On being "Alternative.."

In the world of holistic medicine..we have been trying to stay away from the moniker Alternative Medicine. There is an acknowledged movement to be called Complimentary Medicine. For one we don’t want to threaten the established medicine. We want to work together with them. The drug companies and probably the AMA do see us as a threat to their profits.Big companies have been buying up many of the supplement companies. There is a lot of energy toward making supplements regulated, illegal or tightly regulated, so only a physician can prescribe them.

People love my kind of medicine for many reasons.It’s effective, cheap, noninvasive, little or few side effects ( if prescribed correctly). We actually listen and touch patients..We hear the whole story and can think holistically rather than reductionist and specialized. Our medicine is personalized..allopathic medicine is headed that way with gene therapy and better understanding of people’s genetic make up.

It’s funny but I don’t think of myself or my ideas as alternative, more so, forefront, maybe innovative and in some ways very traditional.

People come to me for three reasons: they have tried everything else when nothing has worked. They are holistic minded and don’t want drugs or surgery. They have been referred to me by friends, family or colleagues after having great results. Sometimes what I do is damage control for what has already been done to people with allopathic medicine.

I like to think that what I do needs to be incorporated into the regular allopathic model because it is such a good low tech way to start with so many conditions and it could save so much money and actually help people.

Although I like to think of myself as an outside the box thinker ..I don’t want to see myself as an outsider, rather an Insider... someone who has connections to and practices some of what is the best of the new amazing medicine out there...also just serving the grass roots as we push toward more humane medicine and better treatments..