DAAN Chinese Herbs and Acupuncture

Two well known doctors debate the alternatives to western medicine:

“In separate interviews, the doctors gave a preview of what’s to come:

Weil: We spend more per-capita on health care than any people in the world, yet by every measure of health outcomes, we’re at or near the bottom compared to other developed countries. What we call health care is intervention and dependent on expensive technology … that’s why our health care system’s on the verge of collapse.

The integrative medicine I teach is really training doctors and other health professionals to focus on health maintenance, prevention of disease and low-tech intervention such as dietary adjustments.

Everybody should take 2 to 3 grams of fish oil a day – it’s a protection against depression, cancer, heart disease all the diseases of aging and optimizes mental function. I also recommend vitamin D-3 (to help prevent many cancers and multiple sclerosis).

Reduce consumption of refined, processed and manufactured foods. Practice stress management, exercise and breathing. Inhale through the nose for the count of four, hold the breath for the count of seven, exhale through your mouth for the count of eight, four cycles twice a day. You can do it sitting at a red light.

Breathing changes the tone of the involuntary nervous system and other imbalances at the root of disease, This affects cardiovascular function, blood circulation, digestion, mood and energy.

Wilkes: I’m skeptical. There may be a placebo effect, but if breathing actually resulted in people being healthier and living longer, we would have evolved in a way that allowed us to breathe that way. Let’s have an independent group study where half get taught to breathe the way Weil does it and see how they do after three months or six years.

And there’s no data that vitamin D does anything for most people. In the absence of data that show it would work, save your money. He’s gotten to be such a wealthy man, put some of that money into clinical trials and see if that stuff works or not.

Medical schools have done a systematically poor job acknowledging this whole field of complementary alternative medicine. Americans spend billions on this. Patients go to see complementary doctors for all of our failures – for needs we can’t meet with Western medicine, and if they don’t feel listened to.”

Tags: East and West //