Mainstream medicine is not at it’s best with chronic health issues. One problem is an symptoms-oriented approach, where drugs are designed to reduce the outward signs, or the immediately measurable biochemical signs of the disorder. This approach can mask the underlying cause of the disorder allowing it to remain unchanged, or to become worse.
Another problem at the root of mainstream medicine is that drug companies make the most profit on drugs they can protect legally, so they don’t make hardly anything they can’t patent. To get a patent it must be unique, so they have to invent it in a lab. Drugs made in this way are essentially chemical compounds that are unnatural to the body, and therefore have varying levels of toxicity when metabolized. This is why the third leading cause of death in the United States is the consumption of prescription medication.
Pharma profits are also driving medical education, with companies sponsoring and organizing continuing education for doctors, and even influencing curricula at medical schools through donor and partnership arrangements. It’s not the doctor’s fault; they just aren’t getting exposed to any other treatment modalities or philosophies than what AMA tradition and pharma dictate.
Mainstream medicine is very good at some things, of course. Diagnostic techniques are good and it’s the best for treating broken bones, severe cuts, burns, and internal ruptures.
The main problem with alternative medicine right now is there is no “general practitioner” or “primary care” person to go to for diagnosis and specialist recommendations. If you have a chronic condition, how do you know which alternative modality is best for treatment? Currently the best option is to talk to various practitioners, do research on the internet and in books, use your intuition, and try some treatments to see if they work. Fortunately, many natural or alternative treatments are relatively inexpensive, and have little or no side-effects, so the only downside is that you may have to endure the condition while searching for the right treatment for you.
Finally (and most difficult for many people to grasp), many chronic health issues have their roots in our emotions. Study after study, and thousands of anecdotal stores, show that chronic anger, depression, and anxiety have serious detrimental influence on our health. Even low levels of these emotions over a long time can cause harm. Easily observed, day-to-day experiences point the way to this fact. Ever notice how your heart can speed up by simply thinking of a stressful situation in your life? If one thought can set in motion the biochemical reactions that can speed up your heart, then what else could thousands of angry, sad, and anxious thoughts be doing to all the systems of the body. Even studies of primates have shown that a stressful social environment is linked to heart disease.
An excellent book on this topic is “The Biology of Belief” by Dr. Bruce Lipton.
Fortunately, there are a lot of techniques that have been discovered or developed to dissipate negative emotional energy, without long-term psychotherapy. It turns out that it’s not ultimately necessary to know where the emotions come from in order to release them. Some techniques are EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), Centerpointe (progressive binaural beats), meditation, and yoga.