Why "Natural Healing"?
recent edition of a news magazine 1 featured a cover story on the dangers of supplements. Herbs can be harmful if they are used for nontraditional purposes or, especially, if used in combination with pharmaceutical drugs. Yet, the minimal risks of herbal medicine must be put into perspective.
The facts:
- From 1981 to 1993 there was one (1) verified report of death from vitamin and mineral supplements and no deaths from commercial herbs. 2 That changed in the 1990s when the demand for diet products escalated, and a herb was used for a nontraditional treatment. From January 1993 to October 1998, the FDA received reports of 2,621 serious problems linked to supplements, including 101 deaths, most of which were inappropriate use of ma huang/ephedra. 3
- 250,000 deaths per year in America are due to unnecessary surgery, medication errors, and negative effects of drugs, making physician errors and pharmaceutical drugs the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.4 The figure of 100,000 deaths due to drugs is more commonly heard (and somewhat more comprehensible); more than half these drug deaths were hospitalized patients admitted for conditions unrelated to drugs. 5
- Cost considerations: 80 percent of lab tests are needed only by laboratory directors and hospitals that collect payments according to a leading pathologist and former editor of JAMA. 5 Administrative costs of healthcare are in excess of one-quarter of our national healthcare bill--and projected to be 50 percent of costs by 2020 if present trends continue.
- The Center for Disease Control reports that six major chronic diseases account for 73 percent of all deaths in the US: heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, obstructive pulmonary disease, and liver disease. The nation spends $425 billion annually on these diseases, which are largely preventable. Yet less than one percent ($287 million) is spent on disease prevention. This amounts to $1.21 per person annually--much less than the weekly cost of a good multivitamin.
Pharmaceutical drugs have no equal for the treatment of trauma. For every other medical or health issue there are Natural Healing treatments that are more effective and DO NO HARM if used properly. A defense of pharma drugs that is often heard in the debate of "natural medicines vs. pharmaceutical drugs" is that many drugs were initially developed from plant sources. This is true, but in isolating and extracting the part of the plant that is effective is aiding healing, the chemist eliminated the remainder of the plant that mollified the effect; the result is the pharmaceutical product has drastic side effects that the whole plant would not.
The healthcare therapies in WomensMedicineBowl are referred to as "Natural Healing" not "alternative and complementary" medicine. Our aim is to educate on natural healthcare processes so that women will make pharmaceutical drugs the "alternative", the medicine of last resort.
Having the knowledge (and natural remedies) to heal most of life's ailments without the time, energy, and expense of running to a physician is empowering. The objective of WomensMedicineBowl, ultimately, is empowering women to take responsibility for their healthcare and their families' healthcare through information exchange.
See also How Do Pharmaceutical Drugs Work? and Is Natural Healing Right for Me? and Tending to Spirit
Footnotes:
- US News & World Report, Feb. 12, 2001
- Kenneth R. Pelletier, MD, The Best Alternative Medicine, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000
- Consumer Reports, Herbal Rx: The Promises and the Pitfalls, Consumer Reports 1999, 64:3
- JAMA, 284, July 26, 2000
- George Lundberg, M.D. Severed Trust, (New York: Basic Books, 2000)
