Sequel Thread To Holistic Doctors, and medicine

Percy we're just getting nowhere with this. I know I'm not going to change your ideas. Do you really think you're going to change mine?When I mention things that happened to me personally, I'm thinking about a number of doctors I saw, as well as a number of psychiatrists (there was no continuity of care there, just a revolving door). I'm also thinking of the experiences that a few thousand other people have had, whom I've spoken to on various internet lists. I'm thinking of articles I've read, which unfortunately I did not tuck away somewhere in case I had to bring them out in the future as evidence. I'm thinking of books I've read such as Your Drug May Be Your Problem by Peter Breggin, whom everyone else here has written off because you don't like his credentials. I'm thinking of Dr. Rogers' book. What does it matter to you anyway, because while I may accept these things as evidence, you don't.I think the fruitfulness of this discussion is at an end to be honest.

Percy, I've had this discussion before when people on antidepressants get angry about the information I disseminate regarding nutritional medicine. They also tell me that I want to apply my personal experience to everyone else in the world. You can see me as a crank with a grudge, that's not a problem. I keep telling you that I have learned a lot from my ND, who has been using nutritional medicine for over 20 years, and I've learned from the thousand or so people on her list with whom I talk. Yes I know you will dismiss all of this as worthless anecdotal evidence. But it is a fact that I am not just considering my individual case. I would not do that. LOLOL Where did I say that?You keep believing in that march of remarkable medical progress Percy. It's good to have a positive outlook. I see more and more people taking pills for preventable or curable conditions and I don't feel quite so positive. Maybe only time will tell.

I get Dr. Mercola's newsletter and I find his nutritional advice to be generally sound, though I don't agree with him about supplements (the only one he regularly recommends is fish oil). I'd probably go to his practice if the need arose, though I would bet they charge a lot of money because he is now so well-known. I'm not sure what else to say here; if I talk about being skeptical at all, I'll be laughed out of court for putting any credence in a single thing he says in the first place.I'm not so familiar with Dr. Rath to be honest. I would have to check out what he's saying. If I had cancer I would not want to be putting my trust in this cellular medicine idea unless I knew that it had been through some good tests and had been generally accepted, at least by the vast majority of NDs. Other cancer treatments like the Gerson Protocol are more well known and established. I'd probably start by asking my ND about this. Hopefully cancer will not end up being a problem for me or my daughter because we have a good diet and supplement regime, though my husband (who eats a lot of junk food and generally doesn't look after himself very well) is more of a concern.I highly recommend Pauling's book How to Live Longer and Feel Better. It was recommended to me as a good introduction to nutritional and orthomolecular medicine. It's an engaging read and there's a lot of information in it.So what is Dr. Rath's vitamin protocol? And what's his formula for digestion? I would have thought that a good diet, and some probiotics (e.g. if you've had to take antibiotics), would be the only digestive formula anyone needed.

Google Dr. Matthias Rath.He's a child-murdering AIDS-denialist.

Time has told. Go back 100 years and see where we were with the kind of herbs and spices recommended.Go back 70 years before antibiotics.Go back 30 years to a time when my daughter would have died young.Time has shown what works.Time and experience has also shown us who you can not trust. The snake oil salesmen have not changed their pitch in a century. They just use the internet now.There is only one way to tell which are snake oil salesmen and which are not. That way is to skeptically and rigorously examine the claims. By best-friends-brothers-cousin says so is not rigorous examination.

You know, Lindalou, I looked into this a little bit more and I think Dr. Rath might be right up your alley.Matthias Rath - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com

Hi Nosy. I would ask you to please look at a few of my past posts. You will find that I am not "against" allopathic medicine. I've said that drugs do help people, they can be life-saving. And I do not recommend that people take herbs and spices to cure themselves. There's been a long discussion here about this but please at least do me the justice of understanding my position first, before you make comments like this.

