Friday, September 12, 2008

The Popularity Of Alternative Medicine

If you have ever looked into alternative medicine in the past, you are probably well aware that it is becoming quite popular. Although alternative medicine is probably never going to overtake standard medicine, the number of people using this method is on the rise. As you can imagine, more and more people are looking into alternative medicine for a reason. For people who have tried standard medicine, with no success, alternative medicine is the next thing in line for them to try.

So what is alternative medicine? Generally speaking, this is anything that is not a standard medical practice. For instance, oncologists have a standard procedure that they follow when treating cancer patients. Of course, they may deviate from this a bit, but all in all they have a standard protocol that they follow through with. If you are not interested in trying these standard practices, alternative medicine is the next best thing for you. Believe it or not, there are many people who will only look into alternative medicine when they get sick; even if they have a very dangerous health problem. The fact of the matter is that they think alternative medicine gives them a much better chance of getting well; and they may be right.

You can see just how popular alternative medicine has become by simply going online, or checking out the books at a local store. There are new alternative health websites popping up each day, and several books have been published on this as of late. This alone shows you just how popular this trend has become.

All in all, if you are interested in alternative medicine you should be able to find the information that you need. The popularity of alternative health is on the rise, and there is no reason for you to not join in on this.

Gout Treated With Alternative Medicine

The name of the disease is not what concerns the person who treats the patient holistically, for they are looking at the die-ease in the patient, not the gout. Gout is a manifestation of the dis-ease in the patient, treating the presenting symptoms with drugs for the inflammation and pain may well relieve the symptoms temporarily, but it's not treating the cause of the condition.

So what is the cause of gout? One might be told that some families have a predisposition to gout, and you may be told that some foods exacerbate the condition, and that's about all that can be done if you are treated conventionally, you will also be given some prescription drugs to alleviate your pain, and to reduce inflammation. If you do nothing else to correct the cause of your gout, then it's very unlikely you will see any improvement in your health.

You may say that since you have been taking a certain drug that you haven't had any gout attacks, and as far as you are concerned not much else matters. Unfortunately the prescription drugs have only palliated your condition, and with constant ingestion of anti-inflammatory drugs and pain killers your gouty condition will continue to develop behind the scenes, and your general health will deteriorate as a result of the drugs you are taking.

Alternative medicine, depending on what modality you have chosen, would firstly want to overhaul your diet, for a diet rich in purine foods would certainly exacerbate the condition, and may even be solely responsible for your gout.

Foods high in purines and are therefore to be avoided: Meat gravies, stocks, organ meats, shellfish, anchovies, sardines, herrings, mussels, mushrooms and asparagus. Alcohol, particularly beer is high in purines, and for that reason must be avoided. Any alcohol taken should be followed by copius amounts of water to avoid dehydration and consequent uric acid build-up. Meat, white flour, sugar, poultry, dried beans, fish, oatmeal,cauliflower, spinach and peas are moderately high in purines, and may need to be avoided.

The ideal diet should contain lots of organic fresh fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, and a very important dietary addition is wheatgrass. Fruits, vegetables and juices assist the excretion of uric acid, and foods that neutralize uric acid are strawberries, cherries, and celery juice, also drink lots of filtered water. Many people have found that the addidition of cherry juice to their diet has prevented further gout attacks.

You may be given herbs or homeopathic remedies for your condition, however a change in your dietary habits may be all that is needed to improve your health. What a simple answer to what could remain a lifetime problem if you may no effort to change your eating habits. If you wish to rid yourself of your gout, alternative medicine can certainly help you.

Preventive Medicine

A Shih Tzu show dog kennel should practice preventive medicine as the means of maintaining optimum health. The Shih Tzu show dog must be available for showing for extended periods of time. Preventive medicine is much more practical and is kinder to the Shih Tzu.

The Shih Tzu show dog must have routine checks for parasites and a strict maintenance of inoculations. Being in the show ring presents more chances of being exposed to disease germs. It is imperative that the Shih Tzu show dog that has been traveling from show to show be kept separate from the home crew once returning home. This can be compared to the older sister or brother who goes to school and brings home the chicken pox to all younger brothers and sisters. Extra precautions should be taken by the Shih Tzu show dog kennel to prevent possible spread of disease germs to the entire kennel and/or any Shih Tzu puppies for sale present among them.

Three very serious diseases to which all dogs are susceptible are:

1. Distemper
2. Hepatitis
3. Leptospirosis

These diseases are serious because they are frequently fatal. Fortunately, there are effective inoculations against all three.

Fleas and ticks are present in almost all parts of the country during warm weather. They are easy to pick up and sometimes quite difficult to get rid of, especially in the case of a long-coated Shih Tzu. Fleas and ticks also are capable of causing a dog to become infested with worms and sometimes diseases.

