What the heck is Naturopathic Medicine?

[Lacipart]

It also annoys me to no end when these alternative medicine people like Natureopathy follows get interviewed on a national radio or tv broadcast. Promoting books like "What your physician doesn't know, and it can kill you"

They are trying to sell others on their ideas so they end up attacking and trying to discredit physicians, this can hurt the patient doctor relationship. I once listened to some quack author say how certain drugs (like lipator) can damage your DNA and hurt children that live near you since you "sweat out the toxins". Saying doctors often only perscribe these drugs to get a commision from the drug corperations.

It leads to people not trusting their doctors. People were calling into this show saying how they "just dumped their persciption drugs down the toliet" and praising how this book author "opened their eyes and saved their family"

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[redsquareblack]

Her: I'm so glad there is a "Renew" gas station close to the college now
Me: Isn't that the gas station that sells 80% ethanol gas...?
Her: Yea, its awesome. Filled up my car this morning there.
Me: Whoa, don't you drive a ford focus? The engine isn't made for ethanol concentration above 10%.
Her: Pfft, yea thats what the oil companies want you to think
Me: You're damaging your engine and loosing fuel effiency
Her: Nope, ethanol burns hotter and better and gives off more energy than gasoline.
Me: Whats the enthalpy for octane?
Her: About (negative) 5000
Me: And the enthalpy for ethanol?
Her: Around -280.
Me: Ummm... Okay, [HER NAME], you're the smartest chemist I know... what has more energy per gallon when it burns in a car.
Her: Ethanol. It said so online.
Me:

While technically, you are correct that gasoline contains more energy/gallon than ethanol (~35 MJ/L vs. ~23 MJ/L), I think you misunderstand what octane ratings mean. To wit, E-85 has an octane rating of 110.

/END PEDANTRY

 

[redsquareblack]

I once listened to some quack author say how certain drugs (like lipator) can damage your DNA and hurt children that live near you since you "sweat out the toxins".

That's why I swear by Kinoki Foot Pads.

 

[Lacipart]

That's why I swear by Kinoki Foot Pads.

And thanks on the octane correction, I was never 100% sure about that, but I was fairly positive on the energy contained deal.

 

[redsquareblack]

And thanks on the octane correction, I was never 100% sure about that, but I was fairly positive on the energy contained deal.

Yeah, it's interesting, because despite containing less energy, all things being equal, you could theoretically get more power out of E-85 because the higher octane rating reduces knocking at higher outputs.

At least, that's my understanding. So... take it with a grain of salt. A BIG grain.

 

[delta121]

Guys, guys, guys... you can't argue with people sold on the idea of alternate medicine. Let me just give an example.

Freashmen year I meet a girl in my Gen Bio class. Stellar student, absolutly superb. Best memory I have ever seen and she would understand concepts before you even finished explaining them. Anyway, she one of those far left wing democrat/hippie types. She was a biochemistry major and around juinior year (after she scored a 39 on the MCAT and kept up her 4.0) she began to get really interested in "alternate treatments". I was a good friend of hers and at first listened to her ideas and beliefs, but it began to get just insane to listen to. Here are two of our conversations...

Her: I'm so glad there is a "Renew" gas station close to the college now
Me: Isn't that the gas station that sells 80% ethanol gas...?
Her: Yea, its awesome. Filled up my car this morning there.
Me: Whoa, don't you drive a ford focus? The engine isn't made for ethanol concentration above 10%.
Her: Pfft, yea thats what the oil companies want you to think
Me: You're damaging your engine and loosing fuel effiency
Her: Nope, ethanol burns hotter and better and gives off more energy than gasoline.
Me: Whats the enthalpy for octane?
Her: About (negative) 5000
Me: And the enthalpy for ethanol?
Her: Around -280.
Me: Ummm... Okay, [HER NAME], you're the smartest chemist I know... what has more energy per gallon when it burns in a car.
Her: Ethanol. It said so online.
Me:


Another more medical related example. This was in senior year when she really started getting extreme.
Her: All pharmaceutical drugs are bad poisenous toxins that kill us.
Me: Right...
Her:I know I'm right. Name ONE drug that does more good than bad.
Me: You're kidding? Okay... Penicillin.
Her: Kills our gut bacteria as well, which hurts us.
Me: Yea but sepsis would have killed us first... whatever, okay, Quinine (anti malarial)
Her: That's not a drug, its a plant extract.
Me: A lot of 'drugs' are extracted from nature... but okay, fine, how about Lipator, it saves millions from heart attacks
Her: It has side effects.
Me: Everything has side effects
Her: Exactly, every medical treatment is toxic and bad for us
Me: *sigh*

And thats how she, the smartest person I ever met with unlimited potencial, decided to use her 39 MCAT and 4.0 GPA to apply to and attend a Native American school of Shamanistic healing in northern Wisconsin. I saw some of the material they mailed her, it showed people wearing fox pelts and holding beads.


