On Monday, March 18, 2024, I wrote
an article entitled:
“Which Area in Health Care is Most
Important: Nutrition or Medicine” here in this link:
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2024/03/which-area-in-health-care-is-most.html
Today, we shall have a brief
comparison between conventional allopathic medicine and naturopathic medicine.
Which would be the better system of medicine?
Let’s have a very brief
run through.
I think both systems have their
strengths and weaknesses. Conventional allopathic medicine that depends heavily
on drug-based treatment and surgeries fare very poorly for chronic disorders
such as diabetes, cardiovascular, metabolic, renal, stroke, etc. But there are
very good in managing acute diseases such as heavy infections where the use of
a wide range of antibiotics, antiviral drugs are very lifesaving or in
emergency medicine where powerful, short-acting drugs and other immediate
interventions such as the establishment of hemodynamic, airways, circulations
including surgery in trauma cases are very crucial. But conventional drug-based
fare extremely badly for disorders due to lifestyles such as overeating and
excessive nutrition, overweight and obesity, smoking, stress-related disorders
such as unnecessary anger, chronic exposure to a harmless environment,
occupational diseases that finally lead to chronic disorders. No chemical-based
drug can cure all these lifestyle diseases, and hospitals are crowded with all
these patients for follow-up for the same medication that never cured them but
just to control the disease. They will be given the same drugs over and over
again with each follow till the maximum dosage is reached, before augmenting
them with similar agents, or given an alternative drug to achieve better
therapeutic outcome. This leads to other linked diseases for which other drugs
would be needed till more and more drugs are added till the patient finally
dies of chronic drug poisoning, of the multiple-link diseases itself because
the root causes were never treated except the patients relies just on
medication. I think for these chronic disorders natural or naturopathic
medicine where the root causes of t diseases are addressed through lifestyle
and dietary modification is the medicine of choice definitely because the body
is programmed to heal itself when insulted or injured.
Conventional allopathic medicine,
also known simply as allopathic medicine or Western medicine, is the mainstream
medical system practiced by medical doctors (MDs) and Doctor of Osteopathic
Medicine (DOs). It relies heavily on evidence-based practices, pharmaceutical
interventions, surgeries, and other conventional medical treatments to
diagnose, treat, and manage diseases and health conditions. Allopathic medicine
is grounded in scientific research, clinical trials, and the principles of
biomedical science.
Naturopathic medicine, on the other
hand, is a holistic approach to healthcare that emphasizes the body's inherent
ability to heal itself through natural therapies and preventive care.
Naturopathic doctors (NDs) integrate traditional healing practices with modern
medical science, focusing on treating the root cause of illness rather than
just managing symptoms. Naturopathic treatments may include dietary and
lifestyle changes, herbal medicine, acupuncture, homeopathy, physical medicine,
and other natural therapies.
As for which system of medicine is
"better," it largely depends on the individual's perspective, health
needs, and preferences. Allopathic medicine is often preferred for acute and
emergency care, as well as for conditions that require advanced medical
interventions such as surgeries and pharmaceutical drugs. Naturopathic medicine
is favoured by those seeking a more holistic and natural approach to health and
wellness, emphasizing prevention and lifestyle modifications.
In terms of recognition and
licensure, allopathic medicine is widely recognized and regulated in most
countries, and medical doctors must obtain a license to practice. Naturopathic
medicine is also gaining recognition in many regions, and in some places,
naturopathic doctors are required to be licensed to practice. However, the
licensure requirements for naturopathic doctors vary significantly depending on
the jurisdiction.
The subjects taught in allopathic
medical schools typically include anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology,
biochemistry, microbiology, clinical medicine, and various specialties such as
surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics/gynaecology, etc. The length of study in
allopathic medical schools varies by country but typically ranges from four to
six years.
Naturopathic medical education too
covers all the same foundational medical sciences as allopathic medicine but
also includes coursework in holistic modalities such as nutrition, botanical
medicine, homeopathy, acupuncture, counselling, and lifestyle counselling.