The simple rule to follow is to consult the veterinarian whenever there is the least question concerning the health of a Shih Tzu show dog. This is especially true in the case of the various diseases of the skin or conditions that result in seasonal irritants. These problems need to be treated promptly in order to prevent a chronic condition leading to the ruin of a Shih Tzu show dog coat, but is also detrimental to the over-all health of the Shih Tzu.

Toy Dogs, which include the Shih Tzu, have physical problems that are peculiar to them. The Toy dogs also have a few advantages over other certain classes of dogs. Many of the special problems affecting Toy dogs are the direct result of having been bred down to their present size. Toy dogs are actually a creation of man mainly for an amusing house pet.

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Turn Your Food into Your Medicine

Fast paced life of modern world has necessitated us to give only lower priority to nutrition. This is at a time when nutrition awareness of everyone is high. Instead of taking well cooked food items, fruits and juices, people go after carbonated drinks, fast 'junk' food, frozen and preserved food, microwave food. People also don’t take the time to enjoy and appreciate the food they eat. Today most of us just need any food that fills the belly for sometime.

This food habits have given rise to a variety of health problems. Significantly important one among them is diabetes.

Ayurvedic principles tell us food is one important element that keeps a person in a balanced state of body, mind and soul. Taking healthy food translates into healthy body.

Ayurvedic view on diabetes is no different. There are times when diabetes can attack without any warning sign. Ayurvedic food style combined with certain herbal applications helps one effectively manage his or her condition of diabetes.

High sugar level is the most dreaded thing about diabetes. Ayurveda recommends food items that don't release excess sugar into the blood. Food items that are too sweet, ice cream, chocolate, friend food items, white flour, preserved food, fast food, junk food etc are to be avoided. Bad habits like smoking and drinking should be given up.

Ayurveda recommends Ayurvedic herbal tea for diabetic patients. Replace sugar with honey or jaggery (thickened molasses - sarkkara) or better still palm jaggery (thickened palm molasses - karippatti).

The advantages or drinking more than eight glass of water everyday is not easily told in an essay. Drink a minimum of 8-15 glass of water in the day time. After sunset take only minimal quantities of water. Another thing is to drink plenty of water an hour before a meal and an hour after the meals. Drinking water close to meals dilute the digestive fire (in Ayurveda it is called pitta) and makes the process of digestion difficult.

Take fruits like grapes, fig, pomegranate, citrus fruits etc. Bitter melon (bitter gourd, karela) is used as medicine for diabetes.

The point about Ayurvedic management of diabetes is never a hard task. All you will have to do is to incorporate Ayurvedic principles as your daily routine. Having healthy food and exercise regime itself can help one control his or her diabetes to a great extent.

Include turmeric and garlic as spices, bitter gourd as vegetable, triphala as a laxative and drinking lot of water as daily habit. These are not very difficult to follow. You can't eat or drink all the food items you have. But living a sweeter life sometimes means giving up some sweet for tongue food items.

Alternative Medicine Within The NHS

It amazes me that even today, knowing the connection between the mind and body that we continue as a nation to feed ourselves with medicines and other such pills whenever our bodies send us the message that something is wrong. I feel that more time and money should be invested in addressing the real causes of ailments, rather than continually treating the symptoms. I am a member of the NHS Directory for Complimentary and Alternative practitioners. This is something that I have to pay for whist using the very carefully worded phrasing above. My details are on an NHS list somewhere and I have never received one referral as a result of being on it. I have even hypnotised a doctor’s receptionist in from on several doctors at a primary care trust meeting.

Below, I explore some of the reasons why I believe hypnotherapy and other such practices should be given much more credibility by the medical establishments.

1. Relaxation

Lets face it, the only time most people relax these days in when they go to bed- and then they can't even do that properly, the get busy brains right at the point where what they actually need most, is to go to sleep. Relaxation is so important and should be integral of your every day routine. Without it, there is often no way of releasing the build ups of stress that accumulate in the every day working lives that we have. This can lead to aggravated states within the body, such as headaches, IBS, muscular aches and pains and lack of energy.

2. Motivation

Quite simply we don't get very far without it. Motivation keeps us going and keeps us growing, and everybody has to grow in order to feel fulfilled in life. We have 2 kinds of motivation in life, things we are motivated to achieve and things we are motivated to get away from. Strangely the latter contains the most power due to the fact that it is most like a survival instinct. In short, motivation is essential in life and you really won't get very far without it.

3. Life Changes

This is probably the broadest of the 3. People want their lives changed in many different ways. For some, changing their life might be about changing their lifestyle- taking up more exercise or giving up smoking for example. For others, changing their life might mean leaving behind years of emotional baggage from abusive relationships. Either way, one small change always tends to snowball and have positive knock on effects in many other areas of life also.

