Alternative Medicine

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• Alternative Medicine

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Evangelical Healers

• Attract large followings
• Claim to possess a gift of miracle healing
• Some hold sincere beliefs, but others engage in
  clear-cut fraud

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History of Christian Science

• 1850- Phineas Parkhurst Quimby of Maine would
  place his hands on a sick patients head and
  abdomen and encourage supposed magnetic healing
  forces to flow through them
• Claimed diagnoses and cure resulted from the
  individuals faith in him
• Disease was error
• Health was truth

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Christian Science

• Illness is an illusion caused by faulty beliefs
• Prayer heals by replacing bad thoughts with good
  ones
• Practitioners work by trying to argue the sick
  thoughts out of the patients mind

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Intercessory Prayer

• Prayer by third parties on people who were
  unaware of the prayers
• Churchgoers tend to be healthier and live longer
  than non-churchgoers

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Psychic Surgery

• Mostly practice in the Phillipines
• Purport to penetrate the body with their bare
  hands without leaving a skin wound
• Blood appears when the skin is cut, and
  diseased organs are removed
• Illusion of surgery is created with the sleight
  of hand

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Faith Healing

• Many cures attributed to faith healing are
  actually cases of spontaneous remission
• Physicians recognize that faith can effect the
  condition of many sick people
• -the power of the mind

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Problems with faith healing

• Failure to screen out or refer people who need
  medical treatment
• Tendency to disparage medical care
• Failure to keep adequate records
• Lack of objective effort to evaluate what they do
• Lack of legal constraints

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Therapeutic Touch

• Using ones hands to pinpoint areas of pain,
  detect when someone is ill, reduce anxiety, and
  stimulate the sick persons recuperative powers
• centering a meditative process said to align
  the healer with the patients energy level
• assessment said to be performed by using ones
  hands to detect forces emanating from the patient
• unruffling the field said to involve sweeping
  stagnant energy downward to prepare for energy
  transfer
• Transfer of energy from a practitioner to a
  patient

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Kirlian Photography

• Reveals the bodys aura
• Object is placed on photographic paper or film in
  an apparatus that generates a high-voltage,
  low-amperage, high-frequency electric current
• Film is exposed to air glow that occurs when
  electrical discharges pass between the subject
  and apparatus through the photographic material

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Occult Practices

• occult refers to that which is mysterious,
  hidden, or obscure
• Involves divination, incantation, and magic
• Breeding ground for psychosis

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Spiritualism and the New Age

• Began in 1848 with Margaret and Kate Fox- claimed
  they were able to communicate with the dead
• spirits from beyond gave advice, made
  predictions, and consoled loved ones through a
  series of rapping noises
• channeling the communication of information to,
  or through, a live person from a nonphysical
  source, such as an angel, extraterrestrial, or
  the spirit of a former human

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Astrology

• Involves the use of a horoscope to determine the
  diseases and infirmities to which one is
  allegedly predisposed
• Celestial patterns at time of birth indicate
  potential illness
• Triggered by subsequent transit of the planets
  over sensitive areas of the natal chart
• The Barnum effect-peoples tendency to accept
  vague, ambiguous, and general statements as
  descriptive of their unique personality

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Biorhythms

• Behavior is determined by innate male and
  female rhythms of the body
• 3 cycles 23 day physical cycle, 28 day emotional
  cycle, and 33 day intellectual cycle
• Cycle begins at exact moment of birth and
  oscillates up and down with absolute precision
  throughout life

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Transcendental Meditation

• Meditator sits comfortably with eyes closed and
  mentally repeats a Sanskrit word or sound
  (mantra) for 15-20 minutes twice a day
• Stress is the basis of all illness

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Maharishi Ayur-Ved

• Attributes most bad luck and disease to demons,
  devils, and the influence of stars and planets
• Bodys functions are regulated by 3 irreducible
  physiological principles
• -doshas (vata, pitta, and kapha)
• Regulate body functions

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Yoga Therapy

• Produces unexcelled health, well-being, and
  mental serenity
• Philosophy postulates five sheaths of
  existence the physical body, the vital body, the
  mind, the higher intellect, and the abode of
  bliss (universal consciousness)
• Includes yogic breathing, meditation, other
  relaxation techniques, bending, stretching,
  holding various postures, dietary measures, and
  emotion culturing

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Visual Training

• Strengthens eyesight through series of exercises
  and the use of eyeglasses
• Exercise hand-eye coordination, watching a series
  of blinking lights, focusing on a string of
  objects, and sleeping in certain positions
• Can improve school and athletic performance,
  increase I.Q. and help overcome learning
  disabilities

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Other Alternative Practices

• There are more than 1000 alternative therapies
• New Age Journal reported almost 100 of their
  readers had used alternative health methods
• 97 would be willing to choose such methods for
  treatment of a potentially life-threatening
  illness

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Unscientific Medical Practices

• Physicians are rendering diagnoses and
  prescribing treatments considered invalid by the
  vast majority of physicians
• They feel alienated from scientific medical
  practices
• Promote their beliefs through publications,
  lectures, and talk show appearances

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Fad Diagnoses

• Based on beliefs that multiple symptoms are
  triggered by hypersensitivity to common foods and
  chemicals
• Patients are considered to by suffering from
  environmental illness, multiple chemical
  sensitivity, allergy to everything, or
  twentieth-century disease, which can mimic
  almost any other illness
• Potential stressors include almost everything
  that modern humans encounter

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Chelation Therapy

• Involves injection of disodium EDTA into the
  bloodstream
• Legitimate method for treating cases of lead
  poisoning
• Heavily promoted as an alternative to coronary
  bypass surgery
• No scientific evidence to demonstrate any benefits

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Holistic Medicine

• Used in scientific and nonscientific circles
• Scientific practitioners regard it as treatment
  of the whole patient
• Most use methods that are nonscientific, narrow
  in focus, and less likely to be individualized to
  fit their patients

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Supportive Organizations

• Alternative practitioners tend to be
  politically and emotionally supportive of one
  another
• Some groups publish journals and operate a
  specialty board
• International Academy of Preventive Medicine
  founded to create an atmosphere conductive to
  open discussion of preventive medicine practices
• American Holistic Medical Association
• American College of Advancement in Medicine
• Foundation for the Advancement of Innovative
  Medicine

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Medical Freedom Laws

• Prevent or make it difficult for their licensing
  boards to discipline practitioners who use a
  nonstandard treatment that does not directly
  threaten the life or health of the patient
• Prevents FDA from interfering with the sale and
  distribution of unproven drugs and devices
• Practitioners claim in increases individual
  freedom

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The NIH

• National Institute of Health
• Established to foster research into
  unconventional practices
• Promotes a large number of unscientific methods
  plus a few that have scientific support

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Consumer Tips

• Although some practitioners seem sincere in their
  beliefs, most are frauds
• Most make no effort to test the validity of what
  they do
• Consumers should be extremely cautious!

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References

• Barrett, Stephen. Consumer Health. A guide to
  Intelligent Decisions. McGraw-Hill. 7th ed.