MD/DO vs ND

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Everything you ever wanted to know about the distinction between MD/DOs and NDs can be summarized by Google image searching "black salve".
 
NurWollen said:
Oh man... I shouldn't done that...
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The story of the lady that shows up as the first result is amazing/tragic/sad.

I can't be arsed to find it now, but she previously had a small BCC which was removed by Mohs surgery. So, a couple years later, she sees a discoloration on her nose that she assumes in BCC, and goes to a derm who says it's benign. She's convinced that it's cancer and, since she doesn't want another Mohs because she's concerned about getting a scar on her nose, seeks alternative treatment. A naturopath 🙄 from some online forum recommends black salve as a topical since it's touted as a "cure for cancer that Big Pharma doesn't want you to know about". She slathers it over the entire bulb of her nose, despite the picture of the benign discoloration she was concerned about being maybe 1 mm in diameter. It destroys the tissue on her nose all the way down to cartilage. She remains convinced it cured her cancer but later met with a plastic surgeon to do reconstruction of her nose.

There was also some account I saw about a guy whose wife was giving it to him orally to kill his metastatic cancer. It ended up perforating his intestine, causing leakage into the peritoneum and septicemia. She assumed him appearing even sicker was a sign of it working and continued administering it. They finally realized that all was not well when bowel contents started leaking out of an abscess located near his navel. He died. Surprise.


Thinking about those makes me really want to go back and reread them.
 
pattr said:
Don't know too much about ND's but thought this article would be relevant; it's written by the president of the ND school in Oregon:

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland...tor-shortage-remove-barriers-to.html?page=all
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Of course the president of an ND school would push for NDs to have as much practicing rights as an MD/DO. If you ask the dean of Nurse Practitioner school their opinion on the "primary care shortage" you'll hear how NPs are the great messiah and are just as adept at primary care as a physician.

Hopefully NDs never gain any strong traction in this nation.
 
darklabel said:
Of course the president of an ND school would pprivel to have as much practicing rights as an MD/DO. If you ask the dean of Nurse Practitioner school their opinion on the "primary care shortage" you'll hear how NPs are the great messiah and are just as adept at primary care as a physician.

Hopefully NDs never gain any strong traction in this nation.
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Exactly.
Does anyone else find it ironic that naturopaths are wanting prescribing privileges?
 
NurWollen said:
Exactly.
Does anyone else find it ironic that naturopaths are wanting prescribing privileges?
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Yup! Here is a ginger root paste AND amoxicillin for that strep infection. One will probably work and it will probably be the ginger root paste but take the amoxicillin just in case you have a resistant strain.

Yea this is pretty ironic hahaha
 
Ok the black salve, although gross, appears to work for certain skin cancers. Is that just a hoax perpetuated by "alt med" people?
 
verynice said:
Ok the black salve, although gross, appears to work for certain skin cancers. Is that just a hoax perpetuated by "alt med" people?
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I wouldn't say a "hoax" I would say they are just ignorant. Black salves use a corrosive agent to destroy tissue, not cancer specifically. Most salves contain zinc chloride (a corrosive agent) and sanguinarine ("Sanguinarine is a toxin that kills animal cells through its action on the Na+-K+-ATPase transmembrane protein."). So I suppose you could say it eliminates skin cancer the same way a bullet eliminates brain tumors.
 
CooIBreeze said:
I wouldn't say a "hoax" I would say they are just ignorant. Black salves use a corrosive agent to destroy tissue, not cancer specifically. Most salves contain zinc chloride (a corrosive agent) and sanguinarine ("Sanguinarine is a toxin that kills animal cells through its action on the Na+-K+-ATPase transmembrane protein."). So I suppose you could say it eliminates skin cancer the same way a bullet eliminates brain tumors.
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Bingo :laugh:

I opened a video propping up black salves and read some of the comments. Someone said that surgery was an inferior option because it heightened the possibility of recurrence. Of course, there was no citation as to why that would be true for surgery and not black salves. :youtubecommentssection:
 
victoriax87 said:
What is an ND?
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Naturopathic "doctor". Google will get you plenty of results for it. They're basically people that want to play doctor without any real qualifications, medicine, or anything credible.