Naturopathic medical programs usually require four to five years of study, similar to
allopathic medical schools. Both are at par with each other except in
conventional allopathic medicine uses drug-based pharmaceuticals, whereas in
naturopathic medicine more natural therapeutic modalities are utilized similar
to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates used.
Some reputable universities or
colleges where naturopathic medicine is taught include:
- Bastyr University (Seattle, Washington, USA)
- National University of Natural Medicine (Portland,
Oregon, USA)
- Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (Toronto,
Ontario, Canada)
- Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine &
Health Sciences (Tempe, Arizona, USA)
- Boucher Institute of Naturopathic Medicine (New
Westminster, British Columbia, Canada)
These institutions offer accredited
naturopathic medical programs that prepare students for licensure and practice
as naturopathic doctors.
There are many other universities
and colleges in other parts of the world such as those in Europe, UK, Germany,
Australia, etc that offers structured 4 – 5 years courses in naturopathic medicine
Naturopathy practice is based on the
recognition that the body possesses an inherent ability to heal itself. Cuts or
wounds that heal, fractured bonds mend, invasive microorganisms are overcome,
and so, naturopathic doctors believe, the healthily functioning body is
capable of maintaining a harmonious existence with its environment. This state
of equilibrium is subject to certain natural laws, the deviation from which
result in disease, and the methods used by naturopathic doctors to overcome
disease are those designed to restore and promote the body’s own functional
ability. Yet, in spite of a practical approach which has made it one of the
principal ‘alternative’ systems of medical care, naturopathic medicine has a
great deal in common with conventional allopathic medicine and it would be
misleading to suggest that they are mutually antagonistic simply because their
views of health and disease do not coincide precisely.
Many naturopathic recommendations
of the past have received scientific verification, or at least have become more
acceptable in recent years. The use of fasting and other forms of dietary
control, the inclusion of fibre, the avoidance of refined carbohydrates, the
teaching of relaxation and meditation techniques, are all part of traditional
naturopathic practice which has more recently attracted greater interest among
the medical profession.
Naturopathic medicine, according to
the manifesto of the British Naturopathic and Osteopathic Association, is ‘a
system of treatment which recognizes the existence of a vital curative force
within the body.’ This means not simply the action of, for example, prothrombin
and blood platelets in healing a wound, or of the leukocytes in fighting
infection, but a less tangible quality unique to each individual and to some
extent depending on hereditary factors, constitution, and acquired
characteristics. It is often referred to as the ‘vital force’ although
biologists have not yet succeeded in defining it.
The concept of vitalism underlies
all natural therapies and implies that the ability to withstand disease is
directly proportional to the capacity for function of the organism. The healthy
body will have greater resistance to disease, or at least the ability to
restore itself to normality if it does become unwell. But the manifestation of
disease is also regarded as an indication of the body ‘s vital response and not
simply the inevitable outcome of infection by pathogenic bacteria or viruses.
Furthermore, the ability to undergo an acute illness is a characteristic of the
healthy individual - one in whom the vital defensive mechanisms can operate
effectively. Measles, mumps, chickenpox, and other common childhood fevers are
generally regarded as normal necessities to the development of immunity for
adult life. Naturopathic doctors also regard cold, influenza, or occasional
diarrhoea, as serving a normalizing process - the response of a fundamentally
healthy body, if they do not occur with undue frequency.
Health is, therefore, more than the
absence of disease. It is not, as our modern culture has come to suppose,
synonymous with hygiene; on the contrary, sterility and the negation of life
and health implies the more positive attributes of a biological dynamism. The
World Health Organization (WHO), in drafting its constitution, sought a
definition which would convey the need of every person to enjoy the ability to
take advantage of their potential for vigour and happiness. Health, according
to WHO 'is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not
merely the absence of disease or infirmity.' its declared goal of 'health for
all by the year 2000 is, perhaps, unrealistic in terms of that definition. We
are already at the time of this writing in April 2024 and health for all is far
from real even before or after the Covid-19 pandemic. We can hardly expect to
eradicate all disease and infirmity. In fact, their incidence is
increasing due to our lifestyles and aging population.
