Thursday, January 6, 2011

Cutting Edge Alternative Medicine - medicine

Alternative medicine is used to replace conventional step. Alternative medicine involves a spritual, religious, metaphysical, innovative healing approach.


Alternative medicine are almost 500 number. Name are few alternative medicine, phytotherapy, acupressure, behavior health, homeopathy, Chinese herbal medicine, medical massage therapy, cranio-sacral therapy, hypnosis, imaging guided chelation, acupuncture, folk, tribal-medicine use traditional, Christian Science, megavitamins, self-help groups, reiki, flower, pranic healing, reflexology, healing energy, East of Shiatsu Massage and Ayurvedic therapy.


It has many definitions. But, according to the National Center for Alternative Medicine - it is defined as a group of different class of health and medical practices that are not part of this conventional medicine. She also integrative medicine that is a combination of alternative and conventional treatment method. For example in conventional medicine prescription, Taï nice massage is proven to make wonders.


Conventional allopathic doctors are preferred in all cases of children's health problem. Alternative medicine has gained in popularity and earned the trust of many people and the same are called to different processing field where conventional medicine are not used as stimulating patient confidence in management of pain, stress reduction and a few preventative health treatments.


Many patients use alternative medicine and traditional therapies to complement each other. Alternative medicine is a holistic and prevention, which contributes to physical and psychological well-being a patient and tried to be preventive treatment used after symptoms appear.


Alternative medicine has gained in popularity in recent years. As the name suggests these become another form of treatment when the conventional method is ineffective. Especially for a curable disease and chronic pain medicines relieve pain immediately and relieve mental pressure and tension. Compared to conventional methods, medicines has little or no side effects. Believers of evil to alternative medicine regular conventional medicine. The difference between traditional and alternative medicine is Malay conventional medicine natural cure that alternative medicine with emphasis on the mind and body.


Alternative medicine followed by philosophies are: organization with little medicine and therapy can cure itself. Always a product should improve the bodies ability to cure. Better to prevent than cure. A general check up is performed periodically to keep an audit before everything awry. Agencies responding to any processing capacity is important then the treatment itself.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Alternative medicine - what is scientific and proven?

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It's time for conventional medical experts to prove the science behind their medicine by demonstrating successful, nontoxic, and affordable patient outcomes.


It's time to revisit the scientific method to deal with the complexities of alternative treatments.


The U.S. government has belatedly confirmed a fact that millions of Americans have known personally for decades - acupuncture works. A 12-member panel of "experts" informed the National Institutes of Health (NIH), its sponsor, that acupuncture is "clearly effective" for treating certain conditions, such as fibromyalgia, tennis elbow, pain following dental surgery, nausea during pregnancy, and nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy.


The panel was less persuaded that acupuncture is appropriate as the sole treatment for headaches, asthma, addiction, menstrual cramps, and others.


The NIH panel said that, "there are a number of cases" where acupuncture works. Since the treatment has fewer side effects and is less invasive than conventional treatments, "it is time to take it seriously" and "expand its use into conventional medicine."


These developments are naturally welcome, and the field of alternative medicine should, be pleased with this progressive step.


But underlying the NIH's endorsement and qualified "legitimization" of acupuncture is a deeper issue that must come to light- the presupposition so ingrained in our society as to be almost invisible to all but the most discerning eyes.


The presupposition is that these "experts" of medicine are entitled and qualified to pass judgment on the scientific and therapeutic merits of alternative medicine modalities.


They are not.


The matter hinges on the definition and scope of the term "scientific." The news is full of complaints by supposed medical experts that alternative medicine is not "scientific" and not "proven." Yet we never hear these experts take a moment out from their vituperations to examine the tenets and assumptions of their cherished scientific method to see if they are valid.


Again, they are not.


Medical historian Harris L. Coulter, Ph.D., author of the landmark four-volume history of Western medicine called Divided Legacy, first alerted me to a crucial, though unrecognized, distinction. The question we should ask is whether conventional medicine is scientific. Dr. Coulter argues convincingly that it is not.