My point is, you can't use logic and science on a sizable portion of the population. Show them proof dinosaurs excisted and they say God put the proof there to fool them, etc etc. These same people will ignore scientific medicine and choose to believe in some other form of treatment. Berries, teas, rain dances, or (to a lesser extent) chiropracters. A lot of these alternate treatments have some proven health benefits (e.g. chiropracters and acupuncture) but a lot of people will take these minor findings and run wild with them, saying that do 1000x more than they really do.

quinine and penicillin are made naturally in nature, extracted for pharmaceutical use. I recommend those drugs. The person you were arguing with needs to get her facts right.

Naturopathic medicine is NOT supposed to replace western medicine. It's supposed to complement it. For example, patient comes in with serious sore throat. You prescribe antibiotics. ND's will prescribe botanicals to alleviate the dryness and moisten the throat, thereby helping patient even more, complementing/ working with antibiotics. Good or bad?

 

[Perrotfish]

What do you guys feel about Traditional Chinese Medicine? In China, TCM remains a powerful player in medicine. In fact, the TCM practitioners and MDs work side by side in hospitals. Enter the hospital and you see two branches. The TCM branch. The Western Branch.

I hear stories, and they go like this. "If I have a chronic disease, I go see a TCM practitioner. If I'm recovering from surgery/chemotherapy, I see a TCM practitioner If I have an acute problem, you bet your ass I'm seeing a western doctor. The practices complement each other."

Is that how it works in the West? Probably not yet. Would this type of system benefit the West? Chronic diseases such as diabetes, skin diseases, obesity, CVD--these types of diseases are more amenable to lifestyle changes.

Traditional chinese medicine is based primarily on the idea that your disease states are causes by imbalences in your life energy, Chi, as it moves along pathes in your body called meridians. Now, while I'm all in favor of double blind trials, you shouldn't need one here. It should be enough to say that 'there are no such things as Chi or meridians'.

There are 4 known forces in the universe and none of them, whatever your favorite anime character might say, is a 'life' force. The body is a chemico-mechanical system, and effective therapies recognize this. Seriously, we've opened it up, no Chi.

Now it may very well be possible that TCM accomplishes some good in preventative medicine by giving people common sense health advice in the context of their bat**** insane belief system (i.e.: your Chi would really flow much better if you were less of a fatass). However that doesn't make elaborate BS surrounding the common sense advice necessary. A nutritionist could have given the same basic advice without throwing in a lot of expensive and potentially dangerous quackery (i.e.: it would also help your chi flow better if you let me stick sharp needles all over your body).

Naturopathic medicine is NOT supposed to replace western medicine. It's supposed to complement it. For example, patient comes in with serious sore throat. You prescribe antibiotics. ND's will prescribe botanicals to alleviate the dryness and moisten the throat, thereby helping patient even more, complementing/ working with antibiotics. Good or bad?

See the problem is that a patient is likely to see only one practicioner, due to both time and finances. But if you give him just the herbs there is a chance the patient will start an epidemic at their work and then develop rheumatic fever, permanantly wrecking their heart valves. When they see an ND they're getting therapy they didn't need someone to perscribe (herbs to alieve throat pain = a cough drop) at an extremely high cost and there's a good chance that going to the ND is going to cause them not to go to the MD for the treatment they actually need. And that's if you're lucky enough to get a CAM practicioner that works within his limits rather than thinking he can cure a Staph infection with a blend of mint and basil. So yeah, gonna go with the MD.

 

[armorshell]

quinine and penicillin are made naturally in nature, extracted for pharmaceutical use. I recommend those drugs. The person you were arguing with needs to get her facts right.

I don't understand why it's supposed to matter if something is made "naturally" or not. Are you a believer that it was placed there by some divine being for the use of mankind to cure our ills? Because, if you don't, that means these chemicals are a product of evolution to defend said plant/mold against predators. These are biochemical poisons that we as humans just happen to be able to bend to our advantage.

