When Doing Nothing Is the Best Medicine

When Doing Nothing Is the Best Medicine - WSJ.com:

"What cures colds, flu, sore throats, sore muscles, headaches, stomach aches, diarrhea, menstrual cramps, hangovers, back pain, jaw pain, tennis elbow, blisters, acne and colic, costs nothing, has no weird side effects and doesn't require a prescription?

Plain old-fashioned time. But it's often the hardest medicine for patients to take.

"Most people's bodies and immune systems are wonderful in terms of handling things—if people can be patient," says Ted Epperly, a family physician in Boise, Idaho, and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

"I have a mantra: You can do more for yourself than I can do for you," says Raymond Scalettar, a Washington, D.C., rheumatologist and former chairman of the American Medical Association. But, he says, "some patients are very medicine-oriented, and when you tell them they aren't good candidates for a drug they've heard about on TV, they don't come back."

An estimated one-third to one-half of the $2.2 trillion Americans spend annually on health care in the U.S. is spent on unnecessary tests, treatments and doctor visits. Much of that merely buys time for the body to heal itself.

And while temporary relief from symptoms is nothing to sneeze at, it adds up to a considerable amount of spending: $5.4 billion annually on cough and cold remedies, $2.7 billion on headache remedies and $411 million on chest rubs and other analgesics, according to Nielsen Co. Americans also spend an estimated $1 billion on unnecessary antibiotics that don't even relieve the symptoms of viral infections, and contribute to antibiotic resistance. But some patients are so insistent on getting antibiotics that doctors give in.

"I have colleagues who say, 'You can take this pill and get better in two days, or do nothing and get over it in 48 hours,' " says Dr. Scalettar.

Even H1N1, or swine flu, for all the uproar, almost always resolves in a few days with no treatment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is urging physicians to use Tamiflu, an antiviral medication, sparingly to prevent shortages and avoid antiviral resistance. Only people who are hospitalized or at high risk for complications should get Tamiflu, according to the CDC.

The list of "self limiting" maladies—those that require no outside treatment—range from minor annoyances to what might appear to be more serious musculoskeletal problems. "Muscle aches and pain, minor traumas, sprains and strains typically do not need to be seen by a doctor," says Dr. Epperly, who recommends his organization's Web site, www.FamilyDoctor.org, as a resource to look up symptoms and health concerns. "Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea are typically time-limited. People will start to see improvement in two or three days—just watch that you're not throwing up blood," he says. If so, call your doctor.

Almost all viral infections resolve on their own, unless you have a compromised immune system. As a rule of thumb, Dr. Epperly says, infections in the nose, throat, stomach and upper respiratory tract tend to be viral. Infections elsewhere in the body are likely to be caused by bacteria, and those can get worse without antibiotics. About 80% of urinary-tract infections resolve on their own, for example, but about 20% develop into more serious kidney or blood infections. And even if they don't, the symptoms can be very uncomfortable.

Parents are often extremely eager to "do something" for children who complain of sniffles, stomach aches, scrapes and fevers. Yet kids are generally very resilient, writes Lara Zibners, an emergency pediatrician, in her book, "If Your Kid Eats This Book, Everything Will Still Be Okay." (For a fever, she advises calling the doctor if the patient is a baby younger than three months and has a fever over 100.4 degrees. For kids older than that, other symptoms are more important than the thermometer—especially if a child is listless, irritable, unusually sleepy, refusing to eat or drink, or having trouble breathing.)

Some chronic maladies follow predictable courses, according to many medical experts ,whether or not they are treated.

Colic is almost always gone in four months. Some 70% of acne is gone three to four years after it first appears. "Frozen shoulder"—a painful restriction of the shoulder joint—is typically painful for three to six months and stiff for the next four to six months, and resolves completely after one to three more months. Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain tends to go away by itself in 18 months. Sciatica resolves on its own in three weeks in 75% of cases.

For all the misery it causes, 80% to 90% of back pain resolves with only "conservative measures" (which include anti-inflammatory drugs, rest, heat, physical therapy and chiropractic treatments). "Sometimes it take days to weeks, sometimes it takes weeks to months, but pain lasts more than three months in only about 10% of cases," says Michael J. Yaszemski, chief of orthopedic spine surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

Whether to operate even in those remaining cases is controversial, he says. With acute lumbar disc herniation, studies have found that two and five years later, there's little difference between patients who had surgery and those who did not. But surgery can sometimes provide relief faster.

"There are those patients who feel they just can't wait—like Joe Montana," says Dr. Yaszemski of the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who made headlines when he returned to playing football just eight weeks after spinal surgery in 1986.

Many patients are relieved to hear that they don't need to take medicine, have a blood test or undergo surgery for what ails them. But some feel embarrassed to have taken the doctor's time or frustrated because they think the doctor isn't taking their situation seriously. ("Much depends on the way you tell them," says Dr. Scalettar. "There are some arrogant doctors.")

And some patients resent paying for a visit when all the doctor provides is reassurance that they'll get better with time. "If a patient says, 'You mean, I'm paying $100 for you to tell me there's nothing wrong?' I say, 'There is something wrong—a virus,' " says Dr. Epperly. " 'But more importantly, I can tell you what's not wrong: it's not meningitis or cancer or a brain tumor or some other life-threatening illness. And if the pain doesn't go away in a few days, please, please tell me, and we'll investigate further.' "

"The longer you've known someone, the easier that conversation is," Dr. Epperly adds.

Indeed, applying what some call "a tincture of time" requires time on the doctor's part as well. Explaining why a medication or CT scan or MRI isn't necessary, or what signs to look for if an ailment isn't getting better, often takes more time than writing a quick prescription.

Of course, there are symptoms that people should never ignore, since they could signal a serious illness or a condition that could get worse, not better, with time. Contact your doctor immediately if you experience any of the following:

• Crushing chest pains—the classic signs of a possible heart attack.
• Sudden numbness or weakness on one side of the body, confusion, trouble speaking or severe headache—which could indicate a stroke.
• Sudden, severe headaches.
• Any major injury, especially involving loss of consciousness.
• Coughing up, throwing up or excreting blood.
• Suicidal or homicidal urges.
• Flashing lights in your vision—which could be a detached retina.
• Inability to breath—which could be a severe allergic reaction.
• Recurrent tooth pain. "You can typically give a tooth ache 24 hours," says Dr. Epperly. "If it's an abscess that would require a root canal, it won't get better by itself."

