I might as well begin by being blunt. There is no love lost between the medicine I was taught in medical school and the kind I practice now, which used to travel under the name of mind-body medicine. It acquired ayurveda (the traditional medicine of India) along the way and now incorporates influences from many other strains of healing.
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Delia Lloyd: 'How I Came To Embrace Alternative Medicine'
JJ Shaughnessy, M.D., M.P.H.
Big Pharma has convinced the American people that surgery (mutilation) is better than say, massage therapy. It sickens me to see people begging for expensive, lethal drugs with deadly side effects. I fight to stop it everyday since I found out what was going on.
My family grew old and healthy with castor oil and baby aspirin. We rarely needed a doctor. When we did, there were always side effects or misdiagnosis. I can remember being awake having a tonsilectomy at 6yrs.
I could see all the doctors talking to each other, and not about me. You'd have thought they were out having a drink. I could feel the doctor pulling on my tonsils and I kept trying to ask him to look at me. He was'nt even looking at my face! His head was turned while he was down my throat, chatting with a nurse..
They lied to me when I did'nt want to take a shot. The nurse said OK, we'll take your temperature instead. I said OK. As soon as I rolled over, she lifted the blanket and shot me in my rear end. I screamed.
We paid cash for our healthcare, and got treated like that. Imagine what the "system" is like that everyone is fighting gor. WE need ":cures", not smoke and mirrors you've been getting.
This is a great article by Deepak Chopra. I love the way that he refers to the alliance between allopathic and alternative medicine as a marriage. I would like to know more details about how the marriage would look and feel like. For instance, would alternative health be available in hospitals and would medicaid and medicare pay for these services too? So far only 2 states accept medicaid for naturopathy,Connecticut and Arizona. How do we get the movement started to make it a 50 state reality.
I am also very concerned with the way in which the alternative health movement has focused almost exclusively on Eastern influences from China, India, Tibet to name a few. I would like to see more incorporation of African and Caribbean as well as Latin American influences.
Finally, I feel strongly that so long as the United States continues to be a de facto Christian nation we won't see the kind of "polyamorous" union and/or marriage that Dr. Chopra writes so well about between allopathic and alternative medicines.
Blessings.
I think your observation about the effect of our "de facto Christian nation" on healthcare is quite astute. Many (not all, but many) don't want anything to do with practices that stemmed from other types of spiritual practices. And they routinely get defensive at any suggestion that people's thoughts can have real, tangible, effects on the conditions of their bodies.
I think that ultimately, if the answer is "marriage," it needs to be an open one, with as many options as possible for as many kinds of treatments as possible. Medical decisions are amongst the most personal we will ever make, and the less ANYONE - be it doctors, government, corporate profiteers or religious groups of any stripe, infringe on our ability to make well-informed decisions regarding what is right for us, the better off we will all be.
Thanks for this very insightful commentary about Dr. Chopra's article and my comment. I hope that we see some changes in the practice of medicine in the U.S. soon. I believe that with the advocacy and scholarship of scholars, healers, practitioners and patients we will win this. And we'll live to see the marriage flourish and open to become very loving. Blessings
Like many things they change with the times, how much asbestos wall paper do you see for sale today? The same will go for "anti-depressants" & "anti-biotics" et al before too long.
I believe these two modalities must get back together! Do it for the children! lol Seriously though, western med has fantastic surgical and analytical capabilities and natural medicine is the proven balanced way to heal & strengthen.