I'd love to hear whatever theories you have about how that's supposed to make a difference vs. a modified version that is engineered specifically to human use.

 

[TheDuder]

I don't understand why it's supposed to matter if something is made "naturally" or not.

Arsenic is "natural" too. The whole "natural" fallacy is based on scientific illiteracy and sloppy thinking.

 

[futile]

Really? No one has posted this yet?

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB_htqDCP-s[/YOUTUBE]

And frustratingly enough, I think the most people on this forum thread agree with eachother, but we're arguing over trivialities.

1. There are some "natural" remedies that work and make people feel more comfortable than their pharmaceutical counterparts. It strikes me that doctors should be aware of these and IMPLEMENT THEM. For example: ever wonder why birch beer tastes like Pepto-Bismol? Because birch oil helps to calm stomach issues. Ginger ALSO helps to calm stomach issues. These are very treatments for mild conditions, but it strikes me that a doctor who was aware of these traits and understood their deliterious side effects would be a better physician than one that stuck his or her fingers in his or her ears.

2. Untrained doctors providing medication = a bad, unsafe system. The whole separating "naturopathic" medicine from "allopathic" medicine is removing credibility from good old physicians. I have no idea why we're buying into that nonsense by calling ourselves allopathic on SDN:

"Allopathic medicine and allopathy (from Greek ἄλλος, állos, other, different + πάϑος, páthos, suffering) are terms coined by Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.[1] It meant "other than the disease" and it was intended, among other things, to point out how traditional doctors used methods that had nothing to do with the symptoms created with the disease, which meant that these methods were harmful to the patients."
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopathic_medicine )

 

[learnmdabc]

Your argument doesn't work for me.

Hypothetical situation.

Pretend a TCM practitioner treats his patients by manipulating Chi. And all his patients obtain excellent results. One day an MD pops in and says "you are not manipulating a physical reality. No such thing as chi. All the living life forces has been discovered. Give it up"

I would vehemently agree with the MD: Chi has no direct physical reality. But I wouldn't agree to give up on Chi for this reason.

Why? The TCM practitioner achieve results. You can't achieve results by doing nothing. So while he may not be manipulating a lifeforce, he is certainly manipulating something.

And that gets to my main point. Chi doesn't have condition the creation of a new lifeforce for it to be effective; it doesn't have to be a physical reality. It can merely serve as a model, a paradigm for thinking, to predict and describe physical phenomenon that we, as scientists, do accept. Chi may very well correspond to blood flow. Who knows?

Insisting that chi exists is foolish and stubborn. It clearly doesn't exist in the imaginative way that many TCM practitioners claim it to be. But that Chi serves as a model for describing certain physical phenomenon I do accept, however. As such, it is meaningful and we may learn a thing or two by studying it. My bias is showing. So I'll leave it at that.

Traditional chinese medicine is based primarily on the idea that your disease states are causes by imbalences in your life energy, Chi, as it moves along pathes in your body called meridians. Now, while I'm all in favor of double blind trials, you shouldn't need one here. It should be enough to say that 'there are no such things as Chi or meridians'.

There are 4 known forces in the universe and none of them, whatever your favorite anime character might say, is a 'life' force. The body is a chemico-mechanical system, and effective therapies recognize this. Seriously, we've opened it up, no Chi.

Now it may very well be possible that TCM accomplishes some good in preventative medicine by giving people common sense health advice in the context of their bat**** insane belief system (i.e.: your Chi would really flow much better if you were less of a fatass). However that doesn't make elaborate BS surrounding the common sense advice necessary. A nutritionist could have given the same basic advice without throwing in a lot of expensive and potentially dangerous quackery (i.e.: it would also help your chi flow better if you let me stick sharp needles all over your body). ]

See the problem is that a patient is likely to see only one practicioner, due to both time and finances. But if you give him just the herbs there is a chance the patient will start an epidemic at their work and then develop rheumatic fever, permanantly wrecking their heart valves. When they see an ND they're getting therapy they didn't need someone to perscribe (herbs to alieve throat pain = a cough drop) at an extremely high cost and there's a good chance that going to the ND is going to cause them not to go to the MD for the treatment they actually need. And that's if you're lucky enough to get a CAM practicioner that works within his limits rather than thinking he can cure a Staph infection with a blend of mint and basil. So yeah, gonna go with the MD.

 

[delta121]

Having too much sex and masturbating depletes Qi.

