Western Medicine: How it Pokes Fun at Complimentary Health Care

I spoke to a neurologist yesterday who seemed to pooh pooh how complimentary care doctors treat Lyme and other infections. I told him about auto blood therapy, where 4ccs of blood are drawn from the arm vein and then inserted into the buttocks to give the immune system a boost. He rolled his eyes and asked if any real studies had been done on it. I told him that such a procedure in Germany or Switzerland would not seem that strange. While he tried to keep an open mind (he was in his mid-sixties), it kept closing like a screen door with a broken spring.

He commented several times how Western medicine and complimentary medicine are worlds apart and how they don't seem to have anything in common with each other. He seemed to think that a holistic doctor has thrown out the baby with the bath water and is living in a woo woo world.

A friend of mine mentioned to me in an email that Western doctors are trained but not educated. What seems to be missing is curiosity and questioning why diseases are there. Western medicine seems to accept the disease as the "end all" and tries to manage or eradicate it when in reality, the disease is a symptom of something else and functional medicine tries to see the bigger picture. Many functional medicine or doctors who marry the two worlds often are themselves struggling with an illness that is a conundrum--if not themselves, a child or a relative is stuck in a grey area.

This doctor did mention that he was hoping when he went to China for a conference that he was hoping to have learned acupuncture in a couple of days but the Chinese doctors were all opting for Western medicine. I had to laugh -- as if acupuncture can be learned in a weekend! But on the other hand, I had to empathize with his frustration.

The AMA does not make it easy for doctors who want to branch out and go beyond the party line mentality.Chances are if a materia medica doctor mentions to a colleague that he or she is interested in complimentary modalities, he or she might well be poked fun of. It's probably easier for a young doctor to make strides in that direction than someone who is up in years.

I walked away from the neurologist with a deep compassion as well as gratitude for doing what he does so well knowing that we are on the threshold of a new era in medicine and it is the patients and younger practitioners who are ushering it in.