Should professional mainstream practitioners be working with alternative medicine?

Question

I know some do. But should they?

I mean, is it safe to corrupt safe alternative medicine with unsafe mainstream practice.
Wouldn't that be considered unprofessional?

Answer 1

Actually, naturopath doctors are trained in the very same way as a medical doctor, only they are also trained in the area of natural therapies (rather than conventional) where medical doctors are not. A medical doctor may not be as knowledgeable about the natural therapies he is recommending, so it may not be wise for him to do so. Natural remedies are however much safer than prescribed drugs and can be just as effective. Maybe ask the doctor where he has learned his expertise on natural alternatives if concern exists.

Answer 2

As a chiropractor, some would argue that we are alternative and some would say that we are now fully integrated with traditional medicine. The vast majority of my profession refer patients and business to medical doctors all the time. That's called patient care, and it should always be about the patient's well being. As a doctor, it would be unethical to try and withhold a patient from the best treatments whether it be chiropractic, physical therapy, or sending them to the MD for drugs or surgery. Drugs and surgery is not a "treat all man kind" ailments, but neither is alternative medicine, but together combined as an approach can give the patient the best options and choices to their health. Remember, I cannot stress this enough, that doctors no matter what their discipline, work for the patient, not the other way around. Doctors are merely meant to guide the patient when they are sick or injured and help them recover whether it being traditional or non-allopathic. For example, when injured patients come to my office, I will diagnose and treat for their injuries, if they are in so much pain, I send them to the MD for a consult & pain medication, MD sends patient back to me for therapy and rehab, nutrition, etc... Now doesn't that work beautifully, The patient gets the best from both worlds and gets well faster.

Answer 3

Actually modern medicine is the alternative that has become mainstream which subverts the real medicine... Hipocrates said let medicine be your food and food your medicine.... That is the true way which they have turned into just an alternative because they can't get rich with it

Answer 4

Not in my opinion. That would be like expecting Republicans to work with Democratic principles. They're on two completely different agendas. Mainstream practitioners seek to treat symptoms with prescriptions (and make a ton of money) whereas Altmed practitioners seek to give the body what it needs in order to heal itself. I just don't think it would work... the big pharma would get wind of this practice and make life very difficult for mainstream docs.

That being said, my personal doc doesn't seem to care about big bucks and big pharms. Sure, he'll prescribe meds for expedience, that's what he was initially trained to do. But if you tell him you'd rather do it naturally, he usually has an alternative. I believe he's the exception to the rule, however.

Answer 5

Well, by and large alternative medicine treatments (provided they work) tend to have 2 things in common.
1) They are very cheap (especially relative to normal medications), a significant fact when you consider most people cannot afford health care in the US.
2) They tend to have far less severe side effects and complications (mostly due to the fact they are based around simpler far more "studied throughout time" therapies than complex very new marketed ones, and also are much less invasive).

There is also the debateable third tenet which states that alternative therapies produce better results since they cure the root of the disease instead of the symptoms. Oftentimes this is true, but it's variable to the point you could consider this fact an opinion.

There are a lot of MDs (I know a few personally and have read about many), who would like to practice alternative therapies on their patients, but cannot since the AMA will take away their liscence if they do them (in order to protect their business). As a result, doctors are often put in a huge moral limbo, and generally the ones who became doctors to help people (instead of "being sucessful") break the rules. A few of these people have authored studies showing the benefits of alternative practices (hence creating a large part of the scientific proof any of it is safe and effective).

I personally think doctors should do it, but in the US it's very tightly controlled so few do, and some of the ones that do use "crappy therapies." Europe is a way better model, and a lot of techniques considered "quack fringe techniques" are practiced by their MDs (with good results we cannot get over here).

Anyhow, last thing. With Kalos's post, he's using a lot of logical fallacies and flames, but with a great deal of charity, you could interpret his (still unsound) arguement as follows.
Alt med is very bad. I believe naturopathy represents all of alt med. A md gave an extremeley good reason for why naturopathy sucks. Therefore this link speaks for itself and settles the issue of alt med being bad.
So I read the article.
A few thoughts in regards to it.
The doctor is essentially saying some naturopaths practice crappy remedies, or ones not proven to work. Most of the stuff he listed is either not practiced by mainstream naturopaths, or grossly misrepresented (and two points which are actually correct but slandered). Rather he is citing the work of uncertificed naturopaths that were self taught and got their degrees from diploma mills. Ignoring all the appeal to authorities littering the piece, he's essentially making a catch22 to justify banning naturopathy. He's basically saying "non certificed unofficial naturopaths do bad practices we can selectively pick out" therefore "we should not have a certfied naturopath medical board in this state which enforces that they only do good practices and are properly trained and liscened."
Truthfully, that's pretty low even by quackwatch's standard.
I knew one of the doctors who got naturopathy liscened in california, and she told me that the AMA, Chiropractors, and the fake naturopath schools all paid lawyers and experts to testify against naturopathy, since "it's just a business thing and they need to spend money to aggressively defend their markets."
*edit
nice counter arguement Kalos. You ignored the entire point and argued semantics on a single technicality (boards technically do it, but two are intertwined and either can influence the other to do what they desire). I did debate in college and that's normally considered dropping/conceding the entire argument.

Answer 6

If they have sufficient training, yes. If not, refer. That's what I do.

Answer 7

yes. so they can stop prescribing all those pills that cause damage to the body