It's Not All Quackery

The use of alternative medicine has surged in the 1990s; in fact, Americans are now making more visits to alternative healers than to primary care medical doctors.

In 1997 an estimated 4 in 10 Americans used at least one alternative or "complementary" remedy; and among people 35 to 49 it was 5 in 10.  That's one-half. Caught between the medical doctors who claim that anything other than standard old medicine is quackery---"if they didn't learn it in medical school, it can't be true"---and the alternative healers who promote everything from aromatherapy to Zen---"if they learned it, it must work"---are, unfortunately, the ailing patients.

The best way to determine which therapies work---regardless of when and where they originated---is to apply scientific methods of research and analysis. The entire issue of the November 11, 1998 Journal of the American Medical Association, a bedrock traditional medical publication, was dedicated to studies of alternative therapies. Among the results published in the special JAMA issue were the following:

--Irritable bowel syndrome (parenthetically, a syndrome is a group of symptoms that, occurring together, indicate a particular abnormal condition): This unfortunately common set of symptoms that include abdominal pain, bloating, constipation and diarrhea, did respond to Chinese herbal formulations.

--Spinal manipulation by a chiropractor failed to alleviate tension-type headaches.

--Acupuncture proved ineffective in treating nerve pain due to infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); sadly, not any treatment has been shown to work.

--Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome who participated in an eight-week yoga program improved more than patients who only received a wrist splint.

--An ancient Chinese practice, moxibustion, used to reposition fetuses incorrectly oriented in the womb before birth, involves burning an herb near enough to the body so that the smoke stimulates particular acupuncture points. The report concluded that moxibustion both increased fetal movements and was effective in repositioning a significant number of fetuses who had been in a breech (feet-first) presentation in the womb.

--Overweight patients who took an herbal remedy, Garcinia cambogia, found in many commercial weight-loss products, were no more successful at shedding pounds than were those who took a placebo.

--Saw palmetto, a popular herbal remedy for symptoms caused by an enlarged prostate, is about as effective as the drug Proscar in relieving symptoms and increasing urine flow; and the herbal remedy had fewer adverse side effects.

JM: The point is, whether from "established" or "alternative" medicine, choose your treatments carefully and thoughtfully---that means, looking at the scientific research; and that means being guided alone by what the facts show, regardless of what you would wish, regardless of what someone just says. And looking at the data can be done easily and free on the Internet from the National Library of Medicine at http://www.nlm.nih.gov. It took, unfortunately, a mass exodus of patients from traditional doctor's offices to get the medical research community to take a serious look at less conventional, but often time-honored, therapies. It is hoped that this article represents a beginning: a willingness by the medical establishment to make a fair appraisal of therapies outside traditional medicine; and (as a consequence) a willingness by those in control of the research monies to allocate a fairer proportion of dollars to evaluate these non-traditional treatments.