Hypnotherapy has been used as a therapeutic tool for many years and has been recognised by the British Medical Association since 1955. Yet still it is brushed off as invalid and jiggery pokery. If as a nation we invested as much money into alternative practices as we have into pharmaceuticals, we would have invested wisely. People would be in a better position to take responsibility for the impact their lifestyles have on their bodies, getting better would be more empowering, potentially less money from the health services would be spent on treating symptoms and would be more geared towards finding and solving the causes. Let’s hope for the future that our potential as human beings can be taken more seriously than our belief in manufactured drugs.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Modern Medicine versus Nature in Treating Cancer

In contrast to at least 6000 years of the practice of natural medicine, Western medicine treats the body as a collection of parts instead of as a synergistic organism. When it comes to treating broken bones and injured body parts, mainstream Western medicine is unequaled. When this same approach is used to treat illness and disease - fixing or repairing the parts where the symptoms of underlying illnesses manifest themselves, modern medicine fails miserably.

In the instance of cancer, instead of addressing the causes of cancer - toxins and a weakened immune system - we see instead treatments that either slash, burn or poison away the tumors and cancer cells, which further weakens an immune system cancer has already defeated and only worsens the conditions that led to cancer to begin with.

Even if initially successful at getting rid of existing cancer cells and tumors, the end result is a weakened body which may have major organ damage and which is more susceptible to the reappearance of the original cancer, as well as other forms of cancer and diseases.

For half a century or more, we have been told that a breakthrough or cure for cancer is just around the corner, yet the death rates for cancer remain virtually unchanged. Meanwhile, effective natural and alternative treatments which address and correct the actual causes of cancer continue to enjoy much greater success than the largely failed mainstream treatments - even as these natural alternatives suppressed and come under increasing attack by the medical establishment.

Profit plays a huge role in Western medicine and, because nature cannot be patented, there is no profit in conducting studies on natural remedies for cancer and illness. In fact, if studies were to prove the effectiveness of natural alternatives and those alternatives were to be approved for use in treating cancer and other illnesses, the result would be to admit cheaper, safer and more effective competition into a fiercely guarded market. Instead, such alternatives are heavily suppressed, discredited and passed off as "snake oil" and "voodoo medicine".

The cold, hard fact is that cancer and other degenerative and chronic illnesses are big business - to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. When their only market place is our bodies, the vested interests of the trillion dollar world pharmaceutical empire, mainstream medicine and the institutions which depend on maintaining the status quo are not likely to allow such natural competition, even though the cost is millions of needless deaths and untold suffering.

A better plan for maintaining and increasing profit is to continue to bring new drugs into the market place which treat only symptoms and have serious side effects that lead to still more drugs in a never ending cycle so that by the time a male American reaches 65 years of age, he takes an average of 15 prescribed and over the counter medications every day - when it all started out with one or two conditions that could have been treated safely and effectively by natural means. A good model for profit, but a horrible one for humanity.

We now have over 15,000 patented and approved drugs, 95% of which have significant side effects. It is no accident that our doctors have been taught for generations, just as we have been, that the way to treat illness and disease is to prescribe approved medications – medications that are made by the single largest source by far of funding for medical education: the world pharmaceutical companies. What exactly has this mountain of medicine actually cured in the past half century? Certainly not cancer!

Make Room in Your Medicine Cabinet for OTC Homeopathics

With the rising costs of healthcare and increasing pharmaceutical-obsession of allopathic medicine, many people are turning to self-treatment for a myriad of medical problems. The complementary and alternative health market is booming and over-the-counter homeopathic remedies are finding their place in the medicine cabinets of informed consumers.

Many naturopathic doctors encourage the use of OTC homeopathic medicines for simple, acute, self-limited complaints, such as coughs or colds, menstrual cramps, indigestion or bug bites. But what are consumers actually purchasing and using homeopathic medicines for?

A survey of OTC homeopathics purchased in health stores in England found that the top 3 most frequently treated conditions were respiratory conditions, bruises/injuries, and mental/psychological issues. The survey respondents perceived OTC homeopathy to be effective in relieving these conditions.

A market analysis conducted in the U.S. showed similar findings. Some of the best selling OTC homeopathic products included cold/allergy medicines, children’s products, and pain relievers.

The most strongly endorsed reasons for using over-the-counter homeopathy were that it was a natural treatment and was perceived as harmless. Most individuals are also aware that there are no drug interactions associated with homeopathic medicines. In fact, almost a quarter of the survey respondents combined their use of homeopathic remedies with prescription drugs.

As consumer demand to play a greater role in one’s own health increases, so does the variety of homeopathic medicines available. For instance, King Bio, one of the leading homeopathic producers in the U.S., has doubled the number of medicines they offer in the last 2 years alone. Their all-natural homeopathic products can now address over 200 different health concerns.

The holistic approach of homeopathy holds appeal for individuals seeking a safe, easy, and effective self-treatment option. Many individuals are looking for better alternatives to harmful OTC drugs; out with the old ulcer-causing pain relievers and aluminum-containing antacids, and in with the homeopathic headache relief and heartburn relief.