EDIT: To get an idea of what we're talking about, here's one in my state... http://www.idnatmed.com/
 
Last edited:
ND = True greatness. We should all be so lucky that we will be rubbing elbows with them in the future.








Not srs
 
My mom actually sees an ND. Her doctor works wonders on her health. Before, my mom was seeing an MD from Hardvard. But when my mom insisted to seek natural options in curing her ailments, the Harvard MD scoffed at her, and told her to not ignore advice from a doctor from Harvard since, "they know what they're doing." It was then that my mom left the doctor's office and told the secretary she will never come back. My mom is living a healthier life with no complaints, and its all thanks to natural medicine.

I'm not putting down MDs at all. But if a patient wants to seek natural remediation, the MD should at least somewhat be receptive. It's shameful that SOME (not all) doctors (especially MDs) act condescending, and boast their education to patients who dare ask for a second opinion or different way other than what the doctor prescribed.
 
Chillywilly said:
My mom actually sees an ND. Her doctor works wonders on her health. Before, my mom was seeing an MD from Hardvard. But when my mom insisted to seek natural options in curing her ailments, the Harvard MD scoffed at her, and told her to not ignore advice from a doctor from Harvard since, "they know what they're doing." It was then that my mom left the doctor's office and told the secretary she will never come back. My mom is living a healthier life with no complaints, and its all thanks to natural medicine.

I'm not putting down MDs at all. But if a patient wants to seek natural remediation, the MD should at least somewhat be receptive. It's shameful that SOME (not all) doctors (especially MDs) act condescending, and boast their education to patients who dare ask for a second opinion or different way other than what the doctor prescribed.
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That sounds like the attitude I might expect from an Ivy grad
 
Chillywilly said:
My mom actually sees an ND. Her doctor works wonders on her health. Before, my mom was seeing an MD from Hardvard. But when my mom insisted to seek natural options in curing her ailments, the Harvard MD scoffed at her, and told her to not ignore advice from a doctor from Harvard since, "they know what they're doing." It was then that my mom left the doctor's office and told the secretary she will never come back. My mom is living a healthier life with no complaints, and its all thanks to natural medicine.

I'm not putting down MDs at all. But if a patient wants to seek natural remediation, the MD should at least somewhat be receptive. It's shameful that SOME (not all) doctors (especially MDs) act condescending, and boast their education to patients who dare ask for a second opinion or different way other than what the doctor prescribed.
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I agree with you. As a health care provider, regardless of your training and initials after your name, it is important to be open minded in the best interest of patients.
 
Dr Curitas said:
I agree with you. As a health care provider, regardless of your training and initials after your name, it is important to be open minded in the best interest of patients.
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Who is to say the doctor wasn't and concluded natural products didn't remedy the problem? Some people confuse being open minded, which means you evaluate the evidence and then decide, with meaning accepting of all.
 
Chillywilly said:
My mom actually sees an ND. Her doctor works wonders on her health. Before, my mom was seeing an MD from Hardvard. But when my mom insisted to seek natural options in curing her ailments, the Harvard MD scoffed at her, and told her to not ignore advice from a doctor from Harvard since, "they know what they're doing." It was then that my mom left the doctor's office and told the secretary she will never come back. My mom is living a healthier life with no complaints, and its all thanks to natural medicine.

I'm not putting down MDs at all. But if a patient wants to seek natural remediation, the MD should at least somewhat be receptive. It's shameful that SOME (not all) doctors (especially MDs) act condescending, and boast their education to patients who dare ask for a second opinion or different way other than what the doctor prescribed.
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Hardvard... I like your take on the name, maybe if they threw in that second D people would forget about the rampant grade inflation. "Hardvard is HARD! It says so right in the name!"