The bottom line: Don't hesitate to call your doctor if you have persistent pain or a loss of function or anything unusual for you. It's worthwhile to rule out something serious that does need medical attention. But if the doctor says you will get better on your own, that's a powerful prescription itself."

The simple choices that we make in our lifestyle can be as powerful as drugs and surgery

Deepak Chopra et. al.: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream - WSJ.com:

By Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy and Andrew Weil

"...if we want to make affordable health care available to the 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then we need to address the fundamental causes of health and illness, and provide incentives for healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing only drugs and surgery.

Heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer and obesity account for 75% of health-care costs, and yet these are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle....

The latest scientific studies show that our bodies have a remarkable capacity to begin healing, and much more quickly than we had once realized, if we address the lifestyle factors that often cause these chronic diseases. These studies show that integrative medicine can make a powerful difference in our health and well-being, how quickly these changes may occur, and how dynamic these mechanisms can be.

Many people tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, laser or high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle -- what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support -- can be as powerful as drugs and surgery. But they often are. And in many instances, they're even more powerful....

Our "health-care system" is primarily a disease-care system. Last year, $2.1 trillion was spent in the U.S. on medical care, or 16.5% of the gross national product. Of these trillions, 95 cents of every dollar was spent to treat disease after it had already occurred. At least 75% of these costs were spent on treating chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, that are preventable or even reversible....

The disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable simply by changing diet and lifestyle. And the same lifestyle changes that can prevent or even reverse heart disease also help prevent or reverse many other chronic diseases as well....

It's time to move past the debate of alternative medicine versus traditional medicine, and to focus on what works, what doesn't, for whom, and under which circumstances...."

Dr. Chopra, the author of more than 50 books on the mind, body and spirit, is guest faculty at Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ornish is clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Mr. Roy is professor emeritus of materials science at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Weil is director of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine.

Can the human mind cure the body?

Can the human mind cure the body?

Harvard University scholar Anne Harrington looks at healing through the mind-body connection.

By Gregory M. Lamb
The Christian Science Monitor
January 22, 2008

Americans who watched the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on TV and reported feeling anxiety afterward also experienced increased rates of various heart ailments in the following three years.

That's the conclusion of a recent scholarly article in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Such research, showing intriguing connections between physical health and states of mind, has come in a steady flow for decades. While some studies are challenged or discredited, others replace them.

Ordinary Americans seem more comfortable than medical researchers with the idea that thoughts can control experience. The idea is embedded in popular culture: In the 1950 musical "Guys and Dolls" the humorous song "Adelaide's Lament" tells the story of a woman whose frustration in not getting married brings on a cold.

But what exactly is the relationship between mind and body? How strong is it? How is it evoked and how does it work?

In The Cure Within, Anne Harrington traces the mind-body connection through the centuries and in its many manifestations. Harrington, chair of the history of science department at Harvard University, finds that mind-body medicine is really a "patchwork" of widely differing beliefs and approaches that often "pull in different directions."

The many manifestations of mind-body healing make for fascinating reading, though her own conclusion on the subject is no more definitive than "let a thousand therapies bloom" alongside conventional, technological medicine.

The reductionist, "physicalist" medicine of today views disease as wholly a material phenomenon, she says. Disease has no meaning beyond being a natural physical process. Yet patients continue to seek out alternative meanings and methods. They see stories in their illnesses. Understanding these stories, they feel, will help lead to wholeness. When their bodies fail them, when they fall ill, people want to know the "why" questions: They ask "Why me? Why now? What next?" she says.

A broader tent for treating disease, Harrington says, would allow "that there is more to physical illness than can be seen just in the body; and more to healing than can be found in just pills and shots. Mind matters too: how one thinks, how one feels, what kind of personality or character one has or cultivates."

In the book readers encounter individuals such as 18th-century physician Franz Anton Mesmer and his form of healing through hypnotism, called mesmerism; Sigmund Freud and the birth of psychoanalysis, which explores the idea that "every illness was more than just a biological event; it was also a biographical event rich with (usually hidden) meaning...."

In the mid-20th century, Norman Vincent Peale, pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, wrote a wildly popular book, "The Power of Positive Thinking,"urging ordinarily Americans to employ mind-body ideas to help themselves. Writer Norman Cousins's "The Anatomy of an Illness (as Perceived by the Patient)" told how he defeated his own severe physical ailment through laughter (including watching Marx Brothers movies). Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson Westernized meditation as healing through his "relaxation response."

In her own research, Harrington has studied the "placebo effect" – the ability of fake drugs or even fake surgery to heal, an effect that continues to perplex researchers. In a broader sense, she asks, might peoples' bodies today listen and respond to scientists or doctors, "people they believe to speak with the authority of science"? We need to reflect on the "larger implications" of what that would mean, Harrington says.

Religion is a taproot for today's secular explorations into mind-body connections, she acknowledges. The Bible is filled with physical healings accomplished through prayer only. Some modern-day Christian denominations, such as Christian Science, emphasize physical healing. But Christian Science, for example, does not see true healing as the result of the action of the human mind, but as the natural effect of communing with the divine Mind, or God. To many religious adherents, religious healing is much more than the "supercharged placebo effect" Harrington grants it.

One way of looking at mental healing suggests that love may have a lot to do with it. In 2000, Robert Putnam, the author of "Bowling Alone," noted: "As a rough rule of thumb, if you belong to no groups but decide to join one, you cut your risk of dying over the next year in half." Statistically, feeling part of a group was about as effective in improving health as stopping smoking.

Studies of children separated from their parents in wartime Britain, postwar Germany, and later in state orphanages in communist Romania, showed that babies given adequate food, shelter, clothing, and medical care, but without attention from a mother or other loving caregiver, fell ill and died at a higher rate than those whose physical care was less good but who received loving attention. Even in a less-than-sanitary women's prison nursery in the United States, researchers found that "The mothers' love had proven a better deterrent to infection than the most conscientious of good hygiene practices," Harrington says.