TCM, naturopathic medicine is here to stay and it's growing and being more accepted now. I personally scoffed at it when I was premed, but accepted it once I learned and spoke with NDs. Lance Armstrong endorses naturopathic medicine.

 

[schrizto]

Lance Armstrong endorses naturopathic medicine.

So? I hate that guy.

 

[greatnt249]

Having too much sex and masturbating depletes Qi.

TCM, naturopathic medicine is here to stay and it's growing and being more accepted now. I personally scoffed at it when I was premed, but accepted it once I learned and spoke with NDs. Lance Armstrong endorses naturopathic medicine.

I hope my sarcasm detector's just broken today...

 

[armorshell]

Lance Armstrong endorses naturopathic medicine.

My mom says I'm cool but that doesn't make it true. Are you seriously falling back on a celebrity endorsement? I see why you like CAM.

 

[delta121]

I don't understand why it's supposed to matter if something is made "naturally" or not. Are you a believer that it was placed there by some divine being for the use of mankind to cure our ills? Because, if you don't, that means these chemicals are a product of evolution to defend said plant/mold against predators. These are biochemical poisons that we as humans just happen to be able to bend to our advantage.

I'd love to hear whatever theories you have about how that's supposed to make a difference vs. a modified version that is engineered specifically to human use.

No, the discussion was, person A thinks quinine and penicillin are harmful substances and shouldn't be prescribed. My thought were, no, it's safe, pharmaceutical medicine doesn't automatically mean synthetic and toxic. Hell, give people aspirin because it's safe, works efficiently, a whole lot faster than any botanical.

 

[delta121]

American cancer centers employ naturopathic doctors. Why?

 

[armorshell]

American cancer centers employ naturopathic doctors. Why?

If all the cool kids were jumping off a bridge, would you do it too?

B&wagon, but at least you're appealing to authority instead of celebrity.

Any chance of you making an argument that doesn't contain any obvious logical fallacies?

 

[greatnt249]

American cancer centers employ naturopathic doctors. Why?

You'd be better off making an actual argument than you would be expecting others to draw specious conclusions from leading questions.

 

[delta121]

See the problem is that a patient is likely to see only one practicioner, due to both time and finances. But if you give him just the herbs there is a chance the patient will start an epidemic at their work and then develop rheumatic fever, permanantly wrecking their heart valves. When they see an ND they're getting therapy they didn't need someone to perscribe (herbs to alieve throat pain = a cough drop) at an extremely high cost and there's a good chance that going to the ND is going to cause them not to go to the MD for the treatment they actually need. And that's if you're lucky enough to get a CAM practicioner that works within his limits rather than thinking he can cure a Staph infection with a blend of mint and basil. So yeah, gonna go with the MD.

Well, NDs in british columbia now have prescription rights, and will continue in the rest of canada and the US. Also, naturopathic doctors are trained in diagnosing something that severe.

 

[Simplify]

Yeah, it's interesting, because despite containing less energy, all things being equal, you could theoretically get more power out of E-85 because the higher octane rating reduces knocking at higher outputs.

A general trend is that low octane burns faster and more explosively and higher octane gas burns slower and more uniformly. Engine knocking is due to pre-ignition of the gasoline during the compression stroke of the cycle. High octane gas is less volatile and therefore not as likely to pre-detonate during this cycle. It has nothing to do with power. The reason octane rating is frequently associated with power is because high octane allows engine manufacturers to advance to engine timing. The earlier the fuel is ignited the better, the problem is that doing it too early causes spark knock and/or detonation. Higher octane leads to increased power through efficiency.

Cars that are E85 capable have special fuel injectors that can increase output when the car is running on E85. It takes a greater volume of E85 per cycle of the motor than E10 and that is due to the lower energy density of E85 vs E10.

 

[redsquareblack]

A general trend is that low octane burns faster and more explosively and higher octane gas burns slower and more uniformly. Engine knocking is due to pre-ignition of the gasoline during the compression stroke of the cycle. High octane gas is less volatile and therefore not as likely to pre-detonate during this cycle. It has nothing to do with power. The reason octane rating is frequently associated with power is because high octane allows engine manufacturers to advance to engine timing. The earlier the fuel is ignited the better, the problem is that doing it too early causes spark knock and/or detonation. Higher octane leads to increased power through efficiency.

Cars that are E85 capable have special fuel injectors that can increase output when the car is running on E85. It takes a greater volume of E85 per cycle of the motor than E10 and that is due to the lower energy density of E85 vs E10.

Ah, I didn't know that, thanks!