Complementary and Alternative Medicine

I was watching an old edition of Frontline:World that I had on my DVR. The one about CIA rendition of terrorism suspects to other countries for torture... excuse me, I mean alternative means of interrogation.

Anyway, the next segment on this episode was about Ayurveda, a form of traditional Indian medicine. The reporter goes to an Indian Ayurvedic retreat with a frozen shoulder maybe, or maybe severe osteoarthritis of his shoulder. He'd been offered a shoulder replacement surgery by an orthopedic surgeon, but was trying to explore non-surgical remedies. His shoulder ailment was relatively severe, in that he didn't have enough movement in his shoulder to comb his hair.

So, anyway, he spends (I think) 2 weeks at this Ayurvedic spa/hospital getting his Doshes balanced with various noxious potions (judging by his descriptions), massages, anointings. Also he got daily shoulder exercises and daily shoulder massages.

Surprisingly (or not, really), his shoulder got better. At the end, he credits this to Ayurvedic medicine.

I'm not a believer in complementary and alternative medicine. At all.

Except, I am. Kind of. But not really.

Let me explain. I don't really believe in Doshes or in homeopathy and the memory of water, aligning chi, or any of that stuff. I'm not a big believer in the supernatural.

I think that Western medicine (hereafter known simply as medicine) is great at curing acute illnesses. Accupuncture/Ayurveda will never be widely promoted for curing tuberculosis or meningitis, or for healing traumatic injuries. What we don't learn in medical school is much about promoting and maintaining health. Western culture also doesn't promote a lifestyle conducive to health. Additionally, what used to be common sense with respect to health is no longer so common.

Many, many people don't have time to cook their own food on a regular basis due in part to work demands and also in part to long commutes. The average commute in the metropolitan area I live in is something like 45 minutes each way. That's 1.5 hours each day. So, if people could afford to live near where they worked, and had a 30 minute commute, that 60 minutes would be enough time to either cook dinner or to get the exercise they need that day. Or, if they lived a 20-30 minute walk away from work, they could just use that extra 45 minutes to cook dinner.

Additionally, most (almost all) of my patients live in the grocery desert known as the inner city (seriously, you can't buy produce within 6 miles of the hospital I work at!). So, they live on fast food. Church's chicken, McDonald's hamburgers, Wendy's, that sort of thing. And the hospital isn't helping much by having an expensive cafeteria with very limited hours, and making Wendy's the only food that's either available or affordable to most of their patients and employees. Is it any wonder we have so much hypertension, obesity, etc? I mean, a certain percentage of the population will always be hypertensive and/or obese and/or diabetic. It does seem though, that those with the genetic predisposition to those diseases who happen to live in the inner city and be poor don't really have a fighting chance.

So, back to the story. You take this reporter with a bad shoulder, feed him good food, let him rest, have him do daily exercises and get daily massages on this shoulder, and what do you get? It's basically intensive physical therapy, which we know works. Why don't we do this here? Because it takes a lot of time and money. The guy didn't continue with the exercises as he was told to do, and his shoulder got worse again. So, I don't think it was Ayurveda balancing his Doshes that fixed his shoulder. It was the rest and intensive physical therapy. What Ayurveda really offered him was wellness.

And what he failed to continue to do was maintain his wellness. So, although I don't think that people have Doshes that need balancing or chi that needs redirecting, I do think that some of these traditional systems of medicine may have a thing or two to say about maintaining wellness that we in western culture (particularly in the USA) seem to have forgotten along the way.

(Picture Credit)