Applying the power of the human mind to the body continues today to evoke healing effects, even if the causes behind them and their potential as reliable therapies remain a subject of debate. Might human mind-over-matter only hint at something more at work? Harrington doesn't go that far, but she does seem convinced that exploring – and even employing – the mind-body connection is a worthwhile endeavor.

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When Trust in Doctors Erodes, Other Treatments Fill the Void

When Trust in Doctors Erodes, Other Treatments Fill the Void

February 3, 2006
By BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times

A few moments before boarding a plane from Los Angeles to New York in January, Charlene Solomon performed her usual preflight ritual: she chewed a small tablet that contained trace amounts of several herbs, including extracts from daisy and chamomile plants.

Ms. Solomon, 56, said she had no way to know whether the tablet, an herb-based remedy for jet lag, worked as advertised. Researchers have found no evidence that such preparations are effective, and Ms. Solomon knows that most doctors would scoff that she was wasting her money.

Yet she swears by the tablets, as well as other alternative remedies, for reasons she acknowledges are partly psychological.

"I guess I do believe in the power of simply paying attention to your health, which in a way is what I'm doing," said Ms. Solomon, who runs a Web consulting business in Los Angeles. "But I also believe there are simply a lot of unknowns when it comes to staying healthy, and if there's a possibility something will help I'm willing to try it."

Besides, she added, "whatever I'm doing is working, so I'm going to keep doing it."

The most telling evidence of Americans' dissatisfaction with traditional health care is the more than $27 billion they spend annually on alternative and complementary medicine, according to government estimates. In ways large and small, millions of people are taking active steps to venture outside the mainstream, whether by taking the herbal remedy echinacea for a cold or by placing their last hopes for cancer cure in alternative treatment, as did Coretta Scott King, who died this week at an alternative hospice clinic in Mexico.

They do not appear to care that there is little, if any, evidence that many of the therapies work. Nor do they seem to mind that alternative therapy practitioners have a fraction of the training mainstream doctors do or that vitamin and herb makers are as profit-driven as drug makers.

This straying from conventional medicine is often rooted in a sense of disappointment, even betrayal, many patients and experts say. When patients see conventional medicine's inadequacies up close — a misdiagnosis, an intolerable drug, failed surgery, even a dismissive doctor — many find the experience profoundly disillusioning, or at least eye-opening.

Haggles with insurance providers, conflicting findings from medical studies and news reports of drug makers' covering up product side effects all feed their disaffection, to the point where many people begin to question not only the health care system but also the science behind it. Soon, intuition and the personal experience of friends and family may seem as trustworthy as advice from a doctor in diagnosing an illness or judging a treatment.

Experts say that people with serious medical problems like diabetes or cancer are least likely to take their chances with natural medicine, unless their illness is terminal. Consumers generally know that quackery is widespread in alternative practices, that there is virtually no government oversight of so-called natural remedies and that some treatments, like enemas, can be dangerous.

Still, 48 percent of American adults used at least one alternative or complementary therapy in 2004, up from 42 percent a decade ago, a figure that includes students and retirees, soccer moms and truckers, New Age seekers and religious conservatives. The numbers continue to grow, experts say, for reasons that have as much to do with increasing distrust of mainstream medicine and the psychological appeal of nontraditional approaches as with the therapeutic properties of herbs or other supplements.

"I think there is a powerful element of nostalgia at work for many people, for home remedies — for what healing is supposed to be — combined with an idealized vision of what is natural and whole and good, " said Dr. Linda Barnes, a medical anthropologist at Boston University School of Medicine.

Dr. Barnes added, "People look around and feel that the conventional system does not measure up, and that something deeper about their well-being is not being addressed at all."

Healthy and Dabbling

Ms. Solomon's first small steps outside the mainstream came in 1991, after she watched her mother die of complications from a hysterectomy.

"I saw doctors struggling to save her," she said. "They were trying really hard, and I have great respect for what they do, but at that point I realized the doctors could only do so much."

She decided then that she needed to take more responsibility for her own health, by eating better, exercising more and seeking out health aids that she thought of as natural, meaning not prescribed by a doctor or developed by a pharmaceutical company.

"I usually stay away from drugs if I can, because the side effects even of cough and cold medicines can be pretty strong," she said.

The herbal preparations she uses, she said, "have no side effects, and the difference in my view is that they help support my own body's natural capability, to fight off disease" rather than treat symptoms.

If these sentiments are present in someone like Ms. Solomon, who regularly consults her internist and describes herself as "pretty mainstream," they run far deeper in millions of other people who use nontraditional therapies more often.

In interviews and surveys, these patients often described prescription drugs as poisons that mostly mask symptoms without improving their underlying cause.

Many extend their suspicions further. In a 2004 study, researchers at the University of Arizona conducted interviews with a group of men and women in Tucson who suffered from chronic arthritis, most of whom regularly used alternative therapies. Those who used alternative methods exclusively valued the treatments on the "rightness of fit" above other factors, and they were inherently skeptical of the health care system.

Distrust in the medical industrial complex, as some patients call it, stems in part from suspicions that insurers warp medical decision making, and in part from the belief that drug companies are out to sell as many drugs as possible, regardless of patients' needs, interviews show.

"I do partly blame the drug companies and the money they make" for the breakdown in trust in the medical system, said Joyce Newman, 74, of Lynnwood Wash., who sees a natural medicine specialist as her primary doctor. "The time when you would listen to your doctor and do whatever he said — that time is long gone, in my opinion. You have to learn to use your own head."

From here it is a small step to begin doubting medical science. If Western medicine is imperfect and sometimes corrupt, then mainstream doctors may not be the best judge of treatments after all, many patients conclude. People's actual experience — the personal testimony of friends and family, in particular — feels more truthful.

To best way to validate this, said Ms. Newman and many others who regularly use nontraditional therapies, is simply to try a remedy "and listen to your own body."

Opting Out

Cynthia Riley effectively opted out of mainstream medicine when it seemed that doctors were not listening to her.

During a nine-year period that ended in 2004, Ms. Riley, 47, visited almost 20 doctors, for a variety of intermittent and strange health complaints: blurred vision, urinary difficulties, balance problems so severe that at times she wobbled like a drunk.

She felt unwell most of the time, but doctors could not figure out what she had.

Each specialist ordered different tests, depending on the symptom, Ms. Riley said, but they were usually rushed and seemed to solicit her views only as a formality.

