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WSJ.com Forums :: View topic - 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 12:05 am Post subject: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (13 ratings) 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream ," by Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy and Andrew Weil. publication. for posting.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 2:36 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (3 ratings) Several years ago, Sharp Healthcare sponsored Dr.

Chopra to establish his mind/body integrative medicine in San Diego.

His services were available on a private basis to obtain purported preventative health benefits more economically than the costs of traditional medicine, avoiding the expenses of treating disease once it developed. At the same time, Sharp Healthcare maintained an HMO which would have greatly benefited financially by having its members maintain better health.

Interestingly, Dr.

Chopra's services were not incorporated into the HMO coverage.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 3:20 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (3 ratings) As always the authors forgot to mention the role of toxic chemicals in diseases. For a beginner start investigating with "Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children" by Philip Shabecoff and "The Secret History of the War on Cancer" Devra Davis.

I don't believe people will be able to meditate that stuff away. Karlheinz Ramm

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 5:48 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (11 ratings) Since when has "alternative" medicine come to include just about anything that comes under a healthy lifestyle? The quacks and charlatans who practice homeopathy, Aromatherapy and magnetotherapy are trying to pull the wool over our eyes by claiming that "plant-based diets, regular exercise, staying happy and stressing less" are "ALTERNATIVE" therapies. Newsflash: Modern medicine is about what works.

Alternative medicine is about everything that sounds good but cannot be proved. Exercise, less dietary cholesterol and relaxation techniques are mainstream.

Alternative medicine is not.

Homeopathy and Aromatherapy remain in the realm of voodoo hogwash.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:32 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (9 ratings) The next time I hope to read anything related to Mr.

Chopra is when he is announcing his intention to have his recently discovered heart disease treated with one of these "alternative treatments" rather than a specialist at Harvard. I eagerly await Mr.

Chopra's dissertation on the newly discovered relevance of phrenology.

He has a well established niche among a certain segment of the population, perhaps former Mother Jones' readers, just not sure of the value provided by placing him in this outlet.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:45 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (7 ratings) I would like to know from Mr Chopra how prostate cancer can be prevented with diet and good lifestyle?

What is the sciantific proof?

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 9:13 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (6 ratings) Chopra wants government to provide incentives for healthful living.

What can the government provide that feeling well and functioning at the highest level can not?

The question that is not asked by the author is why do people choose habits that are detrimental to their health.

Certainly they are not just waiting around for that government incentive. Also claimed is that our current health care system is geared toward existing diseases/conditions not prevention.

I find that acceptable in that it was not set up to protect people from themselves.

Health care should not mean taking away the freedom of choice as to how we live our lives. For the Chopra ideas to work citizens must want to live healthful lifestyles and those that want to most likely are already doing so. H Geary Cleveland

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 10:00 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (10 ratings) As a beneficiary of alternative medical treatments for over 30 years, I can attest to the efficacy of these methods.

Dr. Chopra hit the nail on the head when he said we don't have health care in the U.S.

We have disease care.

The common argument of those who dismiss the success of alternative medicine as nothing but the placebo effect is disingenuous.

If there is a placebo effect, then an individual can self-heal their own body - an 'alternative' phenomena that by itself legitimizes scientific study of non-traditional health care.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 10:31 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (5 ratings) I don't particularly like the use of the terms "alternative" and "holistic".

To me they imply something spiritual or supernatural, to be expounded by a self-designated expert with views that may be outside of views generally accepted by the medical community.

The ideas you stated of improving my health by adjusting my life-style were recommended to me by my medical doctor.

So I guess it is mainstream.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 10:44 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (9 ratings) As a medical anthropologist who studies the intersection of personal responsibility with cultural support, I was heartened to see this article by these esteemed experts.

During this dire economic crisis, we have no choice but to move forward with health care reform.

But I believe we have inspired the first round of individuals to make healthful lifesyle choices over the past 15 years with over 7,000 generated messages per week generated by Internet, news sources, and private and public health sectors.