Over the last 2,500 years, Western medicine has been divided by a powerful schism between two opposed ways of looking at physiology, health, and healing, says Dr. Coulter. What we now call conventional medicine (or allopathy) was once known as Rationalist medicine; alternative medicine, in Dr. Coulter's history, was called Empirical medicine. Rationalist medicine is based on reason and prevailing theory, while Empirical medicine is based on observed facts and real life experience - on what works.


Dr. Coulter makes some startling observations based on this distinction. Conventional medicine is alien, both in spirit and structure, to the scientific method of investigation, he says. Its concepts continually change with the latest breakthrough. Yesterday, it was germ theory; today, it's genetics; tomorrow, who knows?


With each changing fashion in medical thought, conventional medicine has to toss away its now outmoded orthodoxy and impose the new one, until it gets changed again. This is medicine based on abstract theory; the facts of the body must be contorted to conform to these theories or dismissed as irrelevant.


Doctors of this persuasion accept a dogma on faith and impose it on their patients, until it's proved wrong or dangerous by the next generation. They get carried away by abstract ideas and forget the living patients. As a result, the diagnosis is not directly connected to the remedy; the link is more a matter of guesswork than science. This approach, says Dr. Coulter, is "inherently imprecise, approximate, and unstable-it's a dogma of authority, not science." Even if an approach hardly works at all, it's kept on the books because the theory says it's good "science."


On the other hand, practitioners of Empirical, or alternative medicine, do their homework: they study the individual patients; determine all the contributing causes; note all the symptoms; and observe the results of treatment.


Homeopathy and Chinese medicine are prime examples of this approach. Both modalities may be added to because physicians in these fields and other alternative practices constantly seek new information based on their clinical experience.


This is the meaning of empirical: it's based on experience, then continually tested and refined - but not reinvented or discarded - through the doctor's daily practice with actual patients. For this reason, homeopathic remedies don't become outmoded; acupuncture treatment strategies don't become irrelevant.


Alternative medicine is proven every day in the clinical experience of physicians and patients. It was proven ten years ago and will remain proven ten years from now. According to Dr. Coulter, alternative medicine is more scientific in the truest sense than Western, so-called scientific medicine.


Sadly, what we see far too often in conventional medicine is a drug or procedure "proven" as effective and accepted by the FDA and other authoritative bodies only to be revoked a few years later when it's been proven to be toxic, malfunctioning, or deadly.


The conceit of conventional medicine and its "science" is that substances and procedures must pass the double-blind study to be proven effective. But is the double-blind method the most appropriate way to be scientific about alternative medicine? It is not.


The guidelines and boundaries of science must be revised to encompass the clinical subtlety and complexity revealed by alternative medicine. As a testing method, the double-blind study examines a single substance or procedure in isolated, controlled conditions and measures results against an inactive or empty procedure or substance (called a placebo) to be sure that no subjective factors get in the way. The approach is based on the assumption that single factors cause and reverse illness, and that these can be studied alone, out of context and in isolation.


The double-blind study, although taken without critical examination to be the gold standard of modern science, is actually misleading, even useless, when it is used to study alternative medicine. We know that no single factor causes anything nor is there a "magic bullet" capable of single-handedly reversing conditions. Multiple factors contribute to the emergence of an illness and multiple modalities must work together to produce healing.


Equally important is the understanding that this multiplicity of causes and cures takes place in individual patients, no two of whom are alike in psychology, family medical history, and biochemistry. Two men, both of whom are 35 and have similar flu symptoms, do not necessarily and automatically have the same health condition, nor should they receive the same treatment. They might, but you can't count on it.


The double-blind method is incapable of accommodating this degree of medical complexity and variation, yet these are physiological facts of life. Any approach claiming to be scientific which has to exclude this much empirical, real-life data from its study is clearly not true science.


In a profound sense, the double-blind method cannot prove alternative medicine is effective because it is not scientific enough. It is not broad and subtle and complex enough to encompass the clinical realities of alternative medicine.