All typos aside, many modern medical ailments are the result of lifestyle issues. If people are willing to change their eating habits because someone with different letters after their name than MD or DO says so (because God knows no one ever listens when conventional medical practitioners ask them to change) then I'm cool with it. NDs are huge on lifestyle modification and diet and their fancy alternative guise makes patients more likely to listen to them for whatever reason. I just worry when they try to treat real, acute, potentially life threatening illnesses. Your dandelions and hot towels ain't savin' grandpa from pneumonia, flower child.
 
Mad Jack said:
I just worry when they try to treat real, acute, potentially life threatening illnesses.
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Oh, you might want to worry about how they're trying to expand their scope of practice without increasing their training requirements... PCPs who think vaccines don't work and whose education included homeopathy and humoral medicine from year one forward will do wonders for evidence based practice...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/six-reasons-cam-practitioners-should-not-be-licensed/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1140750/?tool=pubmed
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/legislative-alchemy-naturopathy-2013/
 
Mad Jack said:
Hardvard... I like your take on the name, maybe if they threw in that second D people would forget about the rampant grade inflation. "Hardvard is HARD! It says so right in the name!"

All typos aside, many modern medical ailments are the result of lifestyle issues. If people are willing to change their eating habits because someone with different letters after their name than MD or DO says so (because God knows no one ever listens when conventional medical practitioners ask them to change) then I'm cool with it. NDs are huge on lifestyle modification and diet and their fancy alternative guise makes patients more likely to listen to them for whatever reason. I just worry when they try to treat real, acute, potentially life threatening illnesses. Your dandelions and hot towels ain't savin' grandpa from pneumonia, flower child.
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Relevant:
 
Open minded does not mean all inclusive and all accepting. There's a reason modern medicine saves lives from things like cancer, while ND's cannot. We shouldn't even be arguing public health matters like prevention and lifestyle choices because that's mainly things that people shouldn't need docs to tell them about. Maybe a dietitian.
 
wjs010 said:
Open minded does not mean all inclusive and all accepting. There's a reason modern medicine saves lives from things like cancer, while ND's cannot. We shouldn't even be arguing public health matters like prevention and lifestyle choices because that's mainly things that people shouldn't need docs to tell them about. Maybe a dietitian.
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I wish someone would step up to the podium. I reason better public health education in the primary school years would be a good start. Seems to me that talking about eating carrots is more controversial than talking about sex ed or drugs.
 
DrCharlemagne said:
Oh, you might want to worry about how they're trying to expand their scope of practice without increasing their training requirements... PCPs who think vaccines don't work and whose education included homeopathy and humoral medicine from year one forward will do wonders for evidence based practice...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/six-reasons-cam-practitioners-should-not-be-licensed/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1140750/?tool=pubmed
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/legislative-alchemy-naturopathy-2013/
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Yep, that is the stuff that concerns me. I'm well aware of their effort to expand practice. They can even do minor surgeries (suturing, etc) in some states. It's pretty damn ridiculous. The lifestyle side of things, whatevs, but don't go pretending you're a qualified medical doctor that can completely take the place of conventional medicine. And don't even get me started on the anti vaccine crowd. I seriously wish we could quarantine them all onto an island for a few years so they could suffer from measles, tetanus, and all those other diseases vaccines "don't cure" first hand for a while and see the error of their ways.

I think they need to be reminded what ND really stands for- Not a Doctor.
 
The thing that gets me is lifestyle changes are not without the scope of medicine. It's extremely evidence based, and "reduce calories, move more" is actually much easier to adhere to than "ALL THE RAW JUICES!" diets. :shrug:
 
DrCharlemagne said:
The thing that gets me is lifestyle changes are not without the scope of medicine. It's extremely evidence based, and "reduce calories, move more" is actually much easier to adhere to than "ALL THE RAW JUICES!" diets. :shrug:
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Yeah, but they are more likely to listen to a lady that wears a flowery dress with dreadlocks and burning incense as she tells you, "you must cleanse your body with all natural, uncooked food, as your ancestors intended" than it is to listen to a doc that supposedly works for "the medical establishment" or "big pharma" that tells you, "You're fat. Eat less." We've got a PR and image problem, because people haven't evolved much past being mud hut dwellers and the witch doctors still appeal to them more than a guy in a lab coat.
 
