Thursday, January 24, 2013

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE AND ME

    I practice type of medicine , which is known to everyone as medicine . In reality,it is called allopathic medicine .There are several other types of medicines which are practiced in India, which are quite common and practiced quite regularly. These are Homeopathic , Aurvedic and many more .In India these are not 'week end 'courses but are 4 years college courses. They do have materia medica and the medicines used are produced commercially and are easily available .I do not know much about it , but it is very common to use herbs and regular use food articles . Theses do have many uses and I do tell patients about their use. These are from ginger, turmeric , clove garlic , eucaliptus etc.Many of these are available in health food stores and also in regular or Indian grossery stores.I do not recommend or prescribe any of them , do tell patients to use these and they seem to help at least symptoms if not cure them .
     But there are other things which fascinate me and these are not scientifically proved , but people tend to claim success, and I feel that they need to be investigated . These are Recky, (I may be misspelling the word ), photo therapy , acupressure , acupuncture . etc. I have a personal story that can't beat any of these things .
      You might have heard about Chinese meridians . They are similar to Indian Nadies .This is a story of stimulating them . I used to do exercise with free weights . I must have done something wrong as one day I started having pain in my shoulder.It was so bad that I could hardly lift my arm . When I got in to my car I could not raise my hand enough to put keys in the ignition . On that day I had to do a procedure --an endoscopy . I had major problem as I could not raise my hand . At dinner table , i could not pass the salt ,let alone any other pot .
     Next day was a holy day and I went to a temple . As I was standing in line to offer my prayers , a friend of mine was next to me . He is a physical therapist . He noticed my problem and asked me about it . I told him about the problem and also told him that I had gone to an orthopedic surgeon . The surgeon examined me and told me to take ibuprofen . He did not feel that anything major was wrong and any additional intervention would be needed .The physical therapist told me that he could help me and if I want, he could come to my house that evening and give me the treatment . I agreed.
    He came to my house .I was under the impression , that he would give some physical therapy . Instead he took out a box . He had this meridian locater and was going to stimulate it . He found out 3 different spots , two in leg and one in my elbow area.I knew about meridians . So I was not surprised, but I was surprised to see that 2 of the points were in leg. He did the treatment and left. By the time he had left , I was  much improved, may be 50-60%. Next morning when I woke up , I was 80-90 % better. I saw the orthopedic surgeon in the hospital. He was awair  of this technique, but did not feel it was any effective .
   To analyse the whole situation , as I do it all ways , I had taken Advil twice , and not done any exercise, So it could be the effect of the anti inflamatory drugs . But to me the improvement was too quick and significant ,very close to the this new treatment , that I feel that it was related to stimulation of meridian .
   I do believe that  there are lot of 'fake' alternative treatments, but there are effective real treatments too. The difficulty is that we do not have definite double blind studies, that could prove it .

No comments:

Post a Comment