If you depend on the double-blind study to validate alternative medicine, you will end up doubly blind about the reality of medicine.


Listen carefully the next time you hear medical "experts" whining that a substance or method has not been "scientifically" evaluated in a double-blind study and is therefore not yet "proven" effective. They're just trying to mislead and intimidate you. Ask them how much "scientific" proof underlies using chemotherapy and radiation for cancer or angioplasty for heart disease. The fact is, it's very little.


Try turning the situation around. Demand of the experts that they scientifically prove the efficacy of some of their cash cows, such as chemotherapy and radiation for cancer, angioplasty and bypass for heart disease, or hysterectomies for uterine problems. The efficacy hasn't been proven because it can't be proven.


There is no need whatsoever for practitioners and consumers of alternative medicine to wait like supplicants with hat in hand for the scientific "experts" of conventional medicine to dole out a few condescending scraps of official approval for alternative approaches.


Rather, discerning citizens should be demanding of these experts that they prove the science behind their medicine by demonstrating successful, nontoxic, and affordable patient outcomes. If they can't, these approaches should be rejected for being unscientific. After all, the proof is in the cure.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

History of alternative medicine

A new mode or rich ancient history?


You may be new to the use of alternative medicine or you perhaps already saw incredible benefits alternative medicine and medicine can bring to your life. But do you know how his practiced summer and where it originated? Allow me also to make a trip in the fascinating history of alternative medicine.


Alternative medicine history is interesting and has links with many different cultures. However, it is difficult to say exactly when Alternative Medicine starts, partly because until very recently, practices that fall under the term were traditional medical practices of their time. But if we go back in history and track multiple forms of healing are now labeled as alternative we find their origins date back to 5000 years.


Eastern philosophy to widely used alternative West


One of the oldest forms of alternative medicine can be traced throughout Chinese history. The ancient Chinese, the same way as alternative medicine is used today, founded their healing on the importance of body and spirit are in equilibrium. A large part of the philosophy of Chinese medicine is based on the principles Taoist and Buddhist and the belief that a person and their environment are closely linked. The principles widely known of yin and Yang come from Chinese medicine and are part of his practice. Yin and Yang says opposition forces are an integral part of the other, and how harmony within the body of unfolding, they must be in balance. When they are out of balance, disease occurs.


Chinese medicine is working on the restoration of balance in different ways, including the herbal medicine, acupuncture, breathing and movement (Tai - Chi and Qigong) and by diet also. Practitioner watched health patient and life in detail to determine where their force of life or Qi (pronounced Chi) was unbalanced. Various methods would then serve to restore the patient back to health. It is the effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine it is still a large part of modern health care in the East. It is not unusual for such "alternative" practices be used in hospitals, alongside the Western medicine.


Culture is a long history of alternative medicine is the India. Dates of Ayurvedic back as 6,000 years ago, Chinese medicine also has links with Buddhism. The Ayurveda comes from two Sanskrit words - Ayu meaning life and veda meaning knowledge of. This is a system of medicine that keeps a persons body, mind and spirit into harmony with nature to maintain good health.


When in Rome...


In the West, alternative medicine history dates back to 3000 years. Treatments such as hydrotherapy were popular with the Greeks and Romans. The ancient Greeks who were greatly influenced by the Babylonians and to a lesser extent by the India and China introduced the Botanicals in the West. Hippocrates (c. 460-377 BC), a Greek physician, commonly known as the father of medicine, practised medicine by plants.


In the middle ages, monks studied European grew medicinal plants and translated numerous works on the topic of Arabic. Folk healers also passed on their knowledge of healing through the mouth, the master of learning. Understanding of the power are different plants is rooted in many native civilizations and has allowed man to understand and to prosper in often difficult environments. When the Europeans settled in America, they found that the Indians had a thorough knowledge of the power of healing of their native plants. Similarly, Australia Aboriginals understood power plants in their environment.


Go forward in time to the 19th century, before the rise of Western medicine, as we now know doctors were more like naturopaths today. They take a detailed medical history, special attention to the lifestyle of the patient. They would then suggest ways to improve this by changes in diet, the environment and would also prescribe medicines.


