Remember lying on the couch watching that infomercial about herbal weight loss pills? Ever buy a barrel of St. John’s Wort but not take it long enough to see results?

One in three people who in 1990 responded to a landmark study by alternative medicine guru David M. Eisenberg, MD, used alternative medical care for a “serious or bothersome condition.” Recognized worldwide as the man with the data on alternative therapies, Eisenberg found essentially the same consumer fascination with nontraditional therapies when he repeated his survey in 1997.

Astonishingly, consumers made 425 million visits to alternative care providers, surpassing the 338 million visits made to traditional primary care doctors. They paid $10.3 billion out of their pockets for alternative medical services, an amount nearly equal to the $12.8 billion consumers paid out of their pockets for hospitalizations that year.

Currently, consumers spend $30 billion annually on unconventional therapies called “dubious” by many mainstream health care advocates. Leon Jaroff, Discover magazine’s founding editor, often blasted nontraditional remedies in his “Skeptical Eye” column. Another chief opponent of alternative therapies is Loma Linda University professor William Jarvis who claims “Useless procedures don’t add to the outcome, just to the overhead.”

Is alternative medicine witchcraft or wellness?

Congress doesn’t think all claims made by alternative medicine advocates are false (nor do they believe all claims are true). In 1992, they established the Office of Alternative Medicine. Based on consumer demand and calls from the traditional medical community for outcome studies, the agency was upgraded to a full-fledged National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which conducts research nationwide on alternative and complimentary care or “CAMs,” the technical abbreviation.

NCCAM’s current budget is $50 million, up from $20 million last year, and raised from $2 million in 1993. At present, the NCCAM is researching use of St. John’s Wort for treatment of depression, numerous herbal dietary supplements, and ginkgo bilboa, a botanical substance, for its positive effects on dementia. Nearly 1,000 patients are currently involved in a study of that nonstop advertised substance glucosamine/chondroitin sulfate sold to help with osteoarthritis. With one in 15 people seeking chiropractic care annually, studies are underway regarding its effectiveness for specific conditions.

There must be something to this.

Alternative medicine is here to stay. It is not going away.

The question is, how will the traditional medical establishment respond? asks David Frank, MD, medical director of the The Hetrick Center, a multidisciplinary outpatient service noted for its pioneering response to consumer demand for alternative medicine made “compatible with and complimentary to” traditional care.

In addition to The Hetrick Center, Frank soon will launch WellQuest, a PinnacleHealth program designed in response to “a growing consumer preference for non-traditional medicine,” according to PinnacleHealth spokesman Kim Payne. Access to alternative therapies will be offered through a regional network of 22 physician practices affiliated with PinnacleHealth, as well as other doctor’s offices interested in joining the growing regional movement.

To guard against criticisms from local Jarvis/Jaroff-like opponents, Frank says, “We will ‘credential’ a panel of providers to insure quality of care.” In fact, it may be the Jarvis/Jaroff gang who is behind the curve on this one. Already 40 American medical schools teach CAMs and the American Association of Medical Colleges hosts a special interest section for alternative therapies, bridging the enormous, often contentious, gap between traditional and nontraditional care.

“We need to bring traditional and alternative medicine together. Seventy-two percent of Eisenberg’s respondents did not tell their traditional doctor they sought alternative treatments,” Franks points out, stressing the need for both patients and health care providers to open up to each other on this taboo topic.

Open dialogue is seen as the key to ferreting out the hooey from the effective. But how open the lines of communication are depends on the special interest asked. Right now, opponents of nontraditional therapies claim the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is in a weakened response mode due to Congress’s 1994 Drug Supplement Act that favors makers of nontraditional remedies. As it stands, the FDA must approve all “over-the-counter” and prescription drugs, but must prove as “unsafe” any nontraditional therapies. The pill is under the other shell, so to speak. Opponents of nontraditional remedies fear a deregulated FDA will lead to chaos.

Proponents laud Congress’s deregulation as forcing innovation into an arena where consumers vote with $30 billion annually, where there is an obvious free-market force at work. In addition to Eisenberg’s study, the oft-quoted “Landmark Study” cites that 40 percent of respondents would select a health care plan that covered alternative therapies.

How weird is this call for relaxed standards on nontraditional care?

Great Britain’s National Health Service, often bashed by largely market-driven US health care proponents as backward and slow to change, reimburses patients for homeopathic remedies. Japan formally recognizes 147 herbal remedies on which consumers spend $1.3 billion annually.

California’s Blue Shield and Kaiser Permanente, and Oxford Health Plan, before it went out of business, covered various CAMs, even though these services were “managed care” and highly sensitive to Professor Jarvis’ “outcome versus overhead” argument. Germany, through what is called Commission E, publishes an approved list of herbal mixtures. “Once we bring these treatments into the open, as have other countries, we can better evaluate which are effective, which are not, and for whom,” Frank says.