Mad Jack said:
Yeah, but they are more likely to listen to a lady that wears a flowery dress with dreadlocks and burning incense as she tells you, "you must cleanse your body with all natural, uncooked food, as your ancestors intended" than it is to listen to a doc that supposedly works for "the medical establishment" or "big pharma" that tells you, "You're fat. Eat less." We've got a PR and image problem, because people haven't evolved much past being mud hut dwellers and the witch doctors still appeal to them more than a guy in a lab coat.
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That's why I'm kind of ambivalent about wearing a white coat myself. It can lead to unintended consequences such as White Coat Syndrome. It's interesting to think about...
 
coolingglasses said:
That sounds like the attitude I might expect from an Ivy grad[/quot
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I wasn't defending any profession. I just believe patients have the right to question their doctors or get a second opinion. Regardless if you went to Harvard or Yale or Johns Hopkins... Doctors make mistakes, and they don't know everything.

But I agree patients should make more of an effort and take an active role in their health care. But many don't and blame doctors for it.
 
Chillywilly said:
I wasn't defending any profession. I just believe patients have the right to question their doctors or get a second opinion. Regardless if you went to Harvard or Yale or Johns Hopkins... Doctors make mistakes, and they don't know everything.

But I agree patients should make more of an effort and take an active role in their health care. But many don't and blame doctors for it.
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I suppose I shouldn't stereotype, but if I heard someone infer that their opinion was godlike without an ounce of consideration, I'd certainly think less.
 
medickdb said:
That's why I'm kind of ambivalent about wearing a white coat myself. It can lead to unintended consequences such as White Coat Syndrome. It's interesting to think about...
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Lol I don't think white coat hypertension actually has anything to do with a white coat...It has to do with people feeling uncomfortable in a clincal setting. You could be wearing nothing but tidy whities and it wouldn't make a difference for people who feel uneasy in a hospital.
 
AlbinoHawk DO said:
Who is to say the doctor wasn't and concluded natural products didn't remedy the problem? Some people confuse being open minded, which means you evaluate the evidence and then decide, with meaning accepting of all.
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Chilly clearly stated the said physician had "scoffed" at his mother's mention of alternative or complementary medical therapies.
The same type of prejudice can be emitted by non allopathic healthcare providers.
It is important to underline the fact that certain procedures and treatments may be more appropriate for certain conditions and diagnoses but then it is up to the patient to choose a course of treatment.
 
TreadLightly said:
Lol I don't think white coat hypertension actually has anything to do with a white coat...It has to do with people feeling uncomfortable in a clincal setting. You could be wearing nothing but tidy whities and it wouldn't make a difference for people who feel uneasy in a hospital.
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It certainly doesn't help. It contributes psychologically and not only to hypertension.
 
I would have scoffed too. Then again, maybe her vital forces were just too out of balance for an MD to fix.
 
ND's do not practice evidence based medicine.
 
user3 said:
ND's do not practice evidence based medicine.
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I'll disagree with you there...nah not really. The nutrition and exercise stuff is in general evidence based, as stated above. It's a total rebrand by CAM to include nutrition as "alternative" or "complementary." Basic nutrition is very evidence based. The other stuff--herbal remedies, homeopathy, etc.--are not. The trouble comes when unconventional nutrition is touted and confused for evidence based nutrition. Sure, high calorie, low nutrient, high sodium processed foods are unhealthy. But a super limited CAM diet is usually not better than a simple varied healthy diet.

There's no panacea.
 
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