How a bit of mold have tables on alternative medicine


Widespread use of alternative medicine in its various forms has decreased during the 20th century. Treatment of patients became more focused on the use of hospitals and modern medicine lead to widespread use of pharmaceutical medication to treat the disease. The discovery of penicillin and its development in a drug that could treat bacterial infections in the 1940s revolutionised health and alternative medicine has lost favor with most medical practitioners.


Although many doctors let go of what they considered be outdated treatments such as homeopathy, herbal and traditional Chinese medicine for many patients still sorting, especially when conventional medicine seems to work for them.


More is an alternative, now another choice for achieving better health


The result is that Alternative Medicine is growing. Practices such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, aromatherapy and healing are kept alive by practitioners who specialize in one of the form of treatment. Often the alternatives are used side by side with modern medical treatments, which led to solutions given complementary medicine term.


This brief history of alternative medicine that many practices used today are with us for thousands of years shows. Given the growing popularity of alternative to deal with health issues today medicine use, it is likely that these practices are of many others.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Detox Tips to Keep You Healthy This Cold & Flu Season

Cold and flu season is here, so it’s time to start taking the steps to keep your body protected.

Dr. Isaac Eliaz, M.D., M.S., L.Ac., is an author, lecturer, researcher, product formulator, and clinical practitioner in the field of integrative health.

Natural chelation and detoxification expert, Dr. Isaac Eliaz examines ways to enhance your body’s natural defenses and prevent germs from attacking. Eliaz is an expert on various ways of detoxification including effective detox diets, integrative supplement formulas, lifestyle modifications, and detoxification therapies.

Almost everything you encounter today, from tap water and car exhaust to non-organic produce is contaminated with heavy metals that can harm your body. The right detoxification techniques combined with smart lifestyle choices can lessen the toxic load on your system. Simple choices such as switching to organic or locally-grown produce, and using household products that contain fewer toxic chemicals and heavy metals will all contribute to a healthier body. Understanding the types of heavy metals that are toxic to your immune system as well as how they get into your system will help you make the changes needed to avoid them whenever possible.

“Inhalation is still the most common cause of exposure to mercury and there is little we can do about that,” says Eliaz. “We can only protect ourselves from mercury toxicity with appropriate lifestyle changes and supplements.” Limiting your exposure to these dangerous toxins is a step in the right direction, but Eliaz emphasizes the importance of ridding your body of what might already be lurking there through chelation and supplementation.

Chelation Supplements
Modified Citrus Pectin binds to heavy metals so they can be excreted from your body with even greater effectiveness than other forms of treatment. Most other chelation treatments simply loosen toxins from your tissues and dump them into your intestines, allowing heavy metals to be easily re-absorbed.

This limitation inspired Eliaz to find a way to block the re-absorption of heavy metals in the intestines so they could actually be fully excreted from the body. His research led him directly to alginates , which are naturally derived from the seaweed kelp, and similarly to MCP, efficiently trap and excrete heavy metals. These supplements are designed to cleanse the body and protect the immune system from developing harmful viruses and bacteria.

Gentle, yet powerful techniques to prevent the dreaded “healing crisis”
Safe and effective removal of heavy metals and toxins is an evolving field of medical practice, and with the highly sophisticated and strategic therapies now available, it is possible for everyone, including cancer and chronically ill patients, to detox with little or no side effects.

Eliaz extends his research and methodology to successfully help many of his own patients cleanse and detoxify without the risks associated with what is popularly known as a “healing crisis.” “The goal is to design a detoxification program that will enhance the body’s vitality, not deplete it,” says Eliaz.

For more information about Chelation or detoxification, search for “Chelation” in our Natural Solutions article archive.

Dr. Isaac Eliaz, M.D., M.S., L.Ac., is an author, lecturer, researcher, product formulator, and clinical practitioner in the field of integrative health. For more information about Dr. Eliaz, visit www.dreliaz.org.