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The following excerpts are from Dr. Walker's book,
"THE WOMEN'S COMPLETE GUIDE TO NATURAL HEALTH"
Alternative medicine is taking the market by storm. In 1993, a report in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that, for the first time in modern history, annual visits to alternative practitioners may exceed those to primary care physicians. A growing disillusionment with pharmaceuticals has prompted a surge of interest in natural remedies. Herbal products are practically flying off the shelves. In a 1995 Gallup survey, more than 28 million Americans reported taking herbal supplements. Sales have doubled since 1985 and are predicted to exceed two billion dollars by the end of 1997.
The natural approach to cure recognizes that most common complaints will go away by themselves. The body can heal itself. Most drugs actually work to suppress the body's efforts in that direction. Drugs target the coughing, sneezing, fever and diarrhea we think of as the problem, when in fact these symptoms may be the body's attempt to get rid of the problem the foreign toxins, microbes or chemicals that have built up in the tissues. When these reactions are deadened with drugs, the toxins are left to accumulate in the body. And the intended effects of synthetics tend to be accompanied by unintended side effects. Alternative practitioners maintain that except in life-threatening situations, it is therefore usually better to live with your symptoms than to try to suppress them with drugs. Conventional doctors, too, are coming to recommend "watchful waiting" in many cases where drastic surgeries used to be the order of the day.
While you're waiting, excellent natural, non-toxic remedies are available to ease your symptoms and help your body heal. Remedies that support the body's efforts to do its own housecleaning and repair include nutritional supplements, Western and Chinese herbs, homeopathic remedies, aromatherapy and flower essences.
Herbal Medicine
Herbs have been used for healing throughout recorded history. Many conventional drugs are derived from plants. The leaves of the foxglove plant are the source of the heart drug digitalis. Taxol, a powerful new cancer drug, is made from the Pacific Yew tree. Capoten, a blood pressure lowering medicine, comes from snake venom. Even aspirin was originally derived from willow bark. Pharmaceutical companies start with the herb and extract the "active ingredients," but alternative practitioners maintain that the whole herb is more therapeutic than its isolated ingredients and is less likely to result in side effects. Aromatherapy , a form of herbal medicine, involves distillations of the essential oils of the whole plant, carrying all the plant's important information (sometimes referred to as the "blood" or "life force" of the plant).
Statistics from the American Association of Poison Control Centers confirm that while drug poisonings kill hundreds of people annually, deaths from herbal medicine are virtually unheard of. A few medicinal plants can cause bodily harm when taken in excess. (Comfrey, for example, has been linked to liver damage -- although only in enormous overdoses.) Dosings are also harder to gauge accurately for herbs than for drugs, and herbs can cause allergic reactions in the susceptible. They should be used only with professional advice by pregnant women and people with chronic medical conditions. For children, professional advice is also recommended, and doses should be diluted. But even with these provisos, herbs are far less risky than their pharmaceutical counterparts. For healthy, non-pregnant people, they are considered quite safe in recommended doses.
If you think you are having an unwanted reaction to an herbal or any other oral product, you should stop taking it, drink copious amounts of water, take a hot bath to alleviate the symptoms, wait for a period of time, then consider starting it again to see if it was really the cause of the problem. What is sometimes thought to be a bad reaction may not be an allergic one or a reason not to take the remedy. The dose may simply be too high (even if it's the recommended dose), or the effect may be a "healing crisis" or cleansing reaction prompted by the remedy.
Centuries-old Track Records from Various Medical Traditions
Herbal remedies are important constituents of traditional Oriental medicine. Chinese doctors view health as a state of harmonious balance of the body's Qi (pronounced Chi or Chee), or Vital Force, which flows in set patterns throughout the energy systems of the body. These energy patterns are called meridians and are named for the major organs they pass through (heart, stomach, lung, kidney, liver). Disruption of the flow of the vital force to any organ causes an imbalance throughout the system. The more out of balance the system is, the more likely symptoms will result.
