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1 disorder which traditional medicine can't cure, and alternative medicine can?

Annesse

Senior Member
Messages
164
Jenny, I think for anyone to really understand the information, they need to be able to follow it from the beginning. I actually don't think the thread was off topic. If we are making a comparison to ME and MS, which is what we were really doing, you would need to involve all of the other diseases to see if there really is a distinction. That is why I started posting in the first place. So, if that wasn't OK, then starting a new thread wouldn't be either.
 

Jenny

Senior Member
Messages
1,388
Location
Dorset
Jenny, I think for anyone to really understand the information, they need to be able to follow it from the beginning. I actually don't think the thread was off topic. If we are making a comparison to ME and MS, which is what we were really doing, you would need to involve all of the other diseases to see if there really is a distinction. That is why I started posting in the first place. So, if that wasn't OK, then starting a new thread wouldn't be either.

I didn't think what you were saying was particularly off-topic either, but you are making more general points, and talking about other illnesses too, so why not start a thread called something like 'Common features in neuro-immune diseases'?

Jenny
 
Messages
15,786
Jenny, I think for anyone to really understand the information, they need to be able to follow it from the beginning. I actually don't think the thread was off topic. If we are making a comparison to ME and MS, which is what we were really doing, you would need to involve all of the other diseases to see if there really is a distinction. That is why I started posting in the first place. So, if that wasn't OK, then starting a new thread wouldn't be either.

The scope of the conversation had gone far beyond what was asked in the title and original post of that thread. While it is appropriate to answer the original question with your thoughts, it is not the appropriate venue for turning to a detailed discussion of your theory regarding the common cause and cure for every autoimmune disease.

Jenny's suggestion to start a thread on that subject is a good one, and would also make it easy for you to link to that discussion when someone might be interested in reading a more protracted explanation.
 

richvank

Senior Member
Messages
2,732
Hi, Annesse.

I would like to stay in contact with you, and would appreciate it if you would send me a PM with your email address if you feel you will have to stop posting on this forum.
Or you could email me directly at richvank at aol dot com. I think your insights are valuable, and I want to understand them more completely.

Best regards,

Richvank
 

u&iraok

Senior Member
Messages
427
Location
U.S.
I would like to elaborate on what Andrew said and what LBS said. Barry Marshall was a doc in a research team looking at bacterial causes of ulcers. He was considered a quack, and almost lost his medical licence I hear. Nobody took him seriously. So he was out there extreme, vitually a quack according to conventional wisdom. A few years ago he shared the Nobel prize in medicine for his discovery. His treatment is now the standard.

I just read this yesterday:

"One frightening morning in 1991, Dr. [Jonathan] Wright [MD]'s Tahoma Clinic was violently raided. Two dozen heavily armed thugs blew past the patient peacefully waiting in her wheelchair and kicked down the door.

In a nightmare scenario straight out of an action movie, clinic staff members were held at gunpoint for two hours before being ejected from the building. The gang then went on to destroy medical equipment and ransack the clinic.

These thugs weren't criminals getting their kicks. The situation was far worse. They were sent by the FDA to harass Dr. Wright, all because he was giving his patients access to...not illegal drugs, not phony prescriptions. Oh no--his clinic was attacked because he was prescribing preservative-free B vitamins!

Now, twenty years later, the mainstream press is breathlessly celebrating the very substance that was the target of the 1991 raid!"

And reminds me of this:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer
German philosopher (1788 - 1860)
 

Catseye

Senior Member
Messages
109
Location
SW Florida
Since the FDA reserves the right to use the word "cure" only for substances that have gone through clinical trials, and no company will push a clinical trial for a natural substance without patent protection, I don't think you realize what you're asking. Besides, traditional medicine has never prevented or cured a chronic, metabolic condition with drugs or surgery. Maybe you are thinking of acute conditions where traditional medicine saves lives? Do you understand that the medical profession is based on symptom management and does not go after the root causes of chronic, metabolic diseases so you can be a repeat customer for life, dependent on their symptom relieving drugs?

