A personal story of my introduction to "alternative medicine".

About 2 years ago, I became good friends with a former female co-workers. Her son suffered a severe form of autism, the type that impaired his ability to speak. he was 10 years old and hadn't spoken one word since he 3. Since that day, he's been a non-stop patient and subject of therapy for autistic children, the best modern medicine can offer. But alas, officially speaking there is no cure for autism.

At least until she had decided to try something different. At the insistence of one of her friends, she took her son to a well known clinic in nevada specializing in alternative medicine. the doctor put her son on an intense schedule of homeopathic and herbal medicines designed to extract toxins from the body he believed caused the autism. The treatment cost thousands of dollars as it was not covered by her health insurance and was to last several months, if not years.

~1 month after treatment began, I got the news of a miracle. Shortly after being scolded for hurting his sister, her son scared the living hell out of everyone in the house by saying his first word in 7 years, "sorry". It was choppy and forced, but it was there. He's been improving ever since, though the progress is slow.

Incurable my ass.

__________________
True knowledge exists in being aware of what you don't know.

Was he still in the therapy when this miracle occured?

__________________
Left sucks! so visit our new group! Obama is a Joke!

I'm sorry but alternative medicine is nothing more than superstition.

Our understanding of mental illness is sketchy, my brother is mentally handicapped and doesn't even have a diagnosis, and each disease has a vast spectrum (especially autism), so events like the one you mentioned should be expected to happen. Since we don't understand the disease various developments in the body affect the manifestations of these diseases unexpectedly. Puberty is oftentimes known to make or break some of these diseases, for example.

Alternative Medicine exists because we don't want to believe something isn't understood or has no cure. I've worked with a child suffering ADHD whose parents insisted that the cocktail of vitamins and supplements he was given were the "natural cure" he needed, and left me to deal with the consequences of not using the orthodox treatment. At the camp I was volunteering with, I had been told by previous volunteers that the child was very easy to care for and would be a good first time kid to ease into the camp with, but that week I was told by the director the child had never behaved so badly at camp before. Real Medicine versus Alternative Medicine. They just don't work, but when society can't do anything for us, we like to believe renouncing it can fix everything.

Are you referring to the traditional therapy he had been in for 7 years? If that's what you mean, partially. In school he was still places in classes appropriate for the autistic, but external from school he was no longer participating in any programs or going to his doctors. You might claim that after 7 years, they just so happened to finally have a break, but the likeliness that it was not substantially impacted by his alternative doctors given that it happened within 1 month of starting his treatment there makes that extremely unlikely.

This is a place that my friend's friend had been going to for years. I even tried the place out myself, though I'm still a little nervous about the whole thing. When I went there to get a general evaluation, I was prescribed with a homeopathic medicine and a natural fruit supplement to treat my dandruff, allergies and general feeling of fatigue. about three weeks pass and my chronic dandruff was receding and i could breath through my nose for the first time in years. I didn't feel any different as far as fatigue goes, lol... I wasn't exactly fatigued to begin with.

__________________
True knowledge exists in being aware of what you don't know.

Oh believe me, I understand that there are plenty of "quacks" out there, and you should always be skeptical. That's part of the problem is distinguishing the scams from the real stuff. Our system is designed to put any such developments down, however, via the FDA ruling that only a drug can "diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease". To become FDA approved requires millions of dollars of testing, research, etc. and since they are natural, they can't be patented like a pharmaceutical drug. So any alternative medicine is forced to be put in the same pot as the quacks. Along with eating your fruits and vegetables, which also can not legally make the claim to prevent any disease.

__________________
True knowledge exists in being aware of what you don't know.

I'm sorry, but if we know so little how can you so quickly dismiss it?
Not all alternative treatments will work, just as not all medical treatments will work. Some alternative doctors are quacks, just as some legitmate doctors are quacks.

__________________
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson

Because there is no scientific evidence to suggest it does anything. What are the chances some random herb will affect a complicated mental illness?

Here it's the precentages that matter. Even though no medical evidence would suggest alternative medicine works at all, let's say it works 1% of the time, whereas normal medicine works 75% of the time. That one percent is from stabbing in the dark, the 75% is from understanding the human body.

Same goes for Alternative Doctors and Medical Doctors, It's rare to find a quack still employed, in contrast I've never met an Alternative Doctor who isn't a quack.

It seems we need to make a distinction. I have no doubt that modern medicine is very important, and no doubt that it saves lives. Sometimes our bodies are just screwed up and that's where modern medicine is wonderful in it's ability to override nature's flaws. However, I don't think we can forget that we evolved in nature (if you believe in evolution that is). Therefore, it's only reasonable to believe that we having evolved through nature, and not through modern medicine, most aspects of maintaining our normal health can be found through maintaining a natural balance of what nature provides. A simple example is eating right.

So while I agree, more testing is great and I hope it gets funded, it's not outlandish to think that natural medicine is capable of handling at lease some of our health issues. It's not just a matter of finding some magic random herb. It's a matter of finding what your body is deficient of and why it is out of balance then addressing that.

I think you underestimate the growing establishment of alternative medicine. Nevada, for instance, has a state created and regulated board called the Nevada State Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners, enshrined in law. http://www.nvbhme.com/. The the clinic that treated the boy who's story I told above is ran by a former president of this board.

__________________
True knowledge exists in being aware of what you don't know.

Where would anyone find the money to conduct the research and exhaustive double blind studies on herbs, which are available to everyone, that big pharma can invest into mega profit products that they create? See the point? Some alternative medicines may in fact work and work better than prescription meds but the problem is that no one would fund millions of dollars of studies to prove something you can get darn near for free is equal to or better than a manufactured drug.

I believe some alternative medicines work. Some don't. Same with prescription drugs.

Another problem is that prescription drugs often do not cure, they simply mask the issue. They are palliative. Often they work fast because they only address the symptom. Alternative medicine may heal and cure the underlying cause of the medical issue but alternative medicine often works with the body or helps the body act naturally. That usually takes longer and we aren't a culture of people who like to wait for anything.

I know Ayurveda works. Can't say that it works for autism.

My son has Autism, He's almost 4, and we treat him with a combination of ABA Therapy and Treatments that we've learned from the Sonrise Program. One of the things that I've found is that he will either speak when he's either in a very good mood and very free to express himself, or when he's in a high stress situation. As an example, once I was driving with my Mother In Law, and she was trying to get him to eat a Banana (he only eats Pureed foods), so he got overly exacerbated and cried out DA, DA ,,, DA, DA, as if to say, "Save me from this crazy woman!"
Most of the time though, I think he feels that he simply doesn't have the need to speak, so he won't. Sometimes after working with him for a half an hour or so, I might get him to whisper a word or two, but usually it's hard to get him to talk. I try not to put too much pressure on him though, because I know of other parents that have pushed their kids too hard, and they ended up regressing, so I try to maintain a good balance of learning through play, but I can tell you that it is definitely exhausting work, raising a child with Autism. I've had to cut back my hours to only 3 days a week (my wife works with him on those days) and my wife had to cut back her hours to only 2 days a week, so it's been very hard both emotionally and financially on us.
I feel bad for those who end up in this situation and don't have the resources that we have.

__________________
http://www.nosocialism.com
-----------------------------------------------
America is not a Socialist country, this is why the only democrats who ever win, are democrats who SOUND like Republicans (Hello Bill Clinton - Low taxes, Free Trade, Welfare Reform, Era of Big Government Over - Sounds Republican).