justtopnotch-blog

I just read an article of Marilynn Marchione about natural cures. Her basic statement about the effectiveness of alternative medicine is simply “I believe”, or just the placebo effect. The editors of the article even underline this with an introductory comment, that 10 years and $ 2.5 billion in research have found no cures from alternative medicine.
Who’s statistics is this? Who made an account for the investments with positive outcome?
Let’s have a deeper look to those statements. If they wanted to stress the positive effect of placebos in medicine we all agree that they always had their share in any kind of medicine – modern “Western”, natural or alternative, or “traditional” indigenous medicine. Belief is a not to underestimate power of our mind. We are getting ill because of beliefs and we also get cured through beliefs. How many of our diseases are psychosomatic? There are no clear numbers about this, but even modern medicine is aware of the strong interrelation of behavioural aspects with diseases.
If we got ill by stress or because our mind “tricked us”, so we should be able to reverse this effect through influencing our mind. This could be through a placebo given by a doctor or shaman, or it can be done through (self)hypnosis or other psychological treatment. At least, the mentioned article confess that about one third of any treatment – even of carefully tested medicine – rely on the placebo effect!
The other statement that alternative medicines didn’t prove to cure looks like the propaganda of the pharmaceutical industry. Didn’t they always try to tell us that only their extensively tested chemical products are the only cure for any ailment? They forgot to tell us that many of their recipes and pills stem from research of traditional indigenous or natural remedies, applied for generations by shamans and natural healers all over the world. They just synthesized the active ingredients and reproduced the formula in their pills. And in this very moment the natural medicine gets banned or even demonised – to make us run to the Western doctor and the pharmacy instead of to the specialist for natural medicine and alternative treatments.
And what are the results of pharmaceutical treatments vs. alternative treatments? Nobody gives us exact figures. Many pills make disappear the symptoms. But did they cure on the long run? Did they cure the reason of the disease? What’s about the side effects (we often got not just one prescription but two or three together, in order to combat the secondary effects of the specific treatment)?
Why are going more and more patients for an alternative treatment? Here we close the circle: It’s because of the placebo effect. The “Western” pill didn’t work or the patient lost confidence in modern medicine – and is now looking for some treatment that takes into considerations his complete (holistic) situation and seeks for treatment of the root causes of the symptoms.
A recent study on patients´ preference for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM, as just an example of alternative medicine vs. Western Medicine) shows that consumers prefer TCM when uncertain about the cause of the illness and because the belief that a holistic medicine tolerates uncertainty better than Western Medicine. They also show lay beliefs that TCM offers an underlying cure – vs. symptom alleviation by Western Medicine.
Beliefs can move mountains. So there are cured illnesses like cancer and chronic illnesses with Western Medicine as well as with alternative treatments – and there are also reports about failures on both sides. Is it just a question of the available budget for PR of a specific product to tell which medicine is the right one? Shouldn’t it be the free decision of the patient which treatment to choose for his case?