Alternative methods are wide, all encompassing treatment protocols that are tailored to an individual's particular situation, not a disease. So you won't have a "cure" for a disease, just for a person. And since it would probably consist of a few different alternative methods, how would you quantify the outcomes? In my case, dysbiosis was the first nail in my coffin, followed by the liver methylation problems and nutritional deficiencies brought on my bad digestion. Finally, all of this resulted in heavy metal poisoning. Long story short, I fixed the dysbiosis first, then the liver methylation problems, and now I am doing chelation and making real progress on getting over CFS. I used diet and supplements (vitamins, minerals, enzymes, metabolites and a few herbs) and was only able to do all of this after I realized the "symptom-relieving, drugs only" nature of the medical profession. If I have a heart attack or a broken leg, I'll crawl or hop to the doctor. But if I have a chronic condition, I will run from the doctor as he will only make it worse like they did with my CFS. Not only did they fail to diagnose dysbiosis, they never even told me about avoiding gluten and dairy foods - they are especially clueless when it comes to nutrition. I started off seeing a digestive disease specialist; this was the same idiot who not only failed to diagnose problems in my intestines, but who, when asked if the food I was eating could be part of the problem, said "no way". Doctors go to school to learn to sell drugs and surgery, not how to fix a sick body.

I was so desperate after a year and a half with no help from my doctors that I went to a chiropractor. Back then, I was a believer in traditional medicine only but, looking back, that was only because of my severe ignorance coupled with an extreme case of cranium in rectum. My chiropractor gave me a small pamphlet on CFS that mentioned food intolerance and the importance of diet. I began feeling better just from getting adjusted (who knew?) and then I started cutting out wheat and dairy and eating more veggies. After that I started googling. If you put "natural remedies" in with your searches, you will cut out a lot of the medical profession's useless advice, I found.

I know from personal experience that nutritional supplements can help a wide range of conditions. One thing that has helped me greatly is oil of oregano. I have watched the yeast and bad bacteria dwindle in numbers over time from using oil of oregano. I was able to see the progress on my stool analysis tests which measure levels of yeast and bacteria. I know I "cured" my candida with oil of oregano because I saw it happen. I guess I could make my CDSA tests available online for everyone to see but what would be the point? For those who believe in alternative methods, no proof is necessary when you get results and for those who don't believe, no proof is enough.

One thing is certain, though, the medical profession has stated they don't have a cure for CFS. Alternative methods are at least able to consider root causes and go from there. So why would any CFSer limit themselves to traditional medicine? Especially with CFS, when you have a liver methylation problem, putting drugs in your system is going to kick the liver when it's down and make things worse. And since doctors are merely drug salesmen, that's all they have to offer you. Many supplements will aid the liver in its job, like MSM, pantethine, milk thistle, etc. But doctors don't know about them because they aren't profitable enough.

Granted, it's extremely difficult to find an alternative doctor who knows enough about CFS to really help. I have gotten my good results from studying supplements and nutrition and knowing why the alternative doctor recommended what he did and I even added a lot of supplements to the protocol myself. I believe you have to be actively involved in your own treatment protocol, you can't just sit back and let someone else do it all. You could start with the recommendations at beatcfsandfms dot org, they were right on about CFS.

Many supplements like metabolites and enzymes have already been studied so we know what they do. You only need a clinical trial for drugs, because they are substances the body has never been in contact with before and you don't know what will happen. One obvious comparison is zovirax versus lysine. One is a drug, one is an amino acid. Both inhibit herpes viral replication. But zovirax is patentable and lysine is not. Lysine is much cheaper and without serious side effects compared to zovirax. But doctors don't even know anything about lysine. Money is what drives treatments in the medical profession, not degree of effectiveness or safety.

Did you know the American Cancer Society only gives grants for groups to look for patentable cures for cancer rather than any cure? Even though they are taking public donations, they are trying to act like a corporation - they want a piece of the patent! It says so right on their website, but not the front page, of course. I think that's pretty disgusting. But it's obvious even to them that if an unpatentable or natural cure is found, they will go out of business. So they set things up to make sure they all have jobs - that if a cure is found, that it is a highly profitable one rather than one that would be cheap and available to anyone. See, if a natural cure is found and gets FDA approval, then anyone can sell it and make it available. If it is natural and easy to obtain, there is no money to be made. And symptom management without a cure makes repeat business. So that is the medical profession in a nutshell. Makes you wonder how many natural cures are being kept quiet in the interest of job security . . .
 