Naturopathy is based on the
recognition that the body possesses not only a natural ability to resist
disease but inherent mechanisms of recovery and self-regulation. the Canadian
physiologist, W.B. Cannon coined the term 'homeostasis’ (Gr. Omoios, like and
stasis, standing) to describe the state of equilibrium which living systems
maintain when in normal health, and explained some of the mechanisms by which
the body responds to agents which threaten its normally steady state.
In practice naturopathic doctors
employ various physical and biological stimuli to activate and potentiate
homoeostatic mechanisms. they will generally use those modalities which are
compatible with the vital curative activities of the body. This means using
only agents upon which life depends, and more or less as they are found in
nature, such as fresh air, water, sunlight, relaxation, exercise, and dietetic
modification. Many naturopathic doctors use other techniques, such as
herbalism, and acupuncture, but these may properly be regarded as
supplementary.
Most of the basic applications act
in a very general way on the whole body and this is an important distinction
from the therapeutic techniques of conventional medicine. Modern medicine uses
a specific and analytical approach to disease. the elements of an illness, such
as fever, pain, its location, the blood changes, are categorized to arrive at a
specific diagnosis for which there will often be a specific treatment normally
with drugs. The disorder will usually be localized to one system or part of the
body. It endeavours to reduce the components of disturbed physiology to a
definable and quantitative level called the reductionist approach. The
biochemical changes in the membranes of an arthritic joint for example, are
closely studied, and treatment may be based on some chemical or mechanical
intervention to modify the inflammatory process. In other words, a disease, or
its symptoms, is confronted by therapeutic action.
Naturopathic medicine attaches
importance to the examination of systems and relies, to some extent, on the
same understanding of the disease, but its therapeutic action is not confined
to the part or function which is disturbed. A broader spectrum of the bodily is
treated in almost every case. the objective of the treatment is to bring the
diseased part of the body into harmony with the whole. This is attempted by
promoting the body's own defensive processes and employing measures which are
catalytic or constructive. This dichotomy between the reductionist (analytic)
approach of medicine and the more general, often intuitive, approach of natural
therapy may seem a major obstacle to an integrated health care system. Taken to
their extremes both conventional medicine and natural therapy have potential
disadvantages, if not dangers, to the patient who is dependent on their care.
The analytical approach of conventional allopathic medicine may become so
preoccupied with the intricacies of disease ads to lose a view of the whole
person.
The disadvantages of this are seen
in the growth of specialization within medicine so that the dermatologist
(example) may be inclined to disregard the underlying nutritional and emotional
factors of the skin condition with which he is faced. On the other hand, the
general approach of some natural therapists may become so bound in
philosophical dogma as to risk losing their comprehension of reality.
Fortunately, in the UK there are moves on both sides towards the middle road.
For instance, the Royal College of General Practitioners are actively
encouraging the revival of the "whole person" holistic approach in
medicine., and modern naturopathic medicine has already a more firmly
physiological orientation in managing disease conditions. Naturopathic medicine
endeavours to integrate the analytical and qualitative approach towards an
understanding of health and disease.
Vis Medicatrix Naturae is the
belief in the healing power of nature, and is the core belief of naturopathic
medicine, and indeed, all natural therapies unlike conventional allopathic
medicine that depends heavily on chemical drugs and pharmaceuticals that
conventional medical doctors believe can "cure and heal”.
Dr Hans Selye of Montreal who
postulated that the body responds to stress by a three-phase sequence which he
termed the General Adaptation Syndrome:
1. Alarm Stage: Pain
inflammation
2. Stage of
Resistance: symptom free3
3. Stage of
Exhaustion: collapse and degeneration
We shall not go into all these any
further else this short article comparing allopathic drug-based with
naturopathic, or body's own natural medicine would run into hundreds of
pages.