Undeterred, Ms. Riley, an event planner who lives near New London, Conn., typed out a four-page description of her ordeal, including her suspicion that she suffered from lead poisoning. One neurologist waved the report away as if insulted; another barely skimmed it, she said.

"I remember sitting in one doctor's office and realizing, 'He thinks I'm crazy,' " Ms. Riley said. "I was getting absolutely nowhere in conventional medicine, and I was determined to get to the root of my problems."

Through word of mouth, Ms. Riley heard about Deirdre O'Connor, a naturopath with a thriving practice in nearby Mystic, Conn., and made an appointment.

In recent years, people searching for something outside of conventional medicine have increasingly turned to naturopaths, herbal specialists who must complete a degree that includes some standard medical training in order to be licensed, experts say. Fourteen states, including California and Connecticut, now license naturopaths to practice medicine. Natural medicine groups are pushing for similar legislation in other states, including New York.

Licensed naturopaths can prescribe drugs from an approved list in some states, but have no prescribing rights in others.

Right away, Ms. Riley said, she noticed a difference in the level of service. Before even visiting the office, she received a fat envelope in the mail containing a four-page questionnaire, she said. In addition to asking detailed questions about medical history — standard information — it asked about energy level, foods she craved, sensitivity to weather and self-image: "Please list adjectives that describe you," read one item.

"It felt right, from the beginning," Ms. Riley said.

Her first visit lasted an hour and a half, and Ms. O'Connor, the naturopath, agreed that metal exposure was a possible cause of her symptoms. It emerged in their interview that Ms. Riley had worked in the steel industry, and tests of her hair and urine showed elevated levels of both lead and mercury, Ms. O'Connor said.

After taking a combination of herbs, vitamins and regular doses of a drug called dimercaptosuccinic acid, or DMSA, to treat lead poisoning, Ms. Riley said, she began to feel better, and the symptoms subsided.

Along the way, Ms. O'Connor explained the treatments to Ms. Riley, sometimes using drawings, and called her patient regularly to check in, especially during the first few months, Ms. Riley said.

Other doctors said they could not comment on Ms. Riley's case because they had not examined her. Researchers who specialize in lead poisoning say that it is rare in adults but that it can cause neurological symptoms and bladder problems and is often missed by primary care doctors.

Dr. Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist who directs the lead research group at the University of Pittsburgh, said DMSA was the pharmaceutical treatment of choice for high blood lead levels.

Researchers say there is little or no evidence that vitamins or herbs can relieve symptoms like Ms. Riley's. Still, she said, "I look and feel better than I have in years."

Life and Death

Diane Paradise bet her life on the uncertain benefits of natural medicine, after being burned physically and emotionally by conventional doctors.

In 1995, doctors told Ms. Paradise, now 35, that she had Hodgkin's disease. After a six-month course of chemotherapy and radiation, she said, she was declared cancer free, and she remained healthy for five years.

But in 2001 the cancer reappeared, more advanced, and her doctors recommended a 10-month course of drugs and radiation, plus a marrow transplant, she said.

Ms. Paradise, a marketing consultant in Rochester, N.Y., balked.

"I was burned badly the first time around, third-degree burns, and now they were talking about 10 months," she said in an interview, "and they were giving me no guarantees; they said it was experimental. That's when I started looking around. I really had nothing to lose, and I was focused on quality of life at that point, not quantity."

When she told one of her doctors that she was considering an alternative treatment in Arizona, the man exploded, she said.

"His exact words were, 'That's not treatment, that's a vacation — you're wasting your time!' " she said.

And so ended the relationship. With help from friends, Ms. Paradise raised about $40,000 to pay for the Arizona clinic's treatment, plus living expenses while there.

"I had absolutely no scientific reason for choosing this route, none," she said. "I just think there are times in our life when we are asked to make decisions based on our intuition, on our gut instinct, not based on evidence put in front of us, and for me this was one of those moments."

Cancer researchers say that there is no evidence that vitamins, herbs or other alternative therapies can cure cancer, and they caution that some regimens may worsen the disease.

But Ms. Paradise said that her relationship with the natural medicine specialist in Arizona had been collaborative and that she had felt "more empowered, more involved" in the treatment plan, which included large doses of vitamins, as well as changes in diet and sleep routines. After four months on the regimen, she said, she felt much better.

But the cancer was not cured. It has resurfaced recently and spread, and this time Ms. Paradise has started an experimental treatment with an oncologist in New York.

She is complementing this treatment, she said, with another course of alternative therapy in Arizona. She moved in with friends near Phoenix and started the alternative regime in January.

"It's 79 degrees and beautiful here," she said by phone in mid-January. "Let's hope that's a good sign."

For all their suspicions and questions about conventional medicine, those who venture outside the mainstream tend to have one thing in abundance, experts say: hope. In a 1998 survey of more than 1,000 adults from around the country, researchers found that having an interest in "personal growth or spirituality" predicted alternative medicine use.

Nontraditional healers know this, and they often offer some spiritual element in their practice, if they think it is appropriate. David Wood, a naturopath who with his wife, Cheryl, runs a large, Christian-oriented practice in Lynnwood, Wash., said he treated patients of all faiths.

"We pray with patients, with their permission," said Mr. Wood, who also works with local medical doctors when necessary. "If patients would not like us to pray for them, we don't, but it's there if needed."

He added, "Our goal here is to help people get really well, not merely free of symptoms."

That is exactly the sentiment that many Americans say they feel is missing from conventional medicine. Whatever the benefits and risks of its many concoctions and methods, alternative medicine offers them at least the promise of affectionate care, unhurried service, freedom from prescription drug side effects and the potential for feeling not just better but also spiritually recharged.

"I don't hate doctors or anything," Ms. Newman said. "I just know they can make mistakes, and so often they refer you on to see another doctor, and another."

Seeing a naturopath, she said, "I feel I'm known, they see me as a whole person, they listen to what I say."

