Marijuana Status

Marijuana Status

It has long been a sore point with medical scientists, familiar at all with the physiological aspects of drugs and drug abuse, to find just how political and cultural our legal system is with regards to the various recreational drugs of abuse. For the most part, practically everywhere in the world, the legal recreational drugs of abuse are the most popular ones, and the illegal ones are those used by the minority. Science is not heavily involved. 

Even more disappointing is just how little attention is paid to exactly why people abuse recreational drugs. People do a lot of things which just makes them feel better, or relaxes them, or elevates their emotional state, or relieves the stresses in their lives, or just gives them weird mental experiences. The fortunate people are those who feel good without the need of any drugs to generate these ‘good’ feelings. We get hungry, we eat, and after we eat we feel better. We may exercise, and after we exercise we feel better, we may watch a ball game because it adds some excitement to our lives and we like that, we may go shopping because it makes us feel good to have more stuff, we may seek sex for the evening because it makes us feel ‘good’, we may bet on the horses for the chance to feel ‘good’ when our horse wins, and the list goes on and on. Strangely, when someone takes a recreational drug to feel ‘good’ we start attaching moral and character components to this kind of habit—depending, of course, which recreational drug is being used.  

Part of the problem with this topic on recreational drug abuse is that we tend to feel we have to prove the substance being ‘abused’ is a medical danger to the person taking it. If a person spends too much time gambling, it is bad because they may be losing a lot of money or hurting their career advancement, or breaking up a good family life, etc. A person who shops too much may end up hopelessly in debt, a person who chases after endless sex may find such compulsive behavior leads no where but endless inability to maintain a stable social life, and so it goes on and on, simply a reflection of the down side of compulsive behaviors. Something does not have to be medically toxic to be harmful to our lives.  

In reality, the acquired compulsive behaviors to make ourselves ‘feel better’ rarely achieve any real contentment. It always requires more personal investment to get the same high, and the crashes become more severe. All compulsive behaviors, past a certain degree, require medical attention. If we did the right thing, there would be medical centers all over the country which exist to help all citizens let go of compulsive behaviors of any sort. To take a compulsive disorder and make it a criminal behavior ensures the person so affected will not get any help, and in the case of a drug, it will create a massive underground industry of drug trafficking, turn many cities and rural areas into ‘drug zones’, which in turn drive out businesses, and ghettoes are born or made more dangerous.  Ethically this is plain wrong, and economically it is just stupid. It costs roughly $30,000/yr to keep some teenage kid in jail for selling illegal recreational drugs. With mandatory sentences, we may be talking $300,000 for a ten year sentence. Of course the economic burden doesn’t stop there.  After getting out of jail, now near 30 years of age, the person has no skills to get a job, few want to hire felons, they are uneducated, they grew up in a social atmosphere where thuggishness ruled their living situation, with criminal behavior the means to any money. It would be hard to create a worse model for how to treat recreational drug abuse. Yet we have been doing just that for over 50 years, and all along the way the ‘answer’ has always been stiffer mandatory sentences. It would be hard to choose which has been a bigger hoax on our society, the “drug war” or “trickle down economics”. We currently have more people in jail and more living in poverty than ever before. 

Those of us who use alcohol know why we use it. It gives us a little buzz in social situations or settles us down mentally after a stressful day. Smoking may settle our nerves, mellow us out, or whatever. Cocaine will generate a more excited state of mind, add some energy to a life that otherwise has no such energy. