The Most Natural of Remedies
The Most Natural of Remedies
From pacemakers to birth control pills, from kidney transplants to artificial hearts, America has an international reputation for making medical breakthroughs. But even as revolutionary medical techniques continue to make the headlines, another, quieter health revolution is happening in homes across the country. As conventional medicine becomes ever more complicated and costly, a growing number of people are turning to natural healing—simple, traditional, decidedly low-tech methods of preventing illness and solving everyday health problems.
Consider:
- In 1990, Americans made an estimated 425 million visits to alternative health practitioners—more than they made to primary care physicians.
- In 1992, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, established the Office of Alternative Medicine, which devotes more than $3 million a year to exploring unconventional healing techniques such as meditation, massage, vitamin therapy and herbal therapy.
- In 1993, Americans spent an estimated $1.5 billion on herbal remedies, including teas and supplements. While that’s a lot less than the $13.3 billion spent on over-the-counter drugs, it’s more than ten times the amount we spend on over-the-counter sleeping pills from grocery stores and drugstores.
More Familiar Than You Think
What’s going on here? What do homeopaths and nutritionists, massage therapists and Ayurvedic practitioners have to offer a society that boasts the most advanced medical technology in the world? Why are people flocking to health food stores, with their lotions and potions, and what keeps them going back for more?
“There has been a real shift in the way people think about their health,” says Andrew Weil, M.D., a teacher of alternative medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tuscon, founding director of the university’s Center for Integrative Medicine and a physician emphasizing natural and preventive medicine. “At the same time, they’re realizing that conventional medicine is expensive and sometimes dangerous—and not always effective.”
While the term alternative medicine may conjure up some pretty exotic images, many of these therapies are more familiar than you think. If you’ve ever massaged your temples to ease a headache, applied an ice pack to a sprained ankle or listened to your car radio to de-stress during a traffic jam, you’ve already practiced some simple natural healing techniques.
Most of us know we can bolster our diets with vitamin supplements or drink prune juice to avoid constipation. What we may not realize is that these are time-tested therapies and they’re usually cheaper, safer and better for what ails us than painkillers, laxatives or after-work cocktails.
Until a few years ago, herbal teas, those age-old remedies for everything from insomnia to morning sickness, were sold mainly in health food stores. Today, you’ll find seemingly endless varieties stacked next to the java and hot chocolate in your local supermarket. And a cosmetics company, Origins, uses aromatherapy oils in its Sensory Therapy line, which includes peppermint, wintergreen, cinnamon, licorice and patchouli among its ingredients.
Even mainstream doctors have begun to recommend natural, drugless therapies to treat both everyday complaints and serious illnesses. Dietary modification, for instance, has become the weapon of choice against a number of diseases that would have been treated mainly with prescription drugs a generation ago. “We know that many conditions are caused by the wrong diet and can be reversed by the right diet,” says Neal Barnard, M.D., president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in Washington, D.C., and author of Food for Life and other books on the healing aspects of food. “Heart disease, cancer, weight problems, arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure—they can all be treated to some degree with foods.”
Yoga, once dismissed as a hobby for hippies and double-jointed contortionists, has also been rediscovered. Actress/fitness guru Jane Fonda released a yoga workout video, and yogic breathing and relaxation techniques get a full chapter in the best-selling Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease.
The wide appeal of the Ornish program, which includes relaxation, meditation and emotional sharing in support groups as well as exercise and dietary changes, suggests that many people are ready for a more holistic approach to health.
“Western thought has always regarded the mind and body as separate entities,” says Dennis Gersten, M.D., publisher of Atlantis, a bi-monthly imagery newsletter, and a San Diego psychiatrist whose therapies include techniques such as guided imagery, nutritional counseling and meditation as well as medication. If needed, Dr. Gersten will refer patients for treatment with a homeo path, an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, an Ayurvedic practitioner or an orthopedic surgeon. “A holistic approach means recognizing that the mind and the spirit have a direct, powerful effect on how the body functions,” he says.