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Medical Guesswork | Curing Without Cutting

Medical Guesswork | Curing Without Cutting

BusinessWeek, May 29, 2006

Can you trust your doctor's recommendation to have surgery for an aching back? Make sure you have all the facts. Evidence says surgery does not fix the problem over the long term any better than time, physical therapy, and exercise. Indeed, says University of North Carolina's Dr. Nortin M. Hadler, pain clinics are full of people who have had back surgery and now are worse off. Geographic data suggest that such procedures may be a fad. In people with identical symptoms, operations like spinal fusion are performed 20 times as often in some parts of the U.S. as in others. 'Spinal fusion is the most variable condition in all of medicine,' says Dr. James N. Weinstein, editor of Spine magazine and chair of orthopedic surgery at Dartmouth.

Curing Without Cutting
Can you trust your doctor's recommendation to have surgery for an aching back? Make sure you have all the facts. Evidence says surgery does not fix the problem over the long term any better than time, physical therapy, and exercise. Indeed, says University of North Carolina's Dr. Nortin M. Hadler, pain clinics are full of people who have had back surgery and now are worse off. Geographic data suggest that such procedures may be a fad. In people with identical symptoms, operations like spinal fusion are performed 20 times as often in some parts of the U.S. as in others. 'Spinal fusion is the most variable condition in all of medicine,' says Dr. James N. Weinstein, editor of Spine magazine and chair of orthopedic surgery at Dartmouth."

Read article at the original source

When Trust in Doctors Erodes, Other Treatments Fill the Void

When Trust in Doctors Erodes, Other Treatments Fill the Void

By BENEDICT CAREY, New York Times, February 3, 2006

A few moments before boarding a plane from Los Angeles to New York in January, Charlene Solomon performed her usual preflight ritual: she chewed a small tablet that contained trace amounts of several herbs, including extracts from daisy and chamomile plants.

Ms. Solomon, 56, said she had no way to know whether the tablet, an herb-based remedy for jet lag, worked as advertised. Researchers have found no evidence that such preparations are effective, and Ms. Solomon knows that most doctors would scoff that she was wasting her money.

Yet she swears by the tablets, as well as other alternative remedies, for reasons she acknowledges are partly psychological.

"I guess I do believe in the power of simply paying attention to your health, which in a way is what I'm doing," said Ms. Solomon, who runs a Web consulting business in Los Angeles. "But I also believe there are simply a lot of unknowns when it comes to staying healthy, and if there's a possibility something will help I'm willing to try it."

Besides, she added, "whatever I'm doing is working, so I'm going to keep doing it."

The most telling evidence of Americans' dissatisfaction with traditional health care is the more than $27 billion they spend annually on alternative and complementary medicine, according to government estimates. In ways large and small, millions of people are taking active steps to venture outside the mainstream, whether by taking the herbal remedy echinacea for a cold or by placing their last hopes for cancer cure in alternative treatment, as did Coretta Scott King, who died this week at an alternative hospice clinic in Mexico.

They do not appear to care that there is little, if any, evidence that many of the therapies work. Nor do they seem to mind that alternative therapy practitioners have a fraction of the training mainstream doctors do or that vitamin and herb makers are as profit-driven as drug makers.

This straying from conventional medicine is often rooted in a sense of disappointment, even betrayal, many patients and experts say. When patients see conventional medicine's inadequacies up close — a misdiagnosis, an intolerable drug, failed surgery, even a dismissive doctor — many find the experience profoundly disillusioning, or at least eye-opening.

Haggles with insurance providers, conflicting findings from medical studies and news reports of drug makers' covering up product side effects all feed their disaffection, to the point where many people begin to question not only the health care system but also the science behind it. Soon, intuition and the personal experience of friends and family may seem as trustworthy as advice from a doctor in diagnosing an illness or judging a treatment.

Experts say that people with serious medical problems like diabetes or cancer are least likely to take their chances with natural medicine, unless their illness is terminal. Consumers generally know that quackery is widespread in alternative practices, that there is virtually no government oversight of so-called natural remedies and that some treatments, like enemas, can be dangerous.

Still, 48 percent of American adults used at least one alternative or complementary therapy in 2004, up from 42 percent a decade ago, a figure that includes students and retirees, soccer moms and truckers, New Age seekers and religious conservatives. The numbers continue to grow, experts say, for reasons that have as much to do with increasing distrust of mainstream medicine and the psychological appeal of nontraditional approaches as with the therapeutic properties of herbs or other supplements.

"I think there is a powerful element of nostalgia at work for many people, for home remedies — for what healing is supposed to be — combined with an idealized vision of what is natural and whole and good, " said Dr. Linda Barnes, a medical anthropologist at Boston University School of Medicine.

Dr. Barnes added, "People look around and feel that the conventional system does not measure up, and that something deeper about their well-being is not being addressed at all."

Healthy and Dabbling

Ms. Solomon's first small steps outside the mainstream came in 1991, after she watched her mother die of complications from a hysterectomy.

"I saw doctors struggling to save her," she said. "They were trying really hard, and I have great respect for what they do, but at that point I realized the doctors could only do so much."

She decided then that she needed to take more responsibility for her own health, by eating better, exercising more and seeking out health aids that she thought of as natural, meaning not prescribed by a doctor or developed by a pharmaceutical company.

"I usually stay away from drugs if I can, because the side effects even of cough and cold medicines can be pretty strong," she said.

The herbal preparations she uses, she said, "have no side effects, and the difference in my view is that they help support my own body's natural capability, to fight off disease" rather than treat symptoms.

If these sentiments are present in someone like Ms. Solomon, who regularly consults her internist and describes herself as "pretty mainstream," they run far deeper in millions of other people who use nontraditional therapies more often.

In interviews and surveys, these patients often described prescription drugs as poisons that mostly mask symptoms without improving their underlying cause.

Many extend their suspicions further. In a 2004 study, researchers at the University of Arizona conducted interviews with a group of men and women in Tucson who suffered from chronic arthritis, most of whom regularly used alternative therapies. Those who used alternative methods exclusively valued the treatments on the "rightness of fit" above other factors, and they were inherently skeptical of the health care system.

Distrust in the medical industrial complex, as some patients call it, stems in part from suspicions that insurers warp medical decision making, and in part from the belief that drug companies are out to sell as many drugs as possible, regardless of patients' needs, interviews show.

"I do partly blame the drug companies and the money they make" for the breakdown in trust in the medical system, said Joyce Newman, 74, of Lynnwood Wash., who sees a natural medicine specialist as her primary doctor. "The time when you would listen to your doctor and do whatever he said — that time is long gone, in my opinion. You have to learn to use your own head."