svetoslav80

Senior Member
Messages
700
Location
Bulgaria
Catseye,
I haven't ever said that traditional medicine cures all diseases. It doesn't. However, it cures many diseases which alternative medicine cannot. As Alex said, there is no alternative to the antibiotic for some infectious diseases. One such example is acute lyme disease, which can be completely cured with just 2 weeks of Doxycycline. So your claim that "medical profession is based on symptom management" is not true. It is based on symptom management for disorders, which it cannot cure, but those disorders cannot be cured by alternative medicine either (or if you think I'm wrong, just show 1 such disorder). I'm happy you cured your candida with natural methods, but I cured my with Fluconazole so we won't count this one. And not putting you the right diagnosis (dysbiosis as you say) means a bad doctor, not bad medicine, as dysbiosis is officially a condition in traditional medicine. And finally, diet and supplements are very good things which I do myself, but they're used in both traditional and alternative medicines, so let's not count them as only part of alternative medicine.

P.S. Forgot to comment this one - "Money is what drives treatments in the medical profession, not degree of effectiveness or safety".

Believe me, as I read some of the threads on this site, it's absolutely the same for alternative medicine.
 

Annesse

Senior Member
Messages
164
Catsye and u&irak-great posts! I love that quote. It is one of my favorites. The cancer society info is just sad and depressing. I think fundamentally the entire system is badly broken. So much of the information we are given or are "distracted" by is just being spoon fed to us by big pharma. One example of this is the recent thread here titled, "Astounding Norwegian Research". (No offense to the person that posted it) What if the thread would have said, "Astounding Rituximab Research." Is this really so astounding? Science has known for sometime now that the cytokine, tumor necrosis factor, is dysregulated in ME.

Here is a study that shows this. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8148443

TNF alpa and TNF beta differed significantly from the control group.

TNF is what the drug Humira (another biologic) was designed to target in rheumatoid arthritis. It is also used in Crohn's disease. Both of these diseases also have elevated TNF, so the fact the rituxab blocks B cells is not really such a remarkable discovery. The immune system is not broken. It is DYSREGULATED. Taking a drug like Humira or Rituximab most often leads to serious and even life threatening consequences. Wouldn't the obvious question to ask be, "What is responsible in the body for regulating tumor necrosis factor? They know the answer to this question. Anyone with a computer can answer this question. Rituximab made 5.9 BILLION dollars in 2009. They are hoping you never find the answer to this question.

The inability to regulate TNF is just one small component of the disease process itself. Placing our hopes on a toxic medication is not the answer. All it will really do is make Ritiximab more money and take us further away from our goal of a healthy and happy life.
 

Dreambirdie

work in progress
Messages
5,569
Location
N. California
Thanks Annesse for your contributions. I really would like to hear more.

And I want to add that STAGE 2 DIABETES is another disease that can be cured with "alternative medicine," namely diet.
 

richvank

Senior Member
Messages
2,732
Hi, all.

If anyone here has not watched the movie "Burzynski, the Movie," I suggest that you do so. I think it's available from NetFlix, and it may be available free on the internet. It isn't a movie that will make you happy, but it will give you insight into the situation that has been discussed in some other posts here.

Best regards,

Rich
 

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,300
Location
Ashland, Oregon
Death by Medicine

I really don't have any interest in getting into a "provocative" debate. I take the best of what both conventional and alternative medicine have to offer. The distinctions that are often made between them is similar those I've seen that are made between religions; they're often used to create divisiveness.

I lean heavily toward alternative medicine myself because I've found it to be safer and more efficacious. I've seen many, many references to the tens to hundreds of thousands of people who die or are horribly injured by conventional medicine every year, but very few who die or are injured by alternative medicine. And yet when the latter occurs, it seems to get broadcast over traditional news outlets with great alarm. So I thought I'd post the following for a little perspective.

Regards, Wayne
................................................................

Death by Medicine

By Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD

Natural medicine is under siege, as pharmaceutical company lobbyists urge lawmakers to deprive Americans of the benefits of dietary supplements. Drug-company front groups have launched slanderous media campaigns to discredit the value of healthy lifestyles. The FDA continues to interfere with those who offer natural products that compete with prescription drugs.

These attacks against natural medicine obscure a lethal problem that until now was buried in thousands of pages of scientific text. In response to these baseless challenges to natural medicine, the Nutrition Institute of America commissioned an independent review of the quality of government-approved medicine. The startling findings from this meticulous study indicate that conventional medicine is the leading cause of death in the United States.