Interesting. You tell me not to use anecdotes, yet you are giving one yourself.I honestly have no comment about this person. I am not going to believe everything I read on a skeptic site, which I know is going to have the agenda of bashing AltMed. These kinds of sites are often as guilty of twisting or omitting facts to prove their points, as some of the sites they themselves criticise. However, I would also not be inclined to trust Dr. Rath's protocol without some much better evidence for it being sound. My own ND has a good track record and good qualifications and I think she is deserving of my trust. Dr. Rath? Don't know. I would suggest, though, that you don't waste more time throwing out AltMed examples at me and asking if I'd believe them too because I'm such a gullible fool.

There's a lot of conflicting info out there about Dr. Rath. As I look, though, the overall impression I'm getting is not of someone I'd want to trust.Regardless of any controversies about the precise causes or mechanisms of AIDS, I can't see any good reason why a person should be denied life-saving antiretroviral treatment.I applaud anyone who pushes for the freedom of people to take vitamin supplements, but I think Rath is a bad poster boy who appears to be motivated by self-interest. He wants to be able to sell his products. Since he worked with Linus Pauling, he seems to have gone the way of the entrepreneur. Laugh if you want, but yes it's important to be skeptical of someone who wants to tell you that they have the cure for your illness and they will give it to you for a price. My ND sells nothing and does not charge for her services on her list.I've had a look at some of Dr. Rath's supplements. This is someone who ought to know, from working with Pauling, that vitamin C megadosing should be an important part of a daily health routine, as well as a standard part of treatment for illness. However, they contain pretty miniscule amounts of vitamins and would certainly not be considered orthomolecular treatments. It's highly debatable whether they'd be useful in any treatment of disease, let alone cancer. If someone asked me about these supplements I'd tell them to see a reputable ND and buy any supplements they were recommended individually, and cheaply, from a health food shop.I'm not sure where he went wrong, and I don't think he's completely wrong from what I've read so far, but it looks like Dr. Rath was bitten by the greed bug somewhere along the line.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

Indeed it should be. This is something called the Pauling and Rath theory. You can read about it here. Citations are at the bottom.What you might be more interested in, is the contemporary opinions of some doctors regarding heart disease. The old model isn't accepted by everyone. Have a look here and you can see what some doctors and scientists are saying to each other about this.

I showed his supplements to my licensed ND's. They saw no problems with them.Cancer is one of those issues that it is hard to say what one will do until faced with it.His basic vitamin formula didn't have enough of what I needed.I had some digestion issues and my ND didn't feel the digestion formula would not be detrimental. What is interesting is that the digestion formula had an unexpected affect.I had a mole (according to MD's) on my ear that appeared after a life threatening tubal pregnancy exploded. The mole (about 1/4 wide) stayed for about 10 years. My MD's never said anything during physicals, so a few years ago I finally asked about it and was sent to a dermatologist. The only way they could analyze it was to remove it, which would leave a hole in my ear. I didn't fancy that, so didn't have anything done.When I started taking Dr. Rath's vitamins and we were doing the recommended routine which meant taking several of his formulas. After a month I noticed that the mole was getting smaller. I didn't anything of it. As I said the basic vitamins did have enough of what I needed so we adjusted what we were doing. I stopped all, including the digestion formula, but one after finishing the bottle, which lasts about a month.By the time I stopped the mole was smaller than the first time I had noticed the size change. Still didn't think anything of it. Once I stopped I noticed after a month that the mole was getting bigger. So I started using the vitamins again one formula at a time to see which had the affect. The digestion formula had the affect.I continued to use the digestion formula until the mole was completely gone and then one month longer and then stopped completely. The mole was gone and it hasn't returned in the past year.I tried to talk with my MD about it but he doesn't remember the mole and I never brought the mole to my NDs attention before it was gone.Was it really a mole? Don't know. But now it is gone and I don't have a hole in my ear. I don't use any of Dr. Rath's vitamins currently. They are rather expensive, but some of his concepts are interesting.The vitamin C levels are "low" because you end up taking several of his formulas which all have vitamin C in them.Much as we would like to have people do research just for the sake of doing research, people need to eat. They work to earn money.As I've said before, I'm not really an all or nothing type of person. I glean information from several places and Dr. Rath does give me something to think about. More questions to ask.