From here it is a small step to begin doubting medical science. If Western medicine is imperfect and sometimes corrupt, then mainstream doctors may not be the best judge of treatments after all, many patients conclude. People's actual experience — the personal testimony of friends and family, in particular — feels more truthful.

To best way to validate this, said Ms. Newman and many others who regularly use nontraditional therapies, is simply to try a remedy "and listen to your own body."

Opting Out

Cynthia Riley effectively opted out of mainstream medicine when it seemed that doctors were not listening to her.

During a nine-year period that ended in 2004, Ms. Riley, 47, visited almost 20 doctors, for a variety of intermittent and strange health complaints: blurred vision, urinary difficulties, balance problems so severe that at times she wobbled like a drunk.

She felt unwell most of the time, but doctors could not figure out what she had.

Each specialist ordered different tests, depending on the symptom, Ms. Riley said, but they were usually rushed and seemed to solicit her views only as a formality.

Undeterred, Ms. Riley, an event planner who lives near New London, Conn., typed out a four-page description of her ordeal, including her suspicion that she suffered from lead poisoning. One neurologist waved the report away as if insulted; another barely skimmed it, she said.

"I remember sitting in one doctor's office and realizing, 'He thinks I'm crazy,' " Ms. Riley said. "I was getting absolutely nowhere in conventional medicine, and I was determined to get to the root of my problems."

Through word of mouth, Ms. Riley heard about Deirdre O'Connor, a naturopath with a thriving practice in nearby Mystic, Conn., and made an appointment.

In recent years, people searching for something outside of conventional medicine have increasingly turned to naturopaths, herbal specialists who must complete a degree that includes some standard medical training in order to be licensed, experts say. Fourteen states, including California and Connecticut, now license naturopaths to practice medicine. Natural medicine groups are pushing for similar legislation in other states, including New York.

Licensed naturopaths can prescribe drugs from an approved list in some states, but have no prescribing rights in others.

Right away, Ms. Riley said, she noticed a difference in the level of service. Before even visiting the office, she received a fat envelope in the mail containing a four-page questionnaire, she said. In addition to asking detailed questions about medical history — standard information — it asked about energy level, foods she craved, sensitivity to weather and self-image: "Please list adjectives that describe you," read one item.

"It felt right, from the beginning," Ms. Riley said.

Her first visit lasted an hour and a half, and Ms. O'Connor, the naturopath, agreed that metal exposure was a possible cause of her symptoms. It emerged in their interview that Ms. Riley had worked in the steel industry, and tests of her hair and urine showed elevated levels of both lead and mercury, Ms. O'Connor said.

After taking a combination of herbs, vitamins and regular doses of a drug called dimercaptosuccinic acid, or DMSA, to treat lead poisoning, Ms. Riley said, she began to feel better, and the symptoms subsided.

Along the way, Ms. O'Connor explained the treatments to Ms. Riley, sometimes using drawings, and called her patient regularly to check in, especially during the first few months, Ms. Riley said.

Other doctors said they could not comment on Ms. Riley's case because they had not examined her. Researchers who specialize in lead poisoning say that it is rare in adults but that it can cause neurological symptoms and bladder problems and is often missed by primary care doctors.

Dr. Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist who directs the lead research group at the University of Pittsburgh, said DMSA was the pharmaceutical treatment of choice for high blood lead levels.

Researchers say there is little or no evidence that vitamins or herbs can relieve symptoms like Ms. Riley's. Still, she said, "I look and feel better than I have in years."

Life and Death

Diane Paradise bet her life on the uncertain benefits of natural medicine, after being burned physically and emotionally by conventional doctors.

In 1995, doctors told Ms. Paradise, now 35, that she had Hodgkin's disease. After a six-month course of chemotherapy and radiation, she said, she was declared cancer free, and she remained healthy for five years.

But in 2001 the cancer reappeared, more advanced, and her doctors recommended a 10-month course of drugs and radiation, plus a marrow transplant, she said.

Ms. Paradise, a marketing consultant in Rochester, N.Y., balked.

"I was burned badly the first time around, third-degree burns, and now they were talking about 10 months," she said in an interview, "and they were giving me no guarantees; they said it was experimental. That's when I started looking around. I really had nothing to lose, and I was focused on quality of life at that point, not quantity."

When she told one of her doctors that she was considering an alternative treatment in Arizona, the man exploded, she said.

"His exact words were, 'That's not treatment, that's a vacation — you're wasting your time!' " she said.

And so ended the relationship. With help from friends, Ms. Paradise raised about $40,000 to pay for the Arizona clinic's treatment, plus living expenses while there.

"I had absolutely no scientific reason for choosing this route, none," she said. "I just think there are times in our life when we are asked to make decisions based on our intuition, on our gut instinct, not based on evidence put in front of us, and for me this was one of those moments."

Cancer researchers say that there is no evidence that vitamins, herbs or other alternative therapies can cure cancer, and they caution that some regimens may worsen the disease.

But Ms. Paradise said that her relationship with the natural medicine specialist in Arizona had been collaborative and that she had felt "more empowered, more involved" in the treatment plan, which included large doses of vitamins, as well as changes in diet and sleep routines. After four months on the regimen, she said, she felt much better.

But the cancer was not cured. It has resurfaced recently and spread, and this time Ms. Paradise has started an experimental treatment with an oncologist in New York.

She is complementing this treatment, she said, with another course of alternative therapy in Arizona. She moved in with friends near Phoenix and started the alternative regime in January.

"It's 79 degrees and beautiful here," she said by phone in mid-January. "Let's hope that's a good sign."

For all their suspicions and questions about conventional medicine, those who venture outside the mainstream tend to have one thing in abundance, experts say: hope. In a 1998 survey of more than 1,000 adults from around the country, researchers found that having an interest in "personal growth or spirituality" predicted alternative medicine use.

Nontraditional healers know this, and they often offer some spiritual element in their practice, if they think it is appropriate. David Wood, a naturopath who with his wife, Cheryl, runs a large, Christian-oriented practice in Lynnwood, Wash., said he treated patients of all faiths.

"We pray with patients, with their permission," said Mr. Wood, who also works with local medical doctors when necessary. "If patients would not like us to pray for them, we don't, but it's there if needed."