But what is needed to know is all
diseases go into the 3 stages where in the first stage symptoms normally are
presented as warning bells by the body itself that something injurious is
attacking the body. If that is not removed, the body will try to adapt and
tolerate the pathogenic agent whatever it is. If it persists, the body goes
into exhaustion trying to accommodate and then goes into the chronic stage of
the disease which is irreversible and incurable.
For instance, if a person who does
not smoke is given a cigarette to smoke for the first time. He will instantly
cough as the lungs are trying to get rid of the smoke. But if he persists, he
loses that cough reflex (State 2) and he loses those symptoms of coughing. If
he continues with cigarette smoking, he enters into the chronic stage of the
disease with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and lung cancer.
Conventional allopathic medicine seldom addresses the root causes but
prescribes chemical drugs to suppress the symptoms till the patient goes into
the chronic 3rd stage of the disease.
In contrast a naturopathic doctor
will go into the root causes of the disease and try to remove the root causes
so that the disease can reverse from Stage 2 to Stage 1 and if possible,
reverse it from the chronic Stage 3 to normalcy and health once again. There
are hundreds of examples I would like to explain and share, including sharing
them with doctors in conventional drug-based medicine, but it is far beyond the
scope of this very brief article to go into them.
Even for diabetes mellitus of both types – Type 1 and Type2 there are
specific foods that have shown to produce positive results on blood sugar
control. These foods include olives, soybeans, and other legumes, nuts,
artichoke, bitter gourd, garlic, Jerusalem artichokes, onions and mangoes.
These foods all have a low glycemic index and glycemic load and are high in
fiber. High chromium brewer’s yeast is also useful as it contains chromium in
the organic form of glucose tolerance factor (GTF) and together with niacin (nicotinamide,
is a form of vitamin B3) which is richly found in yeast has been shown to
cure diabetes permanently. There are at least over one dozen herbs and
botanical medicines that have the same permanent effect on diabetic patients.
Due to space and time-consuming to explain, I shall give just one example – ivy
gourd scientifically-called Coccina cordifolia. This is a perennial herb of the
cucumber family. This herb is used in Ayurvedic medicine by the Indians to
treat diabetes with additional choleretic, laxative, anti-inflammatory, and
demulcent properties. The leaves appear to have insulin-mimetic effects on
lipoprotein lipase, glucose-6-phosphatase, and other glycolytic enzymes. A
double-blind, placebo controlled RCT (randomised clinical trial) of 60
diabetics aged 35-60 years was studied with a treatment arm consisting of 1 g
ivy gourd extract for 90 days. The result demonstrated a statistically
significant decrease in fasting, postprandial blood glucose, and HbA1c levels
compared to placebo. Likewise, the same result was shown in bitter gourd where
patients were permanently cured of diabetes. All these are nutritional and
herbal medicines.
Unfortunately, medical doctors'
mind-set are influenced by the very powerful pharmaceutical companies only to
use their drug-based products. Other therapeutic modalities are never taught to
medical students during their training. Their mind-set has been firmly
glued and imprisoned by Big Pharma companies who taught them to use
anti-diabetic drugs like sulfonylureas (glipizide, glyburide, gliclazide,
glimepiride), meglitinides (repaglinide and nateglinide), biguanides
(metformin), thiazolidinediones (rosiglitazone, pioglitazone), and
α-Glucosidase inhibitors (acarbose, miglitol, voglibose), the most popular one
used in Malaysia is Metformin, a biguanide ‘to control’ the diabetes but not to
cure it so that the profit between the allopathic doctor and the pharmaceutical
companies continued to be reaped till the patient dies of complications, such
as cardiovascular, renal, stroke, amputation of the legs due to sepsis and
gangrene or other linked diseases.