The Nutrition Institute of America is a nonprofit organization that has sponsored independent research for the past 30 years. To support its bold claim that conventional medicine is America 's number-one killer, the Nutritional Institute of America mandated that every count in this indictment of US medicine be validated by published, peer-reviewed scientific studies.

What you are about to read is a stunning compilation of facts that documents that those who seek to abolish consumer access to natural therapies are misleading the public. Over 700,000 Americans die each year at the hands of government-sanctioned medicine, while the FDA and other government agencies pretend to protect the public by harassing those who offer safe alternatives.

A definitive review of medical peer-reviewed journals and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good....

.................................................................

The rest of the article can be accessed at the above link.
 

Dreambirdie

work in progress
Messages
5,569
Location
N. California
Hi, all.

If anyone here has not watched the movie "Burzynski, the Movie," I suggest that you do so. I think it's available from NetFlix, and it may be available free on the internet. It isn't a movie that will make you happy, but it will give you insight into the situation that has been discussed in some other posts here.

Best regards,

Rich

YES! Fantastic movie. Though it is truly infuriating to see the scam that is cancer research in this country. Burzynski is truly a hero for continuing his work.

Here's a link.

BURZYNSKI, THE MOVIE
http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=F5B32D25BDC2E1977584DF9A1DF9CC0D
 

LBS

Senior Member
Messages
115
Location
Sacramento, CA
Hi, all.

If anyone here has not watched the movie "Burzynski, the Movie," I suggest that you do so. I think it's available from NetFlix, and it may be available free on the internet. It isn't a movie that will make you happy, but it will give you insight into the situation that has been discussed in some other posts here.

Best regards,

Rich

I watched this the other day, after reading about it here. I do have to say that I wasn't much surprised by any of it.
 

Catseye

Senior Member
Messages
109
Location
SW Florida
You are talking about acute and chronic conditions as if they are in the same category and they aren't. We all need the medical profession for a crisis. For a chronic, metabolic condition, they will ruin you. When I said the medical profession was based on symptom management, I was talking about chronic, metabolic conditions so you must have misunderstood me when you said "it is based on symptom management for disorders, which it cannot cure". You also said that alternative methods cannot cure those disorders, either. But I think some, including me, have already listed some in this thread. Maybe you are confused with the terms. You are using "disease" and "disorder" but those terms need to be narrowed down to acute and chronic conditions otherwise the sentence is ambiguous.

For an acute condition or a crisis, the medical profession is indispensable - they save lives. For a chronic, metabolic condition, they are completely useless because of their refusal to find the root cause and their lack of use of vitamins, enzymes and metabolites that we are deficient in.

You said "one such example is acute lyme disease". Well, that's the whole problem with your argument. Alternative medicine is about curing chronic conditions, not acute ones. You are trying to compare apples and oranges. I'm sure if I had an acute infection, though, I would be trying oil of oregano before I'd run to the doctor for a diagnosis and some antibiotics. I wonder how many people die in hospitals of acute infections where the antibiotics didn't work but oil of oregano would? My own father got food poisoning once from a restaurant. I gave him some oil of oregano and it cleared it up in a matter of hours.

And why can't we include dysbiosis in this because you cured yours with Fluconazole? Besides, how do you know you cured it? I don't think you have. After all, you're here. Did you do a Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis which lists all yeasts, bad bacteria, good bacteria and their respective levels? No, you didn't. I know you didn't because medical doctors don't use this test. And since you used Fluconazole, you probably killed off some yeast but it is an antifungal and you will still have bad bacteria interfering with your digestion and assimilation of nutrients as well as compromising the integrity of your gut lining. It also probably severely stressed your liver, a particularly unwanted side effect if you already have CFS. And if you haven't cleaned up your diet, the yeast will come right back because the part of your dysbiosis you didn't cure is still interfering with your immune system and intestines; most of your immune system is right there in your gut - it is crucial that you have it functioning properly if you expect to get over CFS.

Furthermore, dysbiosis hinders the bone marrow in its production of immune system components - there is even an article in pubmed about this but the medical profession seems to ignore how potentially serious dysbiosis can be. When they treat it, they are only treating it for the acute symptoms it is causing and ignoring the long term effects. What this means is they will kill off the yeast if you have a whole body, systemic infection, or an obvious gut-wrenching one with diarrhea and other horrendous symptoms but if you have leaky gut syndrome, they will ignore it. And there is a simple test for leaky gut, too.