He added, "Our goal here is to help people get really well, not merely free of symptoms."

That is exactly the sentiment that many Americans say they feel is missing from conventional medicine. Whatever the benefits and risks of its many concoctions and methods, alternative medicine offers them at least the promise of affectionate care, unhurried service, freedom from prescription drug side effects and the potential for feeling not just better but also spiritually recharged.

"I don't hate doctors or anything," Ms. Newman said. "I just know they can make mistakes, and so often they refer you on to see another doctor, and another."

Seeing a naturopath, she said, "I feel I'm known, they see me as a whole person, they listen to what I say."

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Series shows more than science involved in defining disease

The Seattle Times: Series shows more than science involved in defining disease

Series shows more than science involved in defining disease
By Michael R. Fancher, Seattle Times executive editor, June 26, 2005

A woman is healthy one day, but the next day she has a life-threatening disease. Nothing in her physical condition has changed. How can this be?

The answer to this riddle involves billions of dollars in health-care costs and likely touches the life of everyone reading this newspaper. It's what The Seattle Times calls becoming "Suddenly Sick," the title of a five-part series beginning today.

The woman is healthy one day, diseased the next because the definition of the disease has changed, even though her health hasn't. The series says that every time the definition for a disease is expanded, the market for drugs expands by millions of consumers and billions of dollars.

Most of us typically think of disease in black and white; you have it or you don't. For diseases such as cancer or tuberculosis, a clear determination can be made, and it is scientifically based.

But for such diseases as hypertension, obesity and osteoporosis, the determination is based on boundaries and definitions.

"We found that with the so-called 'lifestyle diseases,' forces other than science affect where the lines are drawn," said Times Managing Editor David Boardman.

"How the line is drawn and who drew it has implications for individuals and society in general," he added.

Reporter Susan Kelleher first started thinking about those implications several years ago at a medical conference in Toronto. Health-care experts were debating how to set the boundaries that define osteoporosis, with huge financial consequences for insurance companies, physicians, researchers and, especially, pharmaceutical companies.

She became fascinated by the politics of osteoporosis and what she would come to realize was the "guidelines industry," the slippery science of defining diseases.

"I had spent 10 years covering health care and I was oblivious to it," she said.

Those years included being the lead reporter on The Orange County Register's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of a fertility clinic at the University of California, Irvine. Doctors there stole eggs from infertile patients and used them for other women who needed donor eggs to get pregnant.

The guidelines industry wasn't that kind of "gotcha" investigation. Kelleher said she knew it was important, but the story didn't crystallize immediately.

She would think about it when she saw "scare-you stories" in women's magazines and other media. Those stories warn of the growing risks of diseases but seldom ask, "Who says so?"

She would think about it as more and more television commercials pushed the preventive value of new drugs. There didn't seem to be much skepticism to a system so driven by pharmaceutical companies.

She thought about the riddle — you go to sleep one night and wake up with a disease. What happened overnight?

Over time, Kelleher would gather string for the story, exploring thousands of pages of documents from the Food and Drug Administration, searching patents and examining financial records of pharmaceutical companies.

"It's like a puzzle. It's probably the most complicated story that I've ever done," she said.

Boardman said a pattern emerged as Kelleher and reporter Duff Wilson, now with The New York Times, explored various aspects of the guidelines system. The numbers always moved in the same direction, with the boundaries of disease — and the market for drugs — expanding.

"We never saw an opposite example," Boardman said.

"Suddenly Sick" reveals how the system works. There are good intentions throughout the system to help people live healthier and longer. But, there is also growing discomfort among some medical practitioners at how much influence the drug industry has obtained.

"It's a huge factor in escalating health-care costs," Boardman said.

Worst of all, the series points out, people may be taking medications that have greater risks than the underlying condition for which they are prescribed.

Kelleher believes the series will arm readers with information they can use in managing their own health care.

"When you fully understand the way things work," she said, "you automatically ask different questions."

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Your human body changes itself more effortlessly than you change your clothes

Flaws of Perception, by Deepak Chopra

"At the atomic level you make a new liver every six weeks; a new skin once every five days; you replace your skeleton every three months; and you replace the raw material of your DNA every six weeks - it comes and goes like migratory birds.

What if we could see the body as it really is? What would we see? We would see first of all that it is made up of atoms, the atoms in turn are made up of subatomic particles, and these subatomic particles are not material things, but fluctuations of energy and information that are flickering in and out of an infinite void at the speed of light. If I could see my body as it really is, through quantum instruments, what I would see is that 99% of my body is empty space and that 1% that appears to be material is also empty space; that the whole thing is made out of nothing."

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Love Is Real Medicine

Love Is Real Medicine

Love Is Real Medicine
Loneliness fosters cardiovascular disease. Fortunately, there's an antidote.

By Dean Ornish, M.D., Newsweek, October 3, 2005

People who survive a heart attack often describe it as a wake-up call. But for a 61-year-old executive I met recently, it was more than that. This man was in the midst of a divorce when he was stricken last spring, and he had fallen out of touch with friends and family members. The executive's doctor, unaware of the strife in his life, counseled him to change his diet, start exercising and quit smoking. He also prescribed drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure. It was sound advice, but in combing the medical literature, the patient discovered that he needed to do more. Studies suggested that his risk of dying within six months would be four times greater if he remained depressed and lonely. So he joined a support group and reordered his priorities, placing relationships at the top of the list instead of the bottom. His health has improved steadily since then, and so has his outlook on life. In fact he now describes his heart attack as the best thing that ever happened to him. "Yes, my arteries are more open," he says. "But even more important, I'm more open."

Medicine today focuses primarily on drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. Yet love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well. If a new medication had the same impact, failure to prescribe it would be malpractice. Connections with other people affect not only the quality of our lives but also our survival. Study after study find that people who feel lonely are many times more likely to get cardiovascular disease than those who have a strong sense of connection and community. I'm not aware of any other factor in medicine—not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery—that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death.

In part, this is because people who are lonely are more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors. Getting through the day becomes more important than living a long life when you have no one else to live for. As one patient told me, "I've got 20 friends in this pack of cigarettes. They're always there for me. You want to take away my 20 friends? What are you going to give me instead?" Other patients take refuge in food, alcohol or drugs: "When I feel lonely, I eat a lot of fat—it coats my nerves and numbs the pain." But loneliness is not just a barrier to fitness. Even when you eat right, exercise and avoid smoking, it increases your risk of early death.