One way Chinese doctors correct imbalances is with acupuncture, a technique that involves placing very fine needles in specific locations to facilitate the flow of Qi through the energy meridians. Once considered akin to "Voodoo," this technique is now gaining wide acceptance among doctors and hospitals in the United States. In November of 1997, a consensus panel convened by the National Institutes of Health concluded that there is clear evidence that acupuncture is effective for relieving pain in a variety of situations, including postoperative and chemotherapy nausea and vomiting, nausea of pregnancy, and postoperative dental pain.
Chinese doctors also correct imbalances with traditional herbal formulas, the safety and effectiveness of which have been proven through centuries of use. Publications from the People's Republic of China report that Chinese herbal formulas are effective in a broad range of clinical situations. (NOTE: It's important to take Chinese herbs in the balanced formulas that address your whole symptom complex. If you take them singly, you run the risk of throwing your body further out of balance.)
European folk medicine, Native American Indian medicine, and the Ayurvedic system developed in India are other herbal traditions that contain excellent botanicals proven through centuries of use.
Nutrients as Medicine
Drugs can mask symptoms and herbs can stimulate body functions that have gone awry, but health will elude the patient so long as there is an underlying lack of essential nutrients in the body. Health problems are increasingly being traced to nutritional deficiencies that can be corrected only by supplying the missing vitamins, minerals, amino acids, etc.
Few people today eat a balanced diet of natural, unprocessed plant foods; and even if they did, these ideal foods can no longer be relied on to fully satisfy nutrient requirements. At one time, everything the body needed was furnished by the foods of the earth. But today, the earth seems to be as depleted as our bodies are. Canning, irradiation, and other methods of preserving shelf life have further decreased the biological value of our food. Processing removes the food's natural antioxidants. (For a discussion of antioxidants, see "Aging.") A report presented to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1936 concluded that our soils and the crops grown on them are so mineral deficient that the only way to prevent and cure the resulting deficiency diseases is by taking mineral supplements; and that was more than half a century ago. The situation has declined significantly since.
It is the rare single nutrient that will cure a disease, on the other hand, unless the disease happens to be due to a deficiency of that nutrient. For example, rickets, which is caused by a lack of vitamin D, can be cured by supplying that vitamin. For most conditions, however, a wide range of nutritional support is required. Every disease state can be helped by a good, balanced vitamin and mineral supplement program; but for purposes of this book, we will be mentioning specific nutritional supplements only to the extent that studies or experience have produced results with them for particular conditions. You can determine if you are short in particular nutrients by visiting a practitioner who specializes in the field. For a complete resource on vitamins, see Earl Mindell's Vitamin Bible. (For a resource on herbs, he has also written an Herb Bible.)
When choosing basic nutritional supplements, it is important to recognize that not all brands are equally good. Natural is better than synthetic, and nutrients need to be in proper balance and in an absorbable form. We'll be mentioning particularly good brands in particular contexts.
Colloidal Versus Ionized Minerals
"Colloidal minerals" are currently popular products promoted as containing a broad range of minerals in a highly absorbable form. But researcher Dr. Alexander Schauss observes that colloidal minerals are basically clays dispersed in water. Something colloidal (suspended in water) is insoluble by definition, and insoluble minerals are generally less absorbable than soluble minerals. An analysis of five of these products showed they averaged only fifteen elements each, not the seventy or more claimed; and the mineral balance was poor. Four of the five contained aluminum (a toxic element linked to Alzheimer's disease) as their first or second element by weight. Other toxic trace elements included arsenic, barium, cadmium, mercury and lead. Colloidal mineral products contain only small amounts of calcium and magnesium, the body's main mineral requirements. Trace minerals should be taken only in trace amounts. If they overpower the macro-minerals (calcium and magnesium), they can throw mineral balance into chaos.
A better way to get your macro- and trace minerals is in ionized form, the form in which plants and mammals are designed to absorb inorganic minerals. To be absorbed, calcium must be reduced to the ionized state (charged particles of elemental calcium). If you take your calcium in this form, it can be immediately absorbed without intermediate processing. Converting calcium requires stomach acid -- something in which many people, and particularly the elderly, tend to be deficient. See "Bone Loss."
