Crisis and Change in Medicine

Modern conventional medicine has been in crisis for some 30 years with the inability to stem the growing avalanche of chronic diseases. According to an editorial in a prestigious medical journal in 1968 and later quoted by President Richard Nixon, "The Germ Theory of Disease and its use of drugs is ineffective in treating chronic diseases".

Conventional medicine’s failure to adapt to changing disease patterns reflects a frozen mind-set. Unable to change its mission or tactics after winning the war against diseases of poverty (infectious communicable diseases caused by nutritional deficiencies, germs and parasites), conventional medicine uses the same tactics with chronic lifestyle diseases that include heart, cancer, diabetes and kidney disease.

Chronic diseases are caused by a lifestyle of affluence as we over eat, under exercise and pollute our environment. We overly consume calories and eat processed foods without burning off the extra caloric intake, managing stress and protecting our environment from pollution.

Chronic diseases are caused by affluence as we over eat, under exercise and pollute the environment. Medical educators and most physicians continue to work with the 19th century model that was used to fight infectious disease; each disease was believed to have one cause (a pathogen) that could be destroyed with one drug—the magic bullet. Medicine remains locked into the old strategy that won the last war against acute diseases rather than dealing with the present challenge posed by chronic diseases that have multiple causes. Chronic diseases are largely preventable. Medical education fails to prepare physicians to treat patients outside the old model of acute disease warfare. Medical researchers continue to search for magic bullets for curing chronic illness with drugs. Drugs only suppress symptoms. The solutions reside in behavioral and institutional change more than with high-tech tools of drugs or surgery.

Our medical care system focuses on treating people after they become ill instead of promoting health. The Center for Practical Health Reform charges that our medical care system focuses on treating people after they become ill instead of promoting health. Waste and inefficiency abound from doctoring preventable chronic diseases after they arise with expensive drugs that primarily mask symptoms. Our medical care system swallows one out of every seven dollars in our economy and is consuming a larger share every year. Medical insurance policies are helpless to control escalating costs. Consumers are temporarily insulated from the costly consequences of their lifestyle choices as they clamor for unlimited services. None of the major parties shoulder responsibility for the waste and inefficiency they each create according to the Center for Practical Health Reform.

Simply using the medical care system now causes more deaths than heart disease according to a new study by several physicians. (See Death by Medicine by Gary Null et al., October 2003, at http://www.garynull.com/documents/iatrogenic/deathbymedicine/DeathByMedicine.pdf

In its aggressive efforts to fight disease, modern medicine kills patients by prescribing drugs with lethal adverse reactions, performing unnecessary surgery, spreading infections and making a wide-range of medical mistakes.

Some pioneering physicians are championing ‘integrative clinics’ offering both CAM and modern therapies. More consumers are seeking to enrich their health. Not only are most chronic diseases preventable, the skills involved in building health differ greatly from those used in fighting disease. Medical schools still largely prepare physicians to wage war against disease by teaching detection and management of disease with drugs and surgery rather than promoting healthy lifestyles and behavioral change. The curriculum focuses on the biochemistry of disease, rather than promoting health. America needs more health promoters, empowering patients in the collaborative work of enriching health and preventing disease. Waiting to treat chronic disease after the damage occurs is costly, often ineffective and sometimes fatal.

This book is about a cultural shift in America from doctoring disease to enriching health. The popularity of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) expresses this shift from a disease centric to a health centric model.

Why People Turn to Alternative Therapies

For over a decade, Maria (not her real name) doctored three chronic conditions with specialists until a dramatic adverse reaction from taking a new drug shocked her into the realization that prescription drugs were not improving her health. This became a turning point, causing Maria to explore more effective pathways than conventional medicine to enrich her health.

Maria, an energetic entrepreneur in good health, had owned and managed a gym where with 16 employees she taught gymnastics to thousands of students for a number of years. She had successfully balanced her business, marriage and parenting three children. In 1986 during pregnancy with her fourth child, her business was audited over a three-month period that caused great stress. Her health remained good through her pregnancy but three months after giving birth, Maria experienced an erosion of her health. The first symptom of allergies came during ragweed season. She could not breathe. She used Selvane and other over-the-counter medications. Maria declared:

This initial attack started a three-year process of trying to discover on my own what was causing the allergic reactions. After finding no relief, I went to an allergist and had the scratch test to identify the culprits. I was allergic to everything so I started allergy shots weekly at first and then monthly. The allergist assured me that I could become immunized to these things within three years but I took allergy shots for seven years.

