“Don’t do anything risky – stick with scientific medicine.”, something we’ve all heard for decades. Friends and family, especially for people of my generation, cautioned us not to venture out into the vast unknown, using unproven methods provided by people with questionable credentials. The term “quacks” was often used to describe alternative providers. Today it’s used a bit less but still the preference, for treating almost any condition that ails us, is to seek a conventional medical professional first - regardless of how minor the condition or symptom might be.
In my first book, GET WELL – EVEN WHEN YOU’VE BEEN TOLD YOU CAN”T, I took great pride in busting a few medical myths that dogged us for decades. This particular one is one of my favorites. It’s also so easy to discredit with just a few facts. I don’t do this to take a cheap shot at conventional medicine, because I highly respect the profession. I just believe we depend too much on them and are too reliant on pharmaceuticals, their first line of treatment. I like to describe conventional medical care as too frequently using a canon instead of a flyswatter.
When the practice of medicine first began, not scientific medicine as we know it during the last 200-years, but the initial form of medicine credited initially to the physician Hippocrates (460 BC – 370 BC) - “First, do no harm.”, was their core philosophy. That statement was believed to be derived from the Hippocratic Oath, still taken by physicians today, but although most physicians recognize the claim, few follow it.
In the medical community’s quest to “attack” or “kill” the germs, bacteria, viruses, or cancers residing in our bodies, the physicians go to war with the invaders. Their seek and destroy mission jumps to radical, invasive treatments right away and their proclivity to prescribe highly toxic and damaging drugs is undenied. As with any war, there is always collateral damage and guess who the victims of that are?
The tools physicians use today are analogous to playing with fire but in the process, it’s the patient who gets burned. Yet, we remain loyal because we honestly believe medical doctors will take better care of us in the long run – or because we don’t know where else to turn.
Here are a few facts that might help you weigh other options. These facts should give you pause. Everything stated here is well sourced and confirmed through major hospital studies, noted medical journals and other sources like Harvard, CNBC and WebMD. Consider this fact, for example: 1) It is estimated that 128,000 Americans die each year as a result of taking prescribed medications. That’s nearly five times the number of people killed by overdosing on prescription painkillers or heroin. These are not diseased caused deaths; these are treatment caused deaths.
2) Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. after heart disease and cancer. According to a Johns Hopkins study, 225,000 people die each year in the U.S. from medical errors and some reports claim then number is as high as 440,000. Those figures make the deathrate from Covid-19 look pretty tame in perspective.
3) Another article titled, “Death by Medicine” written by five medical researchers: three MDs and two PhDs contained data that was much more comprehensive since for the first time this was an analysis which combined data from ALL of the published literature dealing with injuries and deaths caused by government-protected medicine. These medical researchers found: the number of people with in-hospital, adverse reactions to prescribed drugs to be 2.2 million per year and the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections to be 20 million per year - even though we all know antibiotics are useless against any virus. Unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually at a rate of 7.5 million per year and people unnecessarily hospitalized annually numbered 8.9 million.
This study concluded that the more realistic total the number of deaths caused by conventional medicine, was in the neighborhood of 783,936 per year, making the American medical system the leading cause of death in the US - with heart disease in 2001 trailing by 699,697 and cancer farther behind at 553,251.
Why is this happening? It’s not because medical doctors are stupid or lazy – it’s just because they’re human and humans make mistakes. The big exception here is that the tools in the toolbox of medical physicians are extraordinarily lethal: pharmaceuticals, all of which deliver a number of side-effects – some more dangerous than others like chemotherapy; radiation – self-explanatory; and surgery – obviously invasive. So, when a mistake is made, it’s really serious.
The option is to try a flyswatter once in a while for minor conditions – or early in the course of any condition, before all the damage is caused. Home and natural remedies were used very effectively for millennium and many of those remedies still exist. You don’t hear frightening statistics of people dying from an ineffective Reiki treatment, an acupuncture needle placed in the wrong spot; most any supplement – if used as directed; a change in diet or lifestyle that is recommended or any of these: aromatherapy – essential oils; Chinese Herbal Medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, naturopathic medicine, chiropractic care, hydrotherapy, hypnotherapy, homeopathy; massage, imagery and visualization, yoga or meditation. They are all basically harmless, rely on natural sources and when used in combination, can be extraordinarily effective.
Just a point to consider, since I recovered naturally from a host of conditions that would have made most others run for the nearest specialist: rheumatoid arthritis, chronic leukemia (twice), psoriasis, hyperthyroidism (Graves Disease), chronic allergies and eventually, neutropenia, I’m an example that natural methods can work. Guess that’s why I don’t look any the less for wear, given my years of health challenges. The secret is I protected my body in the process.
Although I will use conventional medicine for emergency care, some surgical procedures, most diagnoses and joint replacement – when the time comes, I don’t use that system of medicine for everything. I’ll take a flyswatter over a cannon, any day.