An Overlooked Natural Cure
Another cheap and simple key to health that is often overlooked is plain, unadulterated water. F. Batmanghelidj, M.D., in his groundbreaking book Your Body's Many Cries for Water, links the major chronic epidemics of modern life to water dehydration. Our mistake, he says, is in thinking we have satisfied our need for water by satisfying our thirst with other beverages. We need half our body's weight in ounces of water per day -- not coffee, tea, soft drinks, or juices, but plain (filtered or bottled) water. Thus a 128-pound woman would need 64 ounces, or eight glasses of water. Diseases Dr. Batmanghelidj reports seeing reversed with this simple therapy include high blood pressure, low back pain, asthma, allergies and ulcers, among others. The regimen is also a good way to lose weight.
Wait 1/2 hour before meals and 2 1/2 hours after meals for your heavy water doses, to avoid diluting your digestive juices. Dr. Batmanghelidj advises adding 1/2 teaspoon of salt to your diet daily for every ten glasses of water added. (Unheated sea salt is preferred. Table salt, which has been heated to very high temperatures in processing, can be treated by the body as a foreign toxin). Increase your water intake gradually to make sure your kidneys are functioning properly. Output should increase proportionately with input. Dr. Batmanghelidj's protocol also includes getting sufficient daily exercise (e.g. an hour's walk), to stimulate internal movement and healing.
Removing Blocks to Healing
Besides giving the body the nutrients and water it needs, blocks to healing need to be removed. Cure depends on an immune system and bodily organs that are intact and functioning normally. Under the principle of "vitalism" or "vital force," humans have an innate energy that promotes life and encourages homeostasis (balance). Treatments that are effective over the long-term stimulate this life force. Treatments that block the life force may effectively suppress symptoms, but they are counter-productive for long-term recovery. Life-force-suppressing treatments include cancer chemotherapy and radiation, painkillers, drugs that suppress fever (a natural healing reaction that "cooks out" germs), steroids (which suppress the immune system), and antibiotics (which kill germs, but do it without stimulating the body's own immune system).
Antibiotics and steroids (i.e. hydrocortisone cream) are two popular drug categories that are particularly insidious. In critical situations, they can be "wonder drugs;" but they are used far too frivolously. The development of resistant strains from overuse has led to predictions that antibiotics will be obsolete in a few years. (See "Infection, Immunity.")
Besides current drug use, other factors that act to suppress the body's natural healing ability include previous surgeries, missing organs, a previous history of drug-taking (legal or illegal), smoking, poor nutrition, stress, hereditary conditions including birth defects and obstructions, and dental fillings of non-biocompatible materials. If these obstructions can be removed, they should be, since if a patient is deprived of vital life force by any means, he will be less responsive to natural methods of healing intended to stimulate the life force. But even if obstructions can't be removed, results may be obtained by natural remedies to the extent that they are able to spark whatever life force remains.
Reference
D. Eisenberg, et al., "Unconventional Medicine in the United States ," New England Journal of Medicine 328:246-52 (1993).
See M. Castleman, Nature's Cures (Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale Press, Inc., 1996), pages 218-10.
See, e.g., J. Shaw, "Aging Process and Anti-aging Effects of Chinese Herbal Medicines," International Journal of Chinese Medicine 1:45 -48 (1984); Herbal Pharmacology in the People's Republic of China : A Trip Report of the American Pharmacology Delegation (Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1975); J. Chen, "'Pharmacology,' Medicine and Public Health in the People's Republic of China ," DHEW Publication No. (NIH) 72-67, pp. 93-108 (1972); Kiangsu New Medical College, Pharmacopoeia of Chinese Drugs (Chung Yao Ta Zi Tien ) (Shanghai: People's Publishing House, 1977) (in Chinese).
U.S. Senate Document No. 264, 74th Congress, 2nd Session, 1936.
A. Schauss, Ph.D., "An analysis of colloidal mineral claims," Health Counselor (1997).
F. Batmanghelidj, M.D., Your Body's Many Cries for Water (Falls Church, Virginia: Global Health Solutions, 1995).
See "Suppression and obstruction to cure," Townsend Letter for Doctors (June 1995), pages 112-13.
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