Natural Healing through the Ages
While natural therapies have been described as the wave of the future, they’re actually much older than Western treatments such as surgeries and antibiotics. Experts estimate that herbal remedies and Ayurveda, the traditional medicine of India, have been around for 5,000 years. Ancient Egyptians used fragrant oils in what may have been an early version of aromatherapy, and hydrotherapy was practiced in ancient Greece and Rome. And homeopathy, one of the newest techniques, is more than 200 years old.
Homeopathy, in fact, was as big as allopathy, the type of medicine practiced by conventional doctors, in the early nineteenth century, according to David Edelberg, M.D., an internist and medical director of the American Holistic Center/Chicago, one of the largest alternative treatment facilities in the country. He says that “there were dozens of ‘eclectic’ medical colleges in the nineteenth century, which taught an approach to medicine that ultimately became naturopathy,” a type of medicine still practiced today that uses a number of alternative techniques, including homeopathy, acupuncture, massage, hydrotherapy, nutritional counseling and herbal and vitamin therapies.
It wasn’t until the early twentieth century, the golden age of drug development, that Americans developed the attitude that good health was found in the medicine chest. “Technological medicine made some incredible advances in the first half of the century,” says Dr. Weil. In light of lifesaving discoveries such as penicillin and the Salk polio vaccine, it seemed only reasonable to assume that scientists would one day develop similar “wonder drugs” to wipe out cancer, heart disease and other dread diseases.
“It wasn’t long, though, before people realized that technology creates as many problems as it solves,” says Dr. Weil.
A prime example is the widespread use of antibiotics, which has given rise to strains of bacteria that are highly resistant to most drugs in the conventional arsenal, says Sheila Quinn, association manager of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, a Seattle-based organization that provides information on naturopathic medicine and referrals to naturopathic physicians. While antibiotics have saved millions of lives, they haven’t really solved problems such as tuberculosis, which is turning up in new forms that don’t respond to conventional therapies, Dr. Edelberg says.
“The naturopaths are really on to something,” says Dr. Edelberg. For example, instead of prescribing an antibiotic to wipe out an infection, a naturopathic physician might prescribe a combination of natural remedies to attack the infection but then will also try to determine which factors in the patient’s daily life—such as stress, poor nutrition or inadequate exercise—made him susceptible to the illness in the first place. Natural healers may use a combination of juices, vitamin and mineral supplements, dietary changes and other therapies to build up the immune system, the body’s natural defense against infection. And as the immune system becomes stronger, antibacterial and antiviral herbs and homeopathic preparations can be used to zero in on the infection.
Complementary Medicine
That’s not to say that alternative treatment should be a substitute for conventional medicine. Most alternative health practitioners believe that the best care involves considering all options, including conventional medicine. “Good holistic doctors recognize that regular medicine really is best in certain areas, especially emergency situations,” says Dr. Gersten. “Using an inhaler during an attack can save the life of someone with asthma. What it can’t do is improve the condition in the long term. That’s where other treatments come in.”
One area where alternative treatment is particularly helpful is the managing of stress, which has been implicated in a wide range of conditions, from allergies and skin problems to gastrointestinal disorders and heart disease. Meditation, sound therapy and touch therapies such as massage and reflexology offer simple, practical techniques to keep stress at bay.
In the United Kingdom, where natural techniques are better known and more widely used than in the United States, they’re called complementary therapies, which both conventional physicians and alternative practitioners seem to like. “In some ways it’s a better name,” says Dr. Edelberg. “It illustrates the proper place of these therapies: side by side with conventional medical treatment.”
And while some in the medical community have been slow to accept unconventional treatments, there are a number of indications that these attitudes are changing. “Physicians are intellectually curious,” says Dr. Edelberg. “We’ve had M.D.’s call and visit from all over the country, and many have wanted to rotate here to spend a few days talking to the practitioners.”