Soon after the onset of allergic reactions, Maria started suffering from migraine headaches once or twice every month without connection to the menstrual cycle. At first, the headaches were not severe, but subsequently they ranged from bad to devastating. She explained:

Sometimes during a migraine, I would throw-up and lose my eyesight. I consulted a specialist who prescribed many different kinds of drugs. Nothing helped very much so he kept experimenting with all the latest drug updates.

The third chronic problem to erode her quality of life was a skin rash. Maria had never had skin problems before. She consulted a skin specialist who initially prescribed Acutane but Maria refused any more after one month because it had so many nasty side effects (drying her skin, mouth, eyes and joints). Tetracycline was prescribed along with many other types of antibiotics over a prolonged time period but they did nothing to clear her skin problems.

In 1998, her migraine specialist prescribed a new drug that caused an asthma attack, severely restricting Maria’s capacity to breathe. This adverse drug reaction triggered an avalanche of events that propelled Maria toward exploring alternative therapies. Maria was already getting allergy shots, taking an allergy medicine and Tetracycline for her skin rash. Not being able to breathe got her attention and prompted a return trip to her allergist. The allergist was upset with her for taking another medication that reacted with his treatment regimen. None of the three specialists ever communicated with one another or asked if she might be taking other medications. While Maria was reasonably knowledgeable, she had relied upon her medical experts for all the literature she had read about these maladies and how to treat them.

The allergist retested Maria’s response to a second scratch test after seven years of treatment. She was as allergic to those same things as she had been before! This event exposed the limits of doctoring symptoms and propelled her to explore a wider set of choices and to become an active steward of her own health. Maria recalled:

I left the doctor’s office dazed and disappointed with my misplaced trust in these treatments. As I was returning to the gym, I passed a chiropractic office adjoining my business. I pondered whether my many problems might be due to damaging my neck/spinal column from gymnastic stunts. I walked in, had an x-ray and filled out the most thorough 4-page intake I had ever seen! After examining the intake material and X-ray, he said, “You do not need my chiropractic skills because your spine is fine but you have Dysbiosis, a digestive tract disorder that is causing your symptoms. Your prolonged use of antibiotics has caused an imbalance of bacteria in your digestive tract, causing allergies, skin rash and other problems. This can be fixed but you must get off all your prescriptions and change your diet.” I was asked to adopt a new diet with no wheat, no soda pop, and limited dairy and to take several herbs. Within four months, all my allergies and migraine headaches were gone. This caused me to totally commit to natural health. However, three more years would pass before my skin would clear up with a more alkaline diet I adopted a year later.

Maria’s family moved to an adjoining state where she decided to manage a health food store where she could learn more about natural health. Maria recalled:

I met a man who was totally into diet. He helped me learn that my body was very acidic and that foods should be selected and balanced in terms of alkalinity/acidity. I wanted to learn more about the chemistry of foods to improve my skin and enrich my health. He requested that I commit to the discipline and only eat within strict guidelines. I agreed to the regimen. He taught me to select foods by these criteria and to start out the day with a glass of water with squeezed lemon juice, pure honey and organic natural vinegar (with the mother in it). I learned how to lower my acidic levels with different types of foods. This new set of guidelines cleared up my skin, helped me grow great fingernails and significantly enriched my level of health

Food continues to be Maria’s primary strategy for maintaining health now that her health has returned fully. As she expressed it:

Good health does not primarily depend on a pharmaceutical pill or even natural supplements but on food itself.

She regards food as the most important key to health. Maria lives out the ancient wisdom as taught by the Greek physician, Hipprocrates who asserted, “Let food be your medicine.”Maria’s exploration of pathways for enriching health with complementary and alternative therapies is not unusual. An adverse drug reaction was her turning point but for others, the turning point may be to avoid the intrusive and toxic therapies of conventional medicine or the failure of the conventional medical therapies to treat chronic illness effectively. For others, it is the positive appeal of promoting health, becoming more engaged in one’s own health and/or the gentler methods of alternative therapies.