Keeping the balance with complimentary and conventional treatments

Keeping the balance with complimentary and conventional treatments

There are some basic facts to keep in mind when wondering what type of treatment to seek for whats ailing you.  Given the safety concerns many have with pharmaceuticals and the potential problems each can bring while trying to ameliorate the original set of symptoms, its understandable that an ever increasing number of patients choose to try alternative forms of medicine first.

Alternative or complimentary forms of medical treatments include activities such as:

acupuncture

guided meditation; mindful meditation

mind-body therapies

spinal manipulation

stress reduction (through yoga, tai chi, or meditation)

physical acitivty

nutritional diet

For example, for acid reflux or GERD, the choices are a pharmaceutical that cuts down on the acidity of the stomach, so in cases of regurgitation there is less acidic stomach juices to damage the delicate esophageal lining.  Another approach is to try to find out the underlying causes of the reflux!  Usually this has to do with the correct direction of flow of qi through an area such as abdomen in this case.  Rebellious qi (pronounced chi) can cause acid reflux so a trained acupuncturist will assess some basic facts and after a physical will work on returning the smooth flow of qi and the result is relief from the reflux, or very major improvement, with no negative side effects (such as proton pump inhibitors can cause).

I recently saw a patient with the diagnosis of gastroparesis.   Thats when the stomach is bloated and stays that way and interferes with normal food intake and other activities due to peristalsis of the stomach and esophagus having diminished for some reason.  Imagine not being able to eat your favorite food, and if you do it just sits there for what seems like hours and hours.  Although this patient resorted to an approach that was helping him, he wasnt comfortable having to eat 6-8 small meals a day vs three normal portioned one.  After just one treatment he reported complete resolution of the symptoms.  I say that treating gastroparesis, in this case, with acupuncture vs taking a drug such a Reglan which can bring with it some serious side effects, was the correct approach.

In cases of infertility or habitual miscarriages, one can go to a fertility clinic, hand out tens of thousands of dollars ad be given unnatural treatments that may or may not work.  Infertility is one of those cases in which seeking alternative forms of treatments brings positive results.  I have helped many with infertility problems go on to nurse a healthy child.  Unfortunately, as cool and effective as acupuncture seems to be, it does not work in all the cases and sometimes surgery or pharmaceutical intervention is a necessity.  In those cases, fertility rates are much higher with acupuncture complimenting the conventional medical format, vs conventional medicine by itself.

Pain is a great example of where alternative and complimentary medicine may really work wonders.  I often see patients who have a pain lingering from an operation that was performed due to some necessity.   The patient has two choices again:  take a pain killer which may have some consequences (addiction, constipation, liver damage, ) or they may try acupuncture.  I have seen on numerous occasions a post surgery pain that lingered around the site of the injury improve or fully disappear with some acupuncture treatments which help to restore the flow of qi (flow of qi gets hindered when the body is cut into thru an operation) which when restored may fully eliminate the pain!

There are many examples of when acupuncture is a game changer, but when one gets the unfortunate diagnosis of cancer, acupuncture or nutritional guidance, or Chinese herbal formulas, or stress reduction are NOT the way to go, at first!  Moving fast on recommended therapies vs delay or putting them off altogether is increasing morbidity!

When the diagnosis of cancer is established, acupuncture and nutrition, physical activity, a healthy weight, a healthy diet, stress reduction thru meditation or yoga or tai chi are great complimentary treatments but they cannot be stand alone treatments.   Cancer is too tough of an adversary to try to beat thru gentle approaches such as nutrition and acupuncture.

In order for a cell to become cancerous, many many changes have to have happened in the years preceding the diagnosis.  In some cancers seven steps, in some cancers ten or more steps (genetic changes) need to happen.  Once all the (wrong) players are in place and transcribing their gene products (proteins), acupuncture or diet or exercise or stress reduction techniques cant get rid of them: you need smart drugs that go right to the site and start to destroy the cancerous cells vs chemotherapy that kills all the cells.

We must know the advantages and pitfalls of taking one type of medicine over another.

When it comes to cancer, the genes we inherit from our parents seem to play a huge role, but so does diet, the environment (air we breathe, water we drink, location of closest industrial plant and other possible exposure to carcinogens or radiation), the foods we eat, the weight we carry around with us, how regularly we exercise, and our overall stress level (or stress reduction abilities thru different techniques).   Still most oncologists dont talk to their patients about the importance of nutrition, exercise, and stress reduction techniques.  Part of the reason is the lack of time for doctors to interact with their patients.  We now know there is incredible benefit to eating the right foods, doing stress reduction techniques, doing mindful or guided imagery meditation.

Very recently a study came out that compared the (long term) use of tamoxifen for breast cancer remission maintenance to exercise.  While the researchers found that Tamoxifen reduced breast cancer recurrence rates by 40%, they found that exercise reduced the same parameters by 50%!!!  What??  This study which was 15 years in duration, clearly shows the benefit of exercise for cancer prevention.  In another study, malignant melanoma patients were enrolled in a study in which psychiatric intervention was performed early on.  Psychiatric intervention in this case meant effective coping and reducing affective distress.  These patients had a much higher 6 year survival rates than their non-intervened with subjects on the other side (control–no interference or coaching on how to cope)!!

When it comes to stress reduction, whatever technique works best for you, try it as stress reduction plays a big role in both initiation and propagation of cancer, as well as helping with it not returning.  It makes perfect sense.

What is a bit harder to understand is how can some foods, or supplements, or herbal remedies which may under normal circumstance be great, interfere with the action of oncology drugs?  Long story short, some of the conventional chemotherapeutic drugs do their job (kill cancer cells) by a variety of mechanisms, but some of these drugs seem to also be cytotoxic to the cancer cells due to the drugs ability to cause oxidation of the immediate micro-environment and kill the cells that way, in addition to its main mode of action…DNA chain termination or DNA intercalation.  Most herbal medicines are food, and derived from roots or barks or leaves and or stem of different plants.  Almost all plants have bio-flavanoids and therefore strong anti-oxidant acitivty so when we take an herbal formula while taking a chemo drug at the same time, there maybe interference that will affect the patient negatively.  Not all herb drug interactions are known therefore caution in proceeding is key.  Lets look at turmeric for example.  It has some amazing properties such as anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, anti-bacterial, and powerful anti-oxidant effects.  The anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer effects might be why it is recommended to add it to food and consume regularly througout life, but not  while on chemo or radiation, again due to its ability to protect the DNA from oxidative activity which is delivered by conventional chemo drugs and its also partly how radiation kills the cells, through oxidation.

My personal take:

There is no substitute for the power of alternative forms of therapy such as nutrition, exercise (eve though these arent really therapies but are actually life styles), yoga, meditation, acupuncture.  There is no substitute for a calm mind that handles adversity and the challenges of life well.  Some of us come with that, the rest we can do meditation and teach ourselves to be calm and still.

There is no substitute for acupuncture as it moves qi and blood.  In Oriental medicine, it is believed that there can be no cancer without blood stagnation preceding it by years or decades.  I see in my patients the difference before and after their treatment, in the color of their face, in brightness of their eye, and what they report.  Keeping the blood and qi moving goes a long way towards keeping us healthy.

Bottom line:  If cancer develops, dont delay or put off treatment, but go into it well informed.  Know what helps once the conventional treatments are done and do them as they extend both quality and quantity of life.  If you are worried about developing cancer sometime in the future due to genetics, life style, stress load, or unhealthy behaviors or diet, then check into alternative and complimentary forms of medicine and get what you need.