Alternative medicine concentrates on a plethora of healing sources all aimed at using organic means to stimulate the immune system to repair itself.
While these two methods appear disparate and are frequently at war, perhaps we can all agree that they both have their place.
Alternative medicine should be used for all preventative measures; traditional medicine is superior when illness is traumatic and life threatening.
For instance, when planning to care for your family on a daily basis, alternative medicine is perfect. Go to the chiropractor for adjustment of the spinal flow or cranial-sacral massage to open blocked energy flows. Use whole foods that heal the body with their natural store of enzymes and alkalinity. Use herbal remedies such as teas, garlic, herbs, tea tree oil, barley green, ginger and oils to heal everyday ailments like colds, allergies, stomach upset and skin conditions.
Traditional medicine is invaluable in cases which call for trauma medicine, life saving surgery, antibiotics and diagnosing unknown pain.
The problem comes when there is an auto-immune disease that is treatable two entirely different ways by two different camps. Traditional medicine wants to treat cancer with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. All these methods can potentially add to the cancer: chemo causes severe damage to the immune system, surgery can spread cancer cells. Alternative medicine wants to treat cancer starting with the cause: change of diet, oxygenation, anti-parasitic herbs, prayer, and nutritional deficiency healing.
I have a friend whose 12 year old was recently diagnosed with leukemia - every parent's nightmare. What to do? I know this mother will be underwater while being onslaught with violently differing data. Then she will be fighting for her son's pain management while being pressed to make a decision as to a course of treatment.
I'm a boy scout - I like to be prepared. Let's all be prepared. There are two amazing books on the market. Choices in Healing by Michael Lerner is a brief, fact filled look at 23 traditional, alternative and integrative cancer therapies. The book is sensitive but clinical. The Definitive Guide to Cancer compiled by William Goldberg is a collection of over 20 doctors from traditional training who practice integrative medicine. A virtual encyclopedia of integrative doctors and their proven therapies.
"More often than not, cancer patients believe thatChoose alternative medicine as a lifestyle when all is well. Interview the traditional medicine doctors who attend your family. Don't expect a buy-in. Ask them if they can support you as you use herbs and food to keep your family well; ask them to support you on a celiac vegan diet. But respect the traditional medical world's unprecedented expertise at diagnosing disease and treating trauma.
their choices for therapy are dictated by the findings of pure biomedical
science. Cancer patients also tend to believe that biomedical science is a
monolith - a huge body of knowledge that dictates what an individual must do
with a specific kind of cancer - and that all the information generated by this
monolithic science is funneled into the brains of the first physicians they
consult. Netiher belief is accurate."
Choices in Healing
Michael Lerner
Participate in Your Own Healing.
What a great post and a good topic to discuss. While I agree that alternative treatment is great for preventative measures, it can also be used when traditional therapies have fallen short. I have asthma and allergies. I take all the traditional medications for them. While they help tremendously, they really only help manage a problem that was out of control for me. So now I'm trying an alternative allergy treatment called BAX 3000. I've only had one treatment, but am hopeful that along with traditional medicine, it will provide more relief for me. (If you want to ready about it, google BAX 3000 or go to www.biovedawellness.com.) My point is alternative medicine can sometimes be used as treatment, not just as prevention, when traditional therapies have falled short for chronic conditions.
ReplyDeleteJennifer
Great info jen. I will google BAX3000. Severe year round allergies started me on this path. After 10 years of reading alternative medicine theories I am now a celiac vegan with negligible seasonal allergies.
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