Even after practicing modern scientific medicine and surgery for over 30 years I found a large number of facts about systems of medicine not quite clear to me. Hence I started digging and found a wealth of information as to how modern medicine developed and how recent it is. I am recounting my new knowledge here, which may also be useful to you.

Origin of Allopathy: Traditional medicine practiced in Europe in early 1800s was named Allopathic medicine by a German homeopathic physician , Dr Samuel Hahnemann in 1807 AD. He saw that  traditional medicine included practice of bloodletting, leeching, purging, and other similar procedures. Hahnemann was distressed about such practices that was neither doing much good to patients nor had they a lot of basis. Aside from that the principle of traditiona medicine is and was diagonally opposite to his homeopathy. Allopathic means treating symptoms and Hahnemann called it so because his homeopathy system did just the opposite and treated patients by prescribing remedies, which will create in the patient the symptoms of disease by giving him very small ultra diluted ingredient to cause disease itself.

Origin of Conventional Modern Medicine: Many practitioners of Modern system does not like the name “Allopathic” because it does not give true picture of what it represents these days. Hence the allopathic system is now called Conventional, Modern, Scientific or Evidence Based Medicine. It does many more things than just treating symptoms, as it did in Hahnemann’s days two hundred years ago; it has added prevention, vaccination, use of antibiotics and employing surgery. It is the scientific basis of conventional or modern medicine that allows replicating the results in different patients with similar conditions when treated with same medicines.

Are other systems Quackery? Not really: In late 1950s when we were medical students (of today’s conventional medicine, which is still loosely referred to as allopathic medicine), if someone talked about acupuncture,  yoga or manipulation of back, some of us will outright ridicule it when others would laugh at such procedures. That was because we were biased with the scientific or conventional medicine and were indoctrinated to think that only the evidence based system is correct and that every other system are quackery. This was despite the fact that until 200 years ago this conventional medicine did not even exist and most of the cultures in different countries had adopted their own systems of medicines and remedies, mostly herbal and empirical.

United Nation’s Guidelines: The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – article 34 on The right to the highest attainable standard of health E/C.12/2000/4 of 11 August 2000 states that  “Furthermore, obligations to respect include a State’s obligation to refrain from prohibiting or impeding traditional preventive care, healing practices and medicines, from marketing unsafe drugs and from applying coercive medical treatments, unless on an exceptional basis for the treatment of mental illness or the prevention and control of communicable diseases.”

What is Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM): In the last century Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) has found a place in the holistic treatment of many patients. In the USA the National Institute of Health, which is the umbrella organization for all health and medical issues, has The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) as its integral entity. The term Complementary and Alternative Medicine is generally used to describe practices used independently. When these are used in conjunction with Conventional or Modern medical system, it is called ‘Integrative’ or ‘Integrated Medicine’. It also includes preventive medicine and patient centered medicine. It may also include practices not normally referred to as medicine, such as using prayer, meditation, socializing, and recreation as therapies.

Classification of CAM: National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) classifies CAM therapies into five major groups:

1. Whole medical systems: These include Traditional Chinese medicine, Naturopathy, Homeopathy, and Ayurveda

2. Mind-body medicine: This is a holistic approach to health that explores the interconnection between the mind, body, and spirit. It works under the premise that the mind can affect bodily functions and symptoms.

3. Biology-based practices: These use substances found in nature such as herbs, foods, vitamins, and other natural substances.

4. Manipulative and body-based practices: These feature manipulation or movement of body parts, such as is done in chiropractic and osteopathic manipulation

5. Energy medicine: This is a domain that deals with verifiable energy fields like

a)      Biofield therapies that influence energy fields that surround and penetrate the body.

b)     Bioelectromagnetic-based therapies use verifiable electromagnetic fields.

CAM SUPPORTERS: There are many supporters of the CAM within modern medicine practitioners. They think that the Modern medicine has a space for CAM to be integrated in the treatment plan of many conditions. For example:

Cochrane Collaboration is a group of volunteers in many countries who review the effects of health care interventions tests and their biomedical randomized controlled trials.

