"Alternative Medicine" - Natural Health Care? - Reform?
Non-commercial, purely-educational facts you need for freedom of informed CHOICE -- not merely informed CONSENT.

Note -- If you're FOR one choice and against another, just remember: It may be FOR you, but it isn't FOR everybody; so don't "make a religion of it" (or a "crusade" or an "inquisition", either) by ASSUMING we all need the same things and have the same personal values. WE DON'T! Grant everyone else the same freedom of choice you cherish.
- Free E-Book - Continued -

The Truth About "Natural" Healing
- Ten Things You Should Know

2. The Issues --
Widespread Claims & Misconceptions

To more and more individuals with all kinds of maladies, ailments illness and disease, the idea of a natural "cure" with natural "medicine" sounds like an ideal therapy, or at least a more gentle and harmonious approach.

So, what IS all the fuss and furor, the debate, the controversial wrangling -- or sometimes, simply inner turmoil -- often over OTHER PEOPLE'S personal decisions? Another writer (and evidently keen observer), Dr. Daniel Callahan, introducing his BOOK REVIEW of Joel James Shuman's and Keith G. Meador's "Heal Thyself: Spirituality, Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity" (Oxford University Press, 2003 ) in the Summer 2004 Johns Hopkins University Press "Bulletin of the History of Medicine" (Volume 78, Number 2, pp. 523- 524) expressed it this way: "A few years ago I organized a research project on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). I was drawn to the topic not as a CAM supporter but because I had been intrigued by the HOSTILITY that many physicians feel toward it". Sadly, that describes the attitude to a tee in a great many cases. But, why?

There are a number of possible reasons (and many more "excuses") for skepticism, objection, even outright opposition; and if we're serious about "natural" healing, we'll most likely have to deal with them sooner or later -- preferably, without becoming antagonistic and "polarized" ourselves. (That would NOT be good therapy!)

To encourage insight and understanding instead, let's examine some of the chief objections, misconceptions - and realities:

"Aren't non-medical therapies awfully risky, even dangerous?"
"It isn't proven, scientific or "evidence-based" healing."
"Is it moral, ethical, legal?"

Interestingly, the first response from the average individual if you state that you've chosen an entirely NON-MEDICAL approach to a certain ailment is: "What else IS there?" If any OTHER business, industry, or profession had only HALF so successful a "monopoly" THEY would be "up to THEIR ears" in anti-trust litigation, wouldn't they?

The prevailing misconception held by most people -- IF they even know about the other healing professions -- is that a Chiropractor, Homeopath, Naturopath, Osteopath, Acupuncturist, or Herbalist is not a "real doctor". In most states of the U.S. however, many of these professionals must be licensed by a state board and therefore not only be college graduates, but also finish their profession's equivalent of "Med School". Futhermore, many of them reportedly spend more classroom time studying the anatomy and physiology of the human body than most medical students.

What the latter spend most of their time studying is described by several regular and medical dictionaries as well as the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) as "allopathic medicine".

Other terms that have been proposed include: conventional medicine, Western medicine, evidence-based medicine, clinical medicine, scientific medicine, regular medicine, mainstream medicine, standard medicine, orthodox medicine, and authoritarian medicine. And while "medicine" is broadly defined in most dictionaries as "the art of preventing or curing disease" or "the science concerned with disease in all its relations" (which actually defines "pathology" - Gr. "pathos" = suffering and "ology" or "logia" = study of), Stedman's Medical Dictionary quite logically, correctly and simply lists the actual current customary use of the word first: "(med-i-sin) A drug".

By that realistic definition, nearly all of the so called "alternative medicine" is actually alternative NON MEDICINE; and the term "allopathy" (al OP u thee -- from Gr. allos, other, and pathos, suffering) seems particurlarly insightful and foresightful to have been coined in the first half of the nineteenth century, in view of the current mandatory practice in some countries of listing on drug labels and in drug advertising the known side effects of the drug - the "other suffering" it causes. Could this be the real reason some in the medical profession dislike the term so much - it's implications of breaking that famous Hippocratic rule of healing: "First do no harm"?

This recalls the first major objection listed above.

Is It Safe?

Please Click Here To Continue
Some of the most misunderstood "facts of life" in "Western civilization" are not the kind we're uncomfortable with and consequently fail to teach the kids - they're the covered-up and glossed-over kind we don't know to teach the kids.
IF you're returning from "off-line" and the links don't work,
Please Click Here to "Refresh" the page.
Butting Heads, Are We?
 Alternative Medicene Issues?
Bighorn Sheep; Photo by Simon Phipps cc 2.0

NOT Your Typical Backyard Cookout!
 Hostility 
  to Alternative Medicine = Burning at the Stake?
Wernerswollen, Photobucket.com

Is This You?!
 Alternative 
  Medicine Education
Anatomy of the mediastinum Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator; C. Carl Jaffe, MD, cardiologist.

Click On Any Picture For More Detail
The Truth About "Natural" Healing -- Ten Things You Should Know

1. What IS It -- REALLY?
Scientific "Alternative Medicine"? OR Psychosomatic Occult Superstition?


2. The Issues --
Widespread Claims & Misconceptions

( THE PAGE YOU ARE NOW READING.)

3. Is It Safe?

4. Is It Scientific?

5. Is It Legal?

6. What's the REAL Problem?

7. Is It Enough? --
Growing Up REALLY Drug Free - A True Story


8. Is It For YOU?

9. How Does It Work? --
Unconventional Concepts of Illness & Health - You May or May Not Have Considered


10. How You Can Learn More
-- Sources & Resources


Text-only Version - for Printing the Above Pages
(Opens in a new window so you won't lose this navigation bar)

Appendix --
Other Frequently Asked Questions and Observations


Living Wills, Advance Medical Directives, etc.
Copyright 2007 LowTechConcepts.com - TERMS of COPYRIGHT - You may print (or otherwise reproduce) and distribute as many copies as you like (PLEASE REFERENCE the website URL: http://www.lowtechconcepts.com/ and include this Copyright Notice) but, you MAY NOT SELL them for profit, NOR ALTER ANY PART THEREOF AND TRY TO COPYRIGHT THE RESULT.
PLEASE NOTE!

NOTHING in these pages is intended to diagnose, treat or cure ANY illness or disease; nor to prescribe, endorse, OR EVEN RECOMMEND any substance, therapy or other health care choice. All material is provided as INFORMATION ONLY for the exclusive use of persons wishing to take greater PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for their body and health or those desiring to defend the reasonableness of doing so.

This work is privately funded, purely educational, non- commercial, non-political, non-religious, and strives to be as neutral and non-partisan in every other way as presenting facts and correcting error can possibly be. While based on sources believed by the editor to be reliable, all statements not directly quoted from and referenced to other sources should be considered merely one person's unorthodox opinion.

Thanks for visiting the
Truly-Natural-Health Information Center
provided as a "community service"
by
Low Tech Concepts.

Brief comments, questions and other observations - including constructive criticism - are welcome HERE . ( It's private, low-tech and non-commercial like the rest of these pages.)

You're also invited to add this link to your bookmarks/hot-list/favorite-list, so you can check back occasionally for additional information or features pertaining to natural health care and true health care reform.