Combining the Best of Both Worlds

The Line has been drawn and it needs to be erased. Where is it written that you can’t combine natural medicine with allopathic medicine?? It is very rare that you run into a practitioner on either side and get a balanced viewpoint about the other. With all the talk about integrative medicine, there really doesn’t seem to be movement on either side to really do this. I believe it’s up to us as patients or warriors in the battle of preventive health to call the shots and demand that both sides begin to bury the hatchet.
I recently had a brush with death at the hands of a medical intervention. I was infected with a rare and slow growing bacteria in the hospital when there for a routine appendectomy. I eventually had to return to the hospital to get medical intervention again, as I was unable to get on top of this infection through natural means. I was on three different antibiotics. My doctor asked if I was taking any natural supplements and asked me to stop. I refused. They were helping me avoid a yeast infection, reducing the inevitable gas and bloating that occurs with these medications and keeping my energy up. I know not to combine medications with certain supplements, so I am confident in what I was doing.
Really, I am a self proclaimed medical basher, but I learned a few things through this experience. One very important lesson is that there is a place for both philosophies and they can be used together very effectively. So many people are frightened by their medical doctors into not combining the two because they don’t have any knowledge of natural medicine, and natural health practitioners are equally as guilty of believing that all procedures and medications given by the MD’s are bad, poisonous, dangerous and completely unnecessary.
It’s time for a new paradigm and a blurring of the lines between the two disciplines. We need to start demanding what we want as consumers of health care. It is up to us to make choices and to vote with our feet. I propose the following bill of rights for us medical consumers that want more out of our health care professionals.


Patient bill of rights:
1. We demand to be listened to, we demand that you take your time and really understand our complaints and feel our pain.
2. We reserve the right to choose our own course of medical care with your expert advice to help guide us and we don’t want to be bullied into procedures or medications that we don’t fully understand.
3. We demand to have every procedure or medication or supplement explained to us in a manner and in language that we can understand. We need to know the risks, outcome and goals of each.
4. We want to be given choices, where a noninvasive, less expensive procedure will suffice let us be given the choice.
5. We demand health care providers that will refer us out to others more competent when they are not the right one to take care of our needs. We want practitioners that put our health above their egos.


Using Natural Health Care with modern Allopathic Medicine: What would that look like?
How about a combination of the two that really covered all our needs. What if we could go to a natural health care practitioner that took care of our needs for preventative medicine. They would check us for nutritional deficiencies that would later lead to disease processes. They would make sure we were getting the proper supplements. Our diets, and lifestyles would be evaluated and we would be counseled on ways to improve our chances of remaining well. We would be evaluated, and corrected for structural imbalances that could lead to further injury later in life. We would have basic vital signs measured to be sure there were no signs of dangerous medical conditions impending. We would also see on occasion a medical practitioner that would do a more detailed physical and include occasional blood work to evaluate our path to optimal health. When such an occasion arose for emergency medical intervention, we would be referred to the appropriate health care provider. If medication was absolutely necessary, our natural health care provider would be well enough informed to counsel us on nutritional supplements to reduce the side effects and not interfere with the medication. What a concept! Let’s demand that now, it’s up to you!!
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