Integrative medicine and its future

Integrative medicine and its future

NBC National News quoted the Washington Post in March 2000 about the FDA's concerns about mixing dietary supplements and conventional drugs. There have been concerns that millions of people are taking nutritional supplements (considered herbs, homeopathics, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes and some dietary products) and experiencing reactions when they mix these things with common and prescribed medications.

I have studied this phenomenon for over 20 years and know full well that these reactions are fairly common with traditional medications. The AMA is calling on the FDA to reverse its 1997 decision on dietary supplements.

Is this really the best approach?

Many universities across the country have closed their ethno-botany and botany laboratories, denying many with the talent in the field permission to help find new remedies and determine which plants have side effects when combined with other chemicals

A good example is the treatment of gout.

Medicines prescribed by conventional medicine are usually allopurinal or zyloprim and colchicine (which, by the way, is a homeopathic remedy made from the crocus bulb), which reduces the reaction that uric acid causes in the blood. Allopurinal and colchicine can be increased by a special diet and the elimination of some dietary supplements that may cause an increase in certain enzymes in the diet. Both medications can also cause serious side effects and toxicity when taken in high doses and/or for long periods of time.

Lack of certain nutrients can trigger a gout attack, people taking antibiotics can increase the risk of an attack, and a person's diet can certainly affect not only the severity of an attack but also the frequency of attacks.

There are also other reactions that need to be taken into account and that is that allopurinal and colchicine have a negative effect on the liver after 6 months of use, making it more difficult for these drugs to work effectively. Also, adding something supplement to the system, even a regular multivitamin, when the liver is already struggling to keep up with the demands of the system, can cause an adverse reaction to the liver, in part because the liver has to work harder to absorb the micronutrients contained in the multivitamin.

The balance between conventional medicine and alternative medicine is delicate. At the moment both schools of thought refuse to work together and the general public is the one to suffer.

For some who suffered from allergies when Seldane was prescribed, this was a very worrying problem. When taking Seldane, patients were not told that taking the drug along with certain micronutrients could be fatal, which has been the case in some cases in the United States.

In 1993, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article in which researchers estimated that up to 60 million people had participated in alternative medical care. A follow-up study to this one, appearing in a 1998 issue of JAMA, estimated that the number of visits to alternative health practitioners had increased by more than 47 percent between 1990 and 1997 and that spending on alternative medical services exceeded $21 billion in 1997.

In our small town, we had a family doctor who cared for the needs of the community. He was a wonderful man who always gave his time, energy and knowledge willingly. A week after he was diagnosed with stomach cancer, he called me for advice. I asked him why he would call me and ask for help. He told me that he had watched the patients he had diagnosed with the same disease die a slow, painful and miserable death, even while taking conventional medications. He said he knew the traditional medications and protocols weren't working, he had diagnosed cancer, informed patients, watched them die slowly and he wanted something different. I treated him for 9 months; The cancer hasn't progressed during this time, it hasn't gone away either, but it hasn't progressed. I asked him to do both treatments together, traditional and integrative, but he refused. He had a friend who was an oncologist and that friend eventually convinced him to do some clinical trials at some universities. In order to do this, the GP had to drop all other protocols he had been taking. They waited a few weeks for the nutrients to leave his body and then started him on a protocol called PP6 and thalidomide. A few days after the first treatment, he said to his closest friend: “I killed myself.” Within a few weeks he was completely unable to work. He died about 5 months later in great pain and agony.

Conventional medicine is not always to blame... A cancer patient in stage N was treated by both a conventional doctor and a naturopath. Because the patient was placed on prednisone, he developed edema. The alternative practitioner told the patient to stop taking the medication immediately and then left town on a business trip. A few days later I got a call, the patient was breathing heavily and he had fluid in his lungs. The masseur who called explained what had happened. I told her to call the man's primary care doctor immediately, the reduction of prednisone should not be stopped immediately without the patient suffering repercussions. The patient paid the ultimate price for the bridge between alternative and conventional medicine. There is so much that can be integrated into both schools of thought and treatment. These stories are the reason the public is turning to other methods of treatment, most using a combination which, as the previous story shows, can be harmful unless the healthcare provider has knowledge of both areas and an understanding of the chemical reactions that can occur.

It is always best to be responsible for your own health and treatment. No medical professional should be given total and complete control over another man's life. The need for knowledge is a necessity when deciding to integrate different treatment methods for the healthcare provider involved, it can mean the difference between life and death for a patient.