me feel good - perhaps they should start dispensing them on the NHS?
She's found something that works for her. It probably works because she believes it works rather than any actual therapeutic effect, but hey. She's feeling better and wants to help those she cares about feel better as well. Consider the classic prescription... "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning" 99% of the time two aspirin aren't going to do anything, but just about as often the problem will go away by morning on it's own. However, the guy* who is supposed to know what's going on has inferred that doing this will make you feel better, and in the morning when you do feel better it will reinforce your faith in him. The fact that you're going to call him to tell him whether you feel better or not indicates that he cares about the outcome, and if you don't feel better that's a strong indication that something else is wrong and you should be seen. So while it sounds cynical, the most cliché prescription in medicine is actually decent practice. The doctor is: * Listening to the patient's complaint * Giving the patient a specific action to take with the inference that it will help them. * Calming the patient down by being calm themselves. * Performing a crude differential diagnosis between a non-problem that will go away on it's own and something more serious that will still be there in the morning. * Demonstrating caring by following up with the patient to see if the problem was solved. None of these steps require a lot of medical training. In fact, the most important step the doctor is taking is in the initial triage to determine if this is likely to be something serious that requires immediate treatment or if it's just something that will probably go away on it's own. Good patient care isn't rocket science, but it isn't taught in medical school, either. * Yes, I know I'm using stereotypically male pronouns. Replace them with whatever makes you feel better
Unfortunately it isn't. Should be though; what you are describing is attachment dynamics, which are pretty well researched in psychology and which should be taught to every helping profession. I always teach it to doctors and nurses --it is a vital tool of the helping trade.
So just an update, my cousin brought me to work at her spa for a day because they needed me to organize some before and after pictures and do some side by side comparisons they were doing for a case study for some doctor. Anywho, my payment was a facial (they charge $85 for those) and I got a free BEST session (which they charge $75 for). Apparently my skin is pretty good. Now for the BEST session, it was just very odd and I was very uncomfortable. The lady had me lay on a bed, she kept shaking my legs and ankles saying they wouldn't move, and based on how my body "responded" to the shakes she gave me keywords to focus on and a number which was the "frequency" to fix things. After doing what she said my legs magically moved. I still think its a load of crap. After the fact, I didn't feel any different, and a day later, nothing has changed. Throughout the day they were going on and on how doctors and modern medicine are "passive" healing instead of active because they don't address the unconscious brain and all sorts of other things I know nothing about. Even worse is all they do is repeat the same thing over and over, just re-word it. The funniest thing they told me was "things happened to me that caused me to need glasses, and led to my arthritis". I think it's all crazy. As to my cousin being crazy, I'd agree. Her and her co-workers are all the same with their crazy belief. They seem to swear by it so good for them, but they remind me of those Jehova Witnesses that go door to door trying to force you to read things and talk with them. Every conversation she has leads back to this BEST technique and how everyone needs to do it. Also more details, to learn the technique you need to travel around the States and the course costs something like $50,000.