Disease is manifested by signs and
symptoms; we clinicians normally call them as ‘presentations.’ A fever,
say due to an infection, is a symptom, and is not a disease. If you understand
physiology, a fever has a purpose, put there by the body to fight the infection
by mobilising the phagocytes, part of WBC where a blood count showed it is
raised, speed up the immunoglobulins, create a heated-up environment not
conductive to the infective agents…etc. It is purposely put there by Nature so
that the body can fight much faster and more efficiently towards recovery as
shown by numerous studies. It is hence not wise or ethical to suppress the
fever by using an antipyretic (anti-fever) drug like paracetamol unless it
extremely high, and for this a naturopathic doctor would prescribe sponging the
body with cool water instead of suppressing the fever with an antipyretic
agent. That is just one of the big differences between an allopathic and a
naturopathic system of medicine. Which system of medicine would you prefer?
There is a therapeutic modality
called “fever therapy”, “malaria-therapy” or “malarialization” once used in
allopathic medicine, but “fever therapy” is still used in natural therapy to
treat a number of conditions. But this term “fever therapy” is now replaced by
the term “hyperthermal therapy” and is used for treatment of cancers by current
conventional doctors alongside with other cancer treatments.
The same scenario for managing
hypertension, cancers, neurological disorders and all other chronic and
degenerative disorders where only chemical drugs are used – far, far too
lengthy and far too time-consuming for me to write and explain here.
As I already explained, disease is
in the three stages as explained by Dr Hans Seyle the very famous Canadian
physician. The first is the alarm stage where the body may ring the alarm bell
known as symptoms if the patient is lucky. Some diseases like diabetes,
hypertension and cancers do not show any signs or symptoms in the initial
stage.
If the root cause is not
addressed immediately, but instead suppressed by all these drugs, then the body
goes into the silent asymptomatic stage where the body continues to tolerate
the insult or injury. If this 2nd stage continues by silencing the
body with more or additional chemical drugs for other linked-disease or
diseases, the body just sinks irreversibly into the chronic stage of the
disorder(s). The patient never got cured but died together with the disease
and other linked diseases and all those drugs he was taking during all those
doctor’s ‘follow-up’ every 3 -6 months. We can clearly see the hospitals are
crowded by the same patients for follow-up being prescribed the same or
additional medicine because the case became worse as the root causes were never
addressed, but just given ‘medicines.’
When I was working, two medical
doctor colleagues of mine during our usual morning chat told me and other
medical colleagues that if they were sick, they never take all those drugs and
medicines. They will find other alternative ways of treating themselves. They
told us they only prescribe drugs for their patients, but not for themselves.
Dr Kenneth Walker, a surgeon and
philosopher wrote:
“The partnership between the doctor
and the chemist (drug manufacturer and pharmacist) is proving to be one of the
most profitable partnerships in the whole history of medicine”.
Any comments from readers,
especially from medical doctors and patients. I would be glad to hear your
views
Recommended for further reading:
1. Alternative Therapy
Naturopathic Medicine
by Dr Roger Newman Turner
2. Holistic Health
How to Understand and Use the Revolution in Medicine
by Dr Lawerence LeShan with a Forward by Carl Simonton MD
3. Body Power
The Secret of Self-Healing
by Dr Vernon Coleman MD
4. The Body Natural Instinct
Understanding Your Body’s Healing Ability
by Professor Dr Chang Jia Rui, MD
5. Teach Yourself Nutrition
by Professor John Yudkin MA MD PhD FRCP FRIC FIBiol
Emeritus Professor of Nutrition
University of London
Drugs Do Not Cure Disease
by Dr Yukie Niwa MD PhD
Director of Niwa Institute for Immunology
Tokyo
The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, 3rd Edition
by Dr Michael T. Murray, and Dr Joseph Pizzorno ND
The Encylopedia of Healing Foods
by Dr. Michael Murray ND, Dr Joseph Pizzorno and Lara Pizzorno
Integrative Medicine, Fourth Edition
Edited by Dr David Rakel MD with 130 Medical Specialists contributors with MDs, ND, DC, DO, MPH, and PhDs
The Meaning of True Health
by Prof Dr Chang Jia Rui. Edited and Translated by Dr Shu Shu Lu
Article written by
lim ju boo
No comments:
Post a Comment