Alternative / complementary medicine

I found this tremendous Christian link.

People seem to differ widely on their view of such medicine. Jan and I started as skeptical for 2 good reasons:

• Our background - traditional English tax payers who believe the government and NHS will look after us! Probably my life was saved by the NHS and penicillin when I was six years old.
  
• Our work. Jan has worked at University College Hospital for 20 years, I considered taking a job in their department of medical physics,. They manage CT scanners and radiotherapy equipment.

So we are not against the NHS, and still have trust in them.....

But we are open......God gave us a daughter who had an allergy to dairy products. Dairy could have killed her, yet our GP referred to it as though it was a childish dislike. Her school failed to provide suitable meals, so each day we had to bring her home for lunch. It cost us a fortune in goats milk, soya and other health products...when she accidently had an asthma attack on a school trip she needed emergency treatment, but she has developed into an adult who has dabbled in food research for our largest supermarket chain. So we are open to any questioning that dairy may not be best for us as suggested by Professor Jane Plant's research into Chinese diet.

I looked again at Jane's book, though we have yet to cut dairy. Jan likes her ice creams too much. I read Professor Dr. T. Colin Campbell comments. He is Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, project director of the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project, joint chairman of the Diet and Cancer Project of the American Institute for Cancer Research, and co-chairman of the World Cancer Research Fund. " He says "Professor Plant courageously tells a compelling and very personal story on breast cancer that is a must-read, not only for women interested in this disease but also for the scientific and medical communities, who should sit up and take notice. It is time that the long-alleged nutritional worthiness of dairy be brought up for discussion."

I see a contrast between complementary and alternative, though both may be valid. Alternative suggests that conventional treatment is wrong, one refuses it and takes something else, typically a natural product as an alternative. Professor Jane Plant has a touch of this, though most of her work is complementary. She refused Tamoxifen, had four recurrences of her cancer (maybe proving Tamoxifen has some benefits) and developed her diet to overcome cancer in what she claims is a far safer and more effective manner.

This view has some merit, for example the two treatments that Jan is receiving in radiotherapy and Tamoxifen are both known to be strong carcinogens. It could be said one merely swaps one cancer for the fairly high risk of another, maybe that is why radiotherapy offers no long term survival benefit when measured over 15 years.

Complementary is less confrontational, and looks to diet or lifestyle to complement and enhance the traditional medical treatment. As you would expect, we favour that route until we are convinced that conventional treatment does excessive harm.....maybe that will become our position as treatment progresses!

Professor Dr. Bharat Aggwhal works on complemetary. Maybe he has to as an employee of one of America's top cancer hospitals, who has also worked for a $9billion pharma supplier. His ideas on curcumin (found in Indian curry powder), garlic and tea claim to enhance the effect of conventional drugs such as Tamoxifen, make radiotherapy more effective in killing cancer cells, whilst protecting the body from radiotherapy damage. So they may a winning adjunct to the therapy Jan is now receiving... a win win situation.

I see other alternatives such as aromatherapy and herbalism as less effective, though I have just bought three aromatherapy kits, packs of herbal teas, and a humour CD. After all Readers Digest claim "Laughter is the best medicine". Jane Plant reckons aromatherapy releases dangerous carcinogens from the hot oil, but obviously has soothing effect.

Some of the more spiritual ideas are positively dangerous, hence our current concentration on ideas that have a provable scientific basis backed by qualified scientists such as university professors.