That call for responsible self-care has been heard and integrated into daily activities by one in eight Americans who is motivated by the preventive health research, as mentioned in this article.

But we can't simply place the onus of responsibility on the shoulders of the individuals--not when the society-at-large is a minefield of illness-generating distractions.

What is needed now -- what will provide a tipping point of transformation for the larger public--is the type of cultural support that the tobacco-cessation movement received in the last two decades when it banned smoking from workplaces, public places, airplanes, restaurants, bars, and more.

That regulatory action did more to reduce statistics for death and disability from tobacco than any single action to date.

The state health statistics prove it without question.

We must apply that same successful thinking to the Big Four of Healthy Lifestyles: diet, exercise, stress management and social support.

As first glance, policymakers think it may be possible to regulate for those kinds of actions--but it's not, it just requires creative action and political will.

Corporate wellness programs, as outlined by the National Wellness Institute, have 30 years of solid data that reveal how incentives, both financial and social, can help people make healthy changes.

The Healthy Cities programs that put well-lighted walking trails, bike lanes, recreational facilities, farmer's markets and health fairs into place show turnarounds in their populations.

Corporations like Safeway and Johnson & Johnson with stellar wellness programs have abundant ideas to share with legislators and municipalities.

And most of all, the universal health care coverage models from Japan, Sweden, the UK, Canada, and Switzerland that provide a means for citizens to take part in effective, life-enhancing complementary, alternative and integrative medicine measures that help people prevent disease in the first place--all of those models should be examined.

The best strategies should be adopted here in the US.

Our "sick care" system is crippled with a fee-for-intervention structure that rewards costly medical interventions, generating the fourth and sixth causes of death in the US (inadvertent drug and hospital errors and infections).

The entire system is defined by and dominated by a broken insurance payor industry that is rife with excessive overhead, inappropriate profit, fragmentation and injustice.

As former President Bill Clinton said, "The tail of the dog--the insurance system in America--is wagging the dog...it's all backwards." Leaders in health economics, academics in health promotion research, integrative medicine practitioners, medical and nursing associations, and social medicine scientists are urging the Obama-Biden Transition team, and future Secretary Tom Daschle, to place universal coverage and preventive measures in your top five actions during the first 100 days.

Please look at the studies that indicate how billions could be saved by creating universal coverage.

Nothing could be more important than assuring our nation's health and longevity.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 11:15 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (8 ratings) We need a drastic change in our approach to health care research and practice.

Most clinical trials ought to be modified.

Government nutrition and food guidelines, and insurance reimbursement priorities and levels must change. The positions advocated by Chopra, Ornish, Roy and Weill are well-supported by scientific research.

Heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, and obesity are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle.

Even complex conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease and arthritis are improved by appropriate diet and lifestyle.

Anytime we add weight to a joint (e.g., a knee) we make it worse. Studies have shown that better diets (different from those currently recommended by many professional associations such as the American Heart Association and NIH) drastically reduce the risks of heart disease, abnormal lipids, and hypertension, far better than existing drugs, with no known side effects but likely desirable benefits such as increased life expectancy and increased brain function. I proposed in the late 70s that current recommendations for low fat diets were flawed and counterproductive.

I invented a blood test to accurately measure fatty acids in humans.

My data (early 80s) showed that most humans were not eating enough essential fats (particularly omega-3s) and were eating too many trans fats.

I presented my findings at many scientific meetings, lectures and NIH.

I repeatedly told government officials that the USDA Food Pyramid was flawed because it failed to emphasize the need for essential fats (see my published exchange with the USDA), and told NIH that its cholesterol programs and ATP plans were also flawed (see www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/cholesterol/index.htm ) because it failed to distinguish between essential and non essential fats. Dr.

Ornish and I published communications regarding the role of fat in health and disease.

My position was that humans need to eat essential fats.

Low fats diets being promoted sought to eliminate most fat, and in practice eliminated most essential fats.