I think most CFSers have dysbiosis and the resulting leaky gut at some point but it goes undiagnosed. I wouldn't consider that a bad doctor, I would consider it one of the problems with the medical profession: their lack of finding the root cause or even looking for it. Remember, they are approaching your disease with the intent of selling drugs and surgery, not fixing your broken body.

Sure, there are just as many quack medical doctors as there are alternative doctors, but the nature of the medical profession makes it impossible for them to treat us with things that will help the body heal, like proper diet and supplements. Instead, they only use drugs which mostly work by blocking enzymes and overworking the liver - that's why they have side effects and why they are a hazard for a CFSer.

Diet and supplements are not used by the medical profession. If they were, you would have standard tests to look for nutritional deficiencies and food intolerances, causes of virtually all chronic conditions. It is impossible for the medical profession to treat these chronic conditions from these root causes because they would not be nearly as profitable. If a particular doctor is recommending a particular diet and supplements, then he is doing it on his own. Do you understand how futile it is to trust an industry with making you healthy when they profit more the sicker you are? Alternative medicine goes after the root cause so they don't have this major conflict of interest.

So why do you think the medical profession refuses to address root causes?
 

Sallysblooms

P.O.T.S. now SO MUCH BETTER!
Messages
1,768
Location
Southern USA
Diet and supplements are not used by the medical profession.

Thankfully, the MD's do use SOME supplements like Alpha Lipoic Acid and NAC to save lives with poisonings. Also, IV mag. for people with migraines. Urologists use Potassium Citrate all the time for kidney stones.

My doctors do look for causes and that is why I am so much better.

As a whole, MD's have a LONG way to go. We have to keep finding the best alternative MD's that do complementary care. The best of both worlds. No reason to have to choose. Thank goodness there are more and more excellent doctors that do great work.
 

Catseye

Senior Member
Messages
109
Location
SW Florida
One major problem most of us have at one time or other with CFS is leaky gut syndrome. It is not even recognized by the medical profession even though there is a simple test for it using 2 sugars and their respective abilities to permeate the gut lining. In the medical profession, they actually have the term "intestinal hyperpermeability" but most doctors don't believe in it, test or no test. It simply isn't something they learned in med school. It is extremely difficult to cure and takes months or even years of a very restricted diet and supplements. I used oil of oregano and a low carb diet, basically. It took me 2 years to cure the leaky gut syndrome, which was evident from my lab tests and from the way I felt. Once the dysbiosis was finally cured, the liver methylation restarted.

You have to know which kind of doctor to go to for which part of CFS you have. For example, for the dysbiosis, I saw an alternative doctor who was also a chiropractor. He used lab testing and never guessed like many of them do. If you have hormone imbalances like from thyroid or adrenal problems, you may need an endocrinologist to write you a prescription. For the methylation problem in the liver, the alternative doctor who specialized in leaky gut and the resulting liver issues will be able to handle it. For the eventual heavy metal poisoning from the liver dysfunction caused by dysbiosis, a medical doctor who specializes in chelation is needed because it is a drug requiring a doctor's order. And that is where I am now. If you can't distinguish the kind of problems you are having between which is treatable by drug and which is treatable by diet and supplements you will need an integrative doctor who can help guide you. Of course, if you can fix the dysbiosis, fix your liver and take hormones in the meantime, then chelation will start removing what is causing most of the remaining symptoms. Heavy metals are interfering with enzyme systems from one end of the body to the other and when you pull them out, depending on how much damage has been done, you will regain a certain degree of health, maybe all of it. At least, that's what seems to be happening to me and others I have read about. It really depends on how long you have had dysbiosis and heavy metals accumulating that determines how much ongoing damage you have to contend with. Most people who go through what it takes to get over it can end up 80-100% back to normal. I'll be totally happy with even 80%! My chelation doc says he has seen lots of people get all the way back to normal. It's just real expensive and takes awhile.

Knowing which kind of doctor to use and when is half the battle.
 

Sallysblooms

P.O.T.S. now SO MUCH BETTER!
Messages
1,768
Location
Southern USA
Usually, a good integrative MD can deal with most of that. I have a separate doctor for my BioHormones, specialists and endocrin. knew very little. Just depends on the doctors, each is different.