Dr. Andrew T. Weil is a leading proponent of CAM. He even goes further and says that “integrative medicine” is not synonymous with complementary and alternative medicine. It has a far larger meaning and mission in that it calls for restoration of the focus of medicine on health and healing and emphasizes the centrality of the patient-physician relationship. He also believes that appropriate use of conventional and CAM methods allow patient participation, promotion of health as well as treatment of disease by natural, minimally-invasive methods.

CAM OPPONENTS:  Those who oppose CAM, calls it to be fake or quackery. For example;

The United States’ National Science Foundation has defined alternative medicine as “all treatments that have not been proven effective using scientific methods.”

Institute of Medicine (IOM): In a consensus report released in 2005, entitled Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States, IOM defined CAM as the non-dominant approach to medicine in a given culture and historical period.

UK Department of Health Has also adopted a similar definition for CAM^.

Wallace Sampson, an editor of “Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine” and a Stanford University professor of medicine write that CAM is the “propagation of the absurd” based on the example that alternative and complementary have been substituted for quackery, dubious and implausible and concerns that CAM tolerates contradiction without thorough reason and experiment.

Homeopathy seems to draw most negative comments on CAM. It is because the Homeopathy principles in which the ultra diluted remedy may not contain any active ingredient at all and for such remedies to have pharmacological effect  would violate fundamental principles of science.

Integrative, Complementary and Fringe Medicine: Integrative Medicine is the combination of the practices and methods of alternative/complementary medicine with conventional medicine. Its academic proponents sometimes recommend misleading patients by using known placebo treatments in order to achieve a placebo effect. However, a 2010 survey of family physicians found that 56% of respondents said they had used a placebo in clinical practice as well. Eighty-five percent of respondents believed placebos can have both psychological and physical benefits. A number of universities and hospitals have departments of integrative medicine. The opponents of CAM also call the traditional Chinese medicine like acupuncture as pseudoscience. And despite of such views, the Chinese traditional medicine is still flourishing as can be viewed from in this UTube video; Hongchi Xiao Beyond 2012 UTube, Tao Medicine, traditional Chinese medicine.

However, because of such doubts, the modern homeopaths have proposed that water has a memory that allows homeopathic preparations to work without any of the original substance; however, there are neither verified observations nor scientifically plausible physical mechanisms for such a phenomenon.

My take on CAM and my comments:

• I have done a small poll of my own and found that as many as 90% of people in the poll had used CAM by itself or along with modern medicine.
• Recent study in US amongst doctors and nurses shows as much as 66% of them uses CAM.
• No one should underrate the importance and efficacy of evidence based medicine.
• Proponents of CAM are also strong and many positive results are obtained by its use.
•  Infections, conditions that may benefit from surgery, for proper diagnosis and getting to the root of the condition scientific medicine must be used.
• Life style conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and life threatening conditions must be seen and diagnosed by scientific medical doctor.
• Patient may eventually choose the form of treatment method for themselves.
• CAM definitely has a place in the treatment of humans; after all many scientific medicines are the result of research of the other systems and then including the same in modern medicine.
• I wonder if water itself has some “magical” attributes, which does something that we need to understand by research to understand the benefit from the homeopathic remedies, since they all contain no active ingredient but only water or alcohol.
• It is apparent that people use CAM in all sorts of diseases from Diabetes, Heart diseases, Depression and even into cancer treatment.

Should you allow your children to have silver amalgam?

Decide it yourselves, here are some pertinent facts.

In this article:

•  Why is this discussion important?
•  Why the controversy?
•  Who is right?
•  My take on this subject

Introduction:

Filling started by some French, who brought it to the USA in 1930s. The filling, which has been named “silver filling”, has almost always been more than half mercury alloy. As per Wikipedia  article within the first decade it was deprecated by the American society of dental Surgeons (ASDS) and was declared malpractice because of its mercury content, which was known to be harmful. In the past 30 years or so the controversy is because there are some resin composites are available to replace the old mercury filling but Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and American Dental Association (ADA) are not budging from their position of supporting silver mercury filling and not recommending the new resin compound. The controversy continues after 150 years, when many patients remains either ignorant or confused.

Why is it important to common citizens?