Determining effectiveness of nontraditional treatments involves a review of patients’ lifestyle, according to local practitioner Dr. William Richwine. A student of Eisenberg’s popular seminars, Richwine describes the traditional medical community as “imploding”. “We can’t afford it anymore. That much is clear. Preventing bad health outcomes through nontraditional therapies is the wave of the future.”

Richwine is cautious to mention a significant difference between the two types of medical interventions. “In traditional care, we wait until we’re sick to treat. Alternative care requires a commitment by the patient to become involved in their health, wellness, and treatment on a regular lifestyle basis,” he says. “People ‘engage themselves’ in preventive strategies to avoid or lessen serious illness,” he stresses.

Richwine’s practice demographic reflects this claim. “I have a good split between older Medicare recipients and their baby boomer children.” He calls his older patients “smart seniors”. “What’s interesting to me is that I have baby boomer patients who see their parents on a dozen drugs, and struggling or even failing. They want to prevent that same experience as they age,” Richwine explains. Nationally, the largest consumer group demanding alternative care is between 35 and 50 years old.

One example drawing a bright line between baby boomers and their parents is osteoarthritis. About 94 percent of Medicare recipients suffer from some form of osteoarthritis. About 80 percent eventually have joint-replacement surgery. In published surveys of preferences for nontraditional therapies, baby boomer patients indicate they use or would use an alternative substance to avoid surgery later in life.

“Chronic degenerative disease and other serious disease categories, that’s where I see it show up,” says Richwine. He is referring to hormonal imbalances, cancers, and various forms of arthritis, autoimmune and immune disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Normally scientific leaders, the US medical community is hiding in the dark end of the spectrum on this issue. Sluggishness by the American Medical Association forced the establishment of the College for the Advancement of Medicine, the AMA’s nemesis, which one local physician eventually joined.

“The AMA was slow to recognize the effectiveness of alternative treatments,” says John Sullivan, MD, local practitioner of “integrated medicine” and College member. He reports to MODE riveting success with combinations of traditional and nontraditional treatments.

For patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), he may first use regular antibiotics to clear away long-standing yeast infections, a common feature of this syndrome often called “yuppie flu”. Next, he prescribes “probiotics”, cultures that add “good bacteria” to the body in order to avoid a return of the debilitating yeast bacteria.

Another significant intervention of alternative medicine is the notion of “neutralization”. Sullivan may use a traditional skin allergy test to determine the “threshold” at which patients’ allergies or ailments are “neutralized”. For example, patients with sugar diabetes may learn to inject themselves under the skin with a small amount of chromium to quell a sugar craving. A patient who craves bread may have a wheat allergy and give himself a subcutaneous injection (right under the skin) of a wheat derivative to quell the urge for another slice of bread.

“Patients are astounded at results,” says Sullivan. He explains that if patients are willing to invest some time, he can use his integrated techniques to treat influenza, shingles, mononucleosis, PMS, and endometriosis. He has treated patients who felt so sick they weren’t sure they could get into his office. After performing his “neutralizing” tests, they leave with symptoms already lessened and are better in record time.

Tired of all those hypertension pills? “I use magnesium. We’ve used it in ob-gyn to treat hypertension caused by pregnancy for years. No side effects. No allergies,” Sullivan says, adding that we need to rethink concepts of illness, wellness, and lifestyle.

“We’re living the wrong way. Fast foods, fast life, fast everything. We’re making the environment toxic, depleting the nutrients in the food supply. If that’s the case, why wait until sickness arrives? Why not act to prevent?” Richwine asks.

Local Herbals Retailers
(As always, use these products
with caution.)

Avatar’s
774-2551
321 Bridge Street, New Cumberland

General Nutrition Centers
Carlisle Plaza, Carlisle
258-5940
Capital City Mall, Camp Hill 761-9923
East Mall, Harrisburg
564-9887

The Herb Merchant
249-0970
70 W. Pomfret Street, Carlisle

The Healthy Grocer
737-5123
3800 Trindle Road, Camp Hill
www.thehealthygrocer.com

Miller Springs
Natural Things
236-8499
Broad Street Market, Harrisburg

Sunrise Natural Foods
566-1491
201 E. Main Street, Hummelstown
www.sunrisenatural.com

Local Natural Health Centers:

Cumberland Center
for Natural Health
761-0601
2135 Market Street, Camp Hill
www.naturalhealthdoctor.com

The Hetrick Center
944-2225
500 N. Union Street, Middletown

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