Cholesterol is another one of my issues, although not extreme. I don't take medication. I did find that cutting sugar out of my diet lowered my cholesterol to a healthy range. Unfortunately I had a sweet tooth. My MD said I just needed to lose weight. Oddly enough the weight went down and the cholesterol went up. I did not take supplements of any kind at that time and had not cut out regular sugar yet.MD said it was hereditary and wanted to put me on pills. I preferred to try and figure out why my body was making too much cholesterol.I use stevia now in as much of my cooking as possible. The stevia doesn't affect my cholesterol. Haven't been able to bake with it yet. I don't crave sweets anymore, but when the holidays roll around, I'm in trouble. I did find his views on cholesterol and vitamin C interesting. I have to take vitamin C to keep my gums in shape.

This all sounds great Purpledawn. I couldn't see anything in Dr. Rath's supplements myself that should be detrimental -- just small amounts of vitamins. If you were taking, say, 3 of his supplements, then you'd be getting a few grams of vitamin C per day. That's on the low-ish side for a healthy person. Much more should be used for something like cancer, and then intravenous is best. If it were me, I'd still have to say that I'd try to get what I needed more cheaply elsewhere if possible, especially B-vitamins. The amounts of those in his supplements seem very low indeed, and oral methylcobalamin (B12) is practically useless.If cholesterol is an issue for you then I would definitely recommend you have a look at the THINCS site. The doctors and scientists there disagree with each other, heatedly at times, about the specific causes of cardiovascular disease, but they are all in agreement that high cholesterol itself does not cause it. Blaming the cholesterol for the disease is like blaming the firefighters for the fire.Sounds like you're doing all the right things to get yourself well Best of luck. It's nice to talk to someone who's open-minded to nutritional medicine.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

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It's good news to see cough medicines going out of favour like this. I also believe they provide no benefit. However, this is one cog in a very big wheel.

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Er, why do you believe they have no benefit?I am confused; did you think this before reading the article? If so, what did you base this opinion on?

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If the editors of prestigious medical journals are standing up and saying that there are flaws in the system that need changing, shouldn't people be taking notice?

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LOL! They did nothing of the sort! The fact that they are "standing up" is fantastic evidence that the system is working pretty well.Furthermore, it points up just how important testing products for safety and efficacy really is, and how individual bias and the placebo effect can make millions and millions of people believe they are getting benefit from a medication when in reality they are getting no benefit whatsoever.Perhaps you missed this sentence at the beginning of the article: The reason these ineffective medications were allowed to be sold was because the manufacturers weren't required to test them to show that they were safe and effective.The lack of testing requirements is what let them slip through the cracks.The placebo effect, anecdotal reports of effectiveness, and good marketing is what led to them becoming popular among consumers. This is the exact same reason that Naturopathy and other CAM methods and products gain popularity. All these people belive that the medicines simply work. They've seen them work, didn't they? They can talk to their friends who've had similar positive experiences with them. Sounding familiar yet?This bias will very likely be the reason many people will continue to give them to their children unless they are removed from the market, and also the reason people will continue to use a given CAM product unless it is similarly removed.That's another reason I posted this article; the similarity of the reasons people used these medicines and CAM is striking. Identical, really.I share your concerns about the conflicts of interests regarding drug company testing of drugs.However, the point is, in the above case at least, the system worked extremely well, don't you think?There is no similar system in place among CAM manufacturers and practioners. Those systems actually thrive on anecdote and bias (and often magical, mystical thinking), and do nothing to correct for the errors that will (not "may", but "will") result from avoiding scientific thinking, testing, and methodology as they do. Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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If the rules are set out thus: only the majority of double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trials published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals count for anything -- well then, we all know it's drugs.

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Yes, including drugs like St. John's Wort, willow bark extract, and opium poppy derivitaves.