Population of the world is coming to nearly seven billion humans. Everyone has 32 teeth. Many of them get affected by caries. Many need root canals and dental filling. Depending upon available facilities to treat the patients there are an awful lot of people who will have filling in their lives. The filling normally stays in the tooth for the rest of the life. Mercury is known to emit vapors in people using chewing tobacco or gums or suffering from teeth grinding. The vapors are inhaled and are toxic to brain and kidney. Its placement in teeth is too close to brain and nerves for comfort to many and hence raising an outcry. It is also important to some extent that silver amalgam is durable, cheaper and easy and hence perhaps has FDA and ADA support.

Yet another issue is the disposal of mercury amalgam at its removal or death of person, which adds mercury load of sewerages and environment, which is a concern. Additionally there may be some other issues due to filling in patients, including allergies and immunotoxicity.

Who is right?

As per another Wikipedia article, there has been much review of literatures without any definitive conclusion, though it seems perhaps slightly leaning against the filling. The WHO reports  that mercury from amalgam accounts for 5% of total mercury emissions and that when combined with waste mercury from laboratory and medical devices represents 53% of total mercury emissions. Use of mercury dental amalgam has been banned in Scandinavian countries. Other countries are looking into restricting its use.  Many health problems are alleged to be caused by amalgam are chronic illnesses, oral lesions, birth defects, mental disorders, autoimmune disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and multiple sclerosis.  Some dentists feel so strongly that they advise removal of mercury filling, which is advised to be done as per protocol, which is elaborate and expensive.

Some people feeling strongly about the mercury amalgam have sued FDA. In response in 2009 the FDA’s Ass. Comm. Randall Lutter and Charlie Brown negotiated and, for the first time, the FDA issued this frank and serious warning about amalgam on their website: “Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses.”

Dr Mercola is strong proponent of Consumers for Dental Choice founded by Charlie Brown, which are striving hard to take on FDA to ban mercury amalgam.

MY Take and Comments on the issue:

1. Despite the fact that silver mercury amalgam is used for over 150 years, there has not been any definitive study and adverse outcome. This does not mean though that three are not any risks.
2. I would personally not accept mercury amalgam to be used in my children or grand children because elf a long time that they have to live with it.
3. Almost a third to half of dental surgeons in USA has already stopped using mercury amalgam. But you need to ask to confirm. My Dental surgeon Dr Ayeez Lalji of Royal Dental   and of Anderson Dental Group  tells me that he has not been using mercury amalgam since 1992.
4. New composite resins are yet to be studies and its untoward effect, if any, needs to be brought to light.
5. I would not have my mercury filling removed and changed to new resins for myself because I feel I am past that age to have its benefits and that I have had its adverse effects by now, which has not been overtly many.
6. If there is any definitive indication of adverse effects of mercury amalgam, yes, I would have it removed or changed to resin.

Five lifestyle factors linked to lower Diabetes risk.

United States National Institute of Health (NIH) press release September 5, 2011; here is the summary:

A new analysis of data collected from more than 200,000 adults for 11 years has found that a combination of five healthy lifestyle factors is associated with a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The research team, led by Jared Reis, Ph.D., of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, found that

Each factor people incorporate into their lives may lower their diabetes risk by about 31 percent for men and 39 percent for women, while all five factors together may lower risk by about 80 percent.

The lifestyle factors the team examined were following:

Healthy diet,

Maintaining an optimal body weight,

Engaging in recommended amounts of physical activity,

Minimal alcohol use and

Not smoking.

The study suggests that being overweight or obese is the strongest lifestyle determinant for whether a person develops diabetes, but that those who are already overweight or obese may still be able to reduce their risk by adopting other healthy lifestyle factors.

The study also found that while family history of diabetes is strongly linked to the disease, people may be able to largely prevent or delay diabetes by leading a healthy lifestyle. In other words, said Reis, their risk may not be “predetermined” by genetics.

The study will be published in the September 6 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Reis, contact the NHLBI Office of Communications at 301-496-4236 or nhlbi_news@nhlbi.nih.gov.

My comments:

Well, the truth about Diabetes has been spoken by the ultimate authority of the US, the NIH. Happily though, all that has been identified and suggested by NIH is easy, simple, logical and appealing to common sense. Now the onus is on us to follow such a simple guide line and reduce the prevalence of diabetes to a large extent and/or delay it. Let me also add that if we can prevent or delay diabetes, a large portion of our disease load and its complications will also be reduced. This will also reduce incidences of heart diseases, strokes, depression, Alzheimer’s and even cancers, since without much doubt they all seem to be interconnected with diabetes.