Low fat diets use carbohydrates and proteins (the 3 main macronutrients are fats, carbohydrates and protein).

Humans convert extra calories from carbohydrates or protein into saturated and monounsaturated fats (fatty acids).

Thus, given = calories, a diet low in fat is equivalent to a diet high in saturated fat.

Based on biochemical principles, my research on fatty acids, my clinical experience and review of published data, I proposed that a diet very low in essential fats, was counterproductive, in the long run, for cardiovascular disease.

For example, patients on low fat diets should eat teaspons of soybean or flax seed oil (but not olive oil, rich in omega-6s but poor in omega-3s). With optimal diets we can cut health care costs dramatically, far more than with improved technology or bigger MRI or CAT machines, or greater hospitals.

We need to teach students about lifestyle (and we don’t need computers for that).

We need a President and cabinet members who give the example.

I see far too many overweight people at practically all conferences about nutrition and health. We need insurance coverage that emphasizes behavior modification such as weight loss, no smoking, and other practices that are accepted by practically all scientists.

Selections by President-elect Obama, such as CBO Director Dr.

Peter Orszag and Cass Sunstein, who have written about behavioral economics (mathematical psychology, shifting behavior towards health) are the first step to a drastic shifting of priorities.

We need to avoid drugs and treatments that provide trivial benefits.

We need to compare new drugs or treatments against the best behavior modification (optimal diets, lifestyle changes), not against a placebo that includes failed approaches (such as a diet known to contribute to cardiovascular disease and cancer). I created the models of the health care system to evaluate the costs and benefits of HMOs and evaluate them.

I found that HMOs, by optimizing diagnosis and treatment cut average length of hospital stay by 50%.

I also started an evaluation system for HMOs.

One of the key features of HMOs (unfortunately poorly implemented) was to be an emphasis on lifestyle modification.

It did not happen because of the way governement (and insurers) pay for care. We need the government to change reimbursement systems to discourage expensive treatments that provide trivial improvements in morbidity and mortality, and pay more for those that do.

It should allocate higher payment to primary care providers, and reward (with lower costs) individuals who take care of themselves.

We must eliminate the moral hazard whereby some individuals prefer to spend money on drugs or alcohol or other personal satisfaction instead of insurance because they can get it highly subsidized, or take reckless actions (such as eating and drinking too much) because catheterizations are fully covered. See www.essentialfats.com for published articles.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 11:28 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (13 ratings) An embarrassment to the journals standards.

This article flies in the face of any good science.

These cranks make enough money self-publishing their snake oil.

Why is it necessary to support them in mainstream journalism?

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 11:44 am Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (9 ratings) Every time I see Mr.

Chopra's name as an author, I am reminded of his dietary guidelines...

My question is how what should be my minimum daily consumption of my own urine?

Also will this become a mandated health treatment?

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 12:48 pm Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (7 ratings) I agree whole-heartedly with the assertions in this editorial;

I have witnessed the impact of lifestyle choices on health both to the negative and the positive.

I have but one question--since common sense alone tells us that this is correct, let alone the "arrival" of alternative medicine (how are healthy diet and exercise included in "alternative medicine?"), why is "serious" government funding necessary to establish this any further? There is an immediate answer to get it started--restructure health insurance to operate like auto or life insurance--good health discounts and other incentives just like good drivers and non-smokers get in those fields.

While you're educating and encouraging people to change their lives, which can be an uneven and unpredictable process, reward them financially as well, which can be just as valuable a benefit to many people, and more easily measured.

Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 12:49 pm Post subject: Re: 'Alternative' Medicine Is Mainstream (8 ratings) Integrative medicine is not an "alternative" but quite simply the best practice of medicine --as these distinguished doctors point out.

It's time to face reality and diversify our investment in health care to include approaches that will improve health and cut costs long term.

We need to do this both for the sake of our health and for the sake of our economy.

For more information on integrative health care, please sign up for the Health Outlook at www.health-journalist.com




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