Fortunately, love protects your heart in ways that we don't completely understand. In one study at Yale, men and women who felt the most loved and supported had substantially less blockage in their coronary arteries. Similarly, researchers from Case Western Reserve University studied almost 10,000 married men and found that those who answered "yes" to this simple question—"Does your wife show you her love?"—had significantly less angina (chest pain). And when researchers at Duke surveyed men and women with heart disease, those who were single and lacked confidants were three times as likely to have died after five years. In all three studies, the protective effects of love were independent of other risk factors.

Awareness is the first step in healing. When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it's easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as luxuries, we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our well-being and survival. We are hard-wired to help each other. Science is documenting the healing values of love, intimacy, community, compassion, forgiveness, altruism and service—values that are part of almost all spiritual traditions as well as many secular ones. Seen in this context, being unselfish may be the most self-serving approach to life, for it helps free both the giver and recipient from suffering, disease and premature death. Rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us survive at a time when an increasingly balkanized world so badly needs it.

Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute. His books include "Love and Survival" and "Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease." For more information, go to pmri.org or ornish.com.

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Deadly immunity

Deadly immunity

"Deadly immunity

When a study revealed that mercury in childhood vaccines may have caused autism in thousands of kids, the government rushed to conceal the data -- and to prevent parents from suing drug companies for their role in the epidemic.

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Salon.com, June 16, 2005

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Ga. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to 52 attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva, and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly 'embargoed.' There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left."

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Eric Lander, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - current treatments will be considered medieval

Eric Lander, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

Lander is a Rhodes scholar originally trained as a mathematician, and now quite possibly the country's leading molecular geneticist. He is the founder of one of the world's first and best genome-sequencing centers (the Whitehead Institute / MIT Center for Genome Research) and one of a small coterie of visionaries behind the Human Genome Project.

 

When Lander visualizes the future, one image comes to mind: scornful doctors. "When people tried to treat infectious disease 150 years ago, they had no clue what the cause was - namely that there were these nasty microorganisms that caused the disease," he says. "They were just shooting in the dark. That's what we still do." Doctors of the future will look on our medicine with "bemusement and horror," he says, just as we look at the use of leeches. "They'll site around, saying, 'Can you believe they gave poisons to people to kill their cancers?'" says Lander. "And that is the reward we'll get - we will be considered medieval."

 

 

Source: Newsweek, Special Edition, Your Health in the 21st Century, "The Shape of Things to Come', Summer 2005, p.44.

 

 

Meditation Becoming Part of Some Psychotherapy Practices

Meditation Becoming Part of Some Psychotherapy Practices

"Meditation Becoming Part of Some Psychotherapy Practices
By Christine Junge, U.S. Newswire, April 2005

Meditation is now being incorporated into psychotherapeutic practice and combined in surprising ways with other healing traditions, the April issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter reports.

The focused attention of meditation may change attitudes and behavior by decreasing preoccupation with one�s own suffering and fostering self-understanding. 'Professionals of both traditions are beginning to realize that the resemblance to the aims of psychotherapy is no accident,' says Harvard Mental Health Letter editor Dr. Michael Miller.

To the surprise of some, the psychotherapeutic tradition now taking meditation most seriously is cognitive behavioral therapy, the article reports. Behavioral therapy in its original form was concerned only with stimulus and response and tangible rewards and punishments. Eventually behavior therapists recognized the need to take account of thoughts and feelings, and they incorporated cognitive techniques into therapy. Now some therapists have gone further, merging cognitive techniques and meditation in something they call the 'third wave' of cognitive behavioral therapy.

Approaches to the new technique include dialectical behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. All three incorporate meditation and mindfulness into therapy in a slightly different way. In mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, for example, instead of struggling against depressive thoughts, patients are taught to notice when their mood begins to change, and to break the chain of depressive thinking by observing thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations dispassionately as they come and go.

The Harvard Mental Health Letter concludes that different types of psychotherapy are starting to borrow ideas and techniques from one another, and therapists may use several different approaches with a single patient. 'The introduction of meditation practice into cognitive behavioral therapy may represent a further stage in the historical evolution of psychotherapy,' says Dr. Miller."

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About 70 Percent of Older Adults Use Alternative Medicine

About 70 Percent of Older Adults Use Alternative Medicine

"ABOUT 70 PERCENT OF OLDER ADULTS USE ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE

By Professor Gong-Soog Hong, Ohio State University, April 9, 2005

Nearly three out of every four adults over age 50 use some kind of alternative medicine, such as acupuncture and herbal medicine, according to a new study.

While previous research has been limited, this appears to be a higher rate than occurs within the general population.

This study found that 71 percent of older adults used some form of alternative medicine in 2000. A study done in 2002, found a lower rate -- about 62 percent – among all adults.

The survey asked about the use of six types of alternative medicine: chiropractor, acupuncture, massage therapy, breathing exercises, herbal medicine, and meditation.

The most commonly used form of alternative medicine was chiropractor, which about 43 percent of respondents had used. Acupuncture was the least used.

Respondents were more likely to use alternative medicine if they said they were in poor health and if they reported more problems with daily activities, such as carrying groceries, eating or bathing.

Of those who described their health as poor, 65 percent said they used some form of alternative medicine they considered preventive or curative – a higher percentage than among any other group. And about 63 percent of respondents who said they were not satisfied with their health care also tried alternative therapies classified as preventive or curative.

“Older adults tend to have more chronic illnesses, and conventional medicine doesn’t always solve their problems,” Hong said.

The aches and pains that often come with age may also send more older adults to search for different kinds of treatments.

“Treatment of chronic pain is very difficult,” she said. “People who are living with pain will try everything possible to alleviate it. Those taking a holistic approach toward life may try something else such as alternative medicine.”

However, the exact reasons why these older adults used alternative medicine is not known from this research and needs further study, Hong said. The fact that those who were less satisfied with their health care were more likely to use alternative medicine does suggest some people have issues with the current state of conventional health care.

Hong said the medical establishment has begun studying alternative medicine and has begun to accept some forms of non-traditional medicine. But more study needs to be done before they are generally accepted."

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