I have been strong proponent of life style correction to prevent diseases. I am fairly certain after reading a lot of medical literature, that we invite many diseases by adopting wrong and faulty life styles, or accepting modern amenities and affluence in large doses. Examples of these, aside from those studied by NIH are:

Excessive calories intake,

High carbohydrate diet,

Additional fructose addition in our diet,

Avoidance of sun light causing Vit D deficiency,

Excessive radiation exposure,

Excessive chemicals around us and in our food,

Artificially fattened animal meat and poultry,

Sedentary life style

Inactivity promoting devices like motorized and electronic communication etc.

I would agree that we all would like to enjoy the fruits of our successes and adopt modern amenities. However, we must think twice before accepting almost anything that lead us to artificial and unnatural life style since these are bound to increase disease load in human beings in this and next generations.

WE NEED SIMPLE USE OF OUR COMMON SENSE TO PROMOTE HEALTH & PROTECTION FROM DISEASES

Today everyone in their middle age and keeping up to date with recent trends would know that our life styles have changed from hard working and rural to sedentary and urban, almost all over the world in the past century. This has become a source of worry and a reason to think ahead to find some amicable way for our survival with good health and good quality of life.

Let us see some facts as we know:

1. From the medical literature and general observation we all know that prevalence of conditions like obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, Alzheimer’s depression and cancer are on rise.
2. Of these, obesity, diabetes and heart diseases are so prevalent that they are reaching almost epidemic proportions.
3. All literature points to the fact that these diseases are increasing more and more as we change our life styles from rural to urban and from hard working to sedentary.
4. We know that these changes have started to occur with industrial revolution about 150 years ago. We have seen the disease load to follow after 20 to 30 years of our each change in life styles.
5. Fast food, excessive calorie diet, high fructose intake, low fat or no fat craze causing high Carb intake, which started middle of 1900s also was followed by increased Diabetes and obesity in 20 years or so.
6. Sedentary life style has been followed by all diseases mentioned above roughly similar 20 to 30 years lag period.
7. Less exposure to sun due to our new habit of staying in air conditioned spaces and working indoors causes Vit D deficiency; a high percentage of population of Western world suffers from this.Vit D deficiency is now touted to be the cause of almost all the diseases mentioned above.
8. We have allowed our poultry and meat to be mass produced by bovine growth hormones, antibiotic and genetically modified corn fed animals to fatten them up quickly.
9. We are deficient in essential fatty acids like omega 3 because of low quality fat produced in such animals and poultry.
10. Our agricultural products are now laden with chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides.
11. In our daily lives we use petrochemicals in massive quantities; these are all new to our human genes since they all came into existence sometime in 1900s.
12. Our factories are discharging toxic waste in rivers polluting fish with high PCBs and mercury contents, Talking about mercury, half our dentists are still using amalgams, called “silver” fillings, which contains toxic  mercury, which stays only a few inches from brain all our life. This is despite the fact that the FDA has banned use of mercury in animals; it is not banned for use humans in amalgams.
13. If we plot a graph, the prevalence of diseases is directly correlated with usage of all these unnatural food or chemical.
14. We have started using genetically modified foods during past century with little or no effort to find out its untoward effects on our health and life.
15. Add to this the impact of radiation, our new love to rule the world with. We seem to be heading towards a catastrophe to human lives and perhaps for planet also. Until about 1900 the radiation load on planet was all natural from cosmic rays and boron gas from radium. Presently the natural radiation is same, but we have some 19% additional “man made radiation” to deal with, used in medical field and nuclear reactors.

We need to use our natural common sense to recognize as to which of the modern facility and affluence we need. We also need to understand much is it hurting us and how can we keep on using the modernity, while at the same time we do not harm ourselves, and other lives on the planet. If we did not think about this proactively, it is quite possible that we are crossing the tipping point and a line of no return and that we might be endangering all the lives on the planet bringing them to extinction with some unforeseen accident.

We have several examples of such civilizations disappearing and we do not have any way of finding their accomplishments and why they got extinct. I intend to write on each of these 15 subjects in due course, though some of them are overlapping. These are being researched and will be presented to you soon.