As the Reader may know, a while back my friend, a internist, cooked up a scheme for us to open an Integrative Medicine Clinic together. This would be a clinic where we would prescribe herbs and nutritional supplements as often as we would prescribe medications, and where acupuncture and massage would be employed with as much frequency as, say, physical therapy.
So after months of planning and development, we opened about seven months ago. It’s been an interesting venture. One of my friends said that things would happen that we wouldn’t even imagine occurring, and that has turned out to be very true.
I studied folk medicine and beliefs in graduate school, but thought it had more to do with other cultures than my own. Yet, what I’ve learned these last few months is that, even in 21st century America, people are more influenced by their beliefs about health care than by any other influence. A current notion is that medical doctors don’t know anything about herbs and nutrition, even those who specialize in complementary medicine.
Many of our patients will listen to their esthetician or sales person in the supplement section before they’ll listen to us. We have studied botanicals, keep the latest references, stay abreast of the newest research, understand the pathophysiology, been through eons of school, and spent our considerable adult lives trying to help sick and well people, but somehow that only counts for so much.
Why is that? I go with the Curse of Marcus Welby theory. Patients are so used to takeanaspirinandcallmeinthemorning that it’s difficult to fathom that something else might be out there. The tall men who talk fast and walk fast are doctors, but no one thinks they know anything about healing. The docs engendered the mistrust themselves by their fast pace and unsympathetic manner.
But, as good ol’ boy as the stereotypical medical doctors are in America, they are still what they’ve always been: ambitious high achievers who genuinely work for those straight A’s (remember the pre-meds in tears if they got a B?). And the specialist in complementary medicine is no exception. She’s going learn those herb-drug interactions if it kills her. The M.D. turned homeopath is really going to put the time in. No weekend course for him; he must be at the top of the class. Even I, a nurse practitioner, work hard at it, and have logged in at least 60 university hours studying herbal therapeutics, and countless hours reading on my own. This after graduation from six years of college and 17 years in practice.
There’s a whole lot of charlatanism out there, and some people are pretty gullible. A massage therapist turned nutritionist told my partner and me how she found this nice company that would do saliva testing for her, then analyze the results and recommend their own products for the clients to buy and take. One patient had spent around a thousand dollars out of pocket for this evaluation, but it was worth it because the client was going to “get her health back”.
In the mainstream world, it is illegal for a medical doctor to own a pharmacy because of the obvious conflict that would inevitably arise. Yet this company charges around $360.00 for a panel of tests that can easily make them more money. Also, in most cases, saliva testing is bogus. But anyone can spit and send it through the mail. The panel of tests this person showed us could have been done for less money and with much higher reliability in our local lab. And the results would have interpreted by a trained clinician and not by a supplement company looking to make profits.
By the way, I checked on her nutritionist school. It had accreditation only locally, and was an online university exclusively. “Accreditation” means regionally, as in one of the four quadrants of the U.S.A., or nationally. Otherwise it’s not accredited, and is not recognized for licensure. In her naivete, she thought that her school was accredited. I bet she paid a handsome sum for her degree, too.
Now, many clinicians are learning the ways of Europe. There, herbal preparations are studied, derived and manufactured properly, and prescribed as legitimate medicines. There are many formulations on the European market that are effective and safer than drugs. For example, one can get a prescription for an herbal remedy for irritable bowel syndrome, a painful and embarrassing problem. These preparations are not often available here except via the Internet. Why is this? I’m not completely sure, but I do know that the pharmaceutical industry carries a lot of clout here in the U.S. — and it is very territorial.
Still, the information is out there, and some of us have access to it. Research is going on more and more frequently for herbal remedies and nutritional supplements. It’s not all anecdotal anymore.
So, the next time you want to find a clinician who claims to be complementary, consider that you may be able to find someone who has the training and intention to see you, hear you out, and to recognize the difference between a worrisome symptom and a more simple problem. And don’t assume that your doctor or nurse practitioner is a part of the good ole boy club because he or she went to a good university. She may be just as eccentric, sincere, and spiritually evolved as you are.