This willingness to consider alternative therapies is also beginning to spread to the health insurance industry. A few large carriers have started to experiment with covering alternative treatments. A pilot program at Mutual of Omaha, for instance, covers the Dean Ornish cardiac rehabilitation program, and Blue Cross of Washington has a policy that covers naturopathy and homeopathy. But no carrier has made a greater commitment to natural healing than the American Western Life Insurance Company of Foster City, California. The company’s Wellness plan covers naturopathic treatments, including Ayurveda, homeopathy, nutritional counseling, massage and physical therapy.
“We were looking for a cost containment mechanism, not a new philosophy,” says Lisa WolfKlain, an American Western vice-president who oversees the Wellness plan. But in researching ways to cut health care costs, American Western discovered naturopathy. Today, the company maintains a full-time Wellness Line, staffed by trained naturopathic doctors who answer clients’ health care questions.
Premiums for the Wellness plan are about 20 percent lower than for the company’s traditional plans, says WolfKlain, “because we believe very strongly that if people do take care of themselves, if they take preventive measures, it’s going to save us all a lot of money in the long run.”
While the Wellness plan has more than 2,000 subscribers, it’s offered in only five western states. For more information on coverage for alternative treatments, contact your insurance company.
Medicine for a New Century
Why the recent surge in interest? Rising health care costs may be a factor, says BeHage. “People are taking more control of their destinies as far as health is concerned,” he says. “They have to, because with the cost of health care, they can’t afford not to.”
At the same time, more and more Americans have been affected by newly discovered chronic degenerative diseases such as AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome, conditions that Western medicine can’t cure. “Conventional medicine doesn’t do all that well with chronic illnesses, which are definitely on the increase,” notes Dr. Edelberg. Many patients with chronic fatigue, arthritis or irritable bowel syndrome either aren’t helped by medication, he says, or experience such severe side effects that they stop treatment altogether.
“Conventional doctors often tell patients to learn to live with these problems, but for a 32-year-old woman with irritable bowel who doesn’t want to live with diarrhea and stomach cramps for the next half-century, that’s just not acceptable,” says Dr. Edelberg. “People are willing to try unconventional treatments because they want to get well.”
Many patients are also attracted to the alternative practitioner’s emphasis on treating the whole person—mind, body and spirit. Ayurvedic practitioners treat patients according to mind/body type, believing that true healing depends on balancing physical, mental and emotional influences. Flower remedy/essence therapy is chosen to even out emotional imbalances, which, therapists believe, are at the root of most physical problems. And holistic physicians such as Dr. Edelberg use intensive counseling to help patients find out whether aspects of their daily lives, such as job stress, marital problems, diet or sleeping habits, might be behind their symptoms.
In this age of managed care and impersonal group practices, patients find this individualized approach particularly appealing, says Dr. Gersten.
“It’s definitely a reaction to how depersonalized allopathic medicine has become,” says Dr. Gersten. “It wasn’t always this way. The family doctor of a century ago was really a holistic doctor. He knew three generations of the family, and he knew that the mother’s diabetes got worse when the teenager acted up. He saw the big picture. That’s something conventional medicine has definitely lost.”
Take Control of Your Health
Finally, whether they’re changing their diets or relaxing with meditation, patients who take the natural approach report feeling more in charge of their health.
This is one of the principal goals of natural healing, says WolfKlain. “The whole idea is to break the cycle of dependency, to get people well and keep them out of the doctor’s office when it’s not necessary. Many people go to the doctor with a victim mentality: ‘Here, I’m a body, take care of me.’ Instead, we want them to ask how they can take care of themselves.”
Alternative practitioners admit that this approach isn’t for everyone. “There are plenty of people who think ‘I don’t want to change my life. I don’t want to hear that my job is giving me a coronary. Just give me a pill for it,’ ” says Dr. Edelberg. “We send these patients back to conventional physicians, who will probably do just that.”
“Changing behavior is hard,” says Quinn. “Alternative practitioners are better at helping people change behavior because that’s what their training emphasizes and because they spend more time getting to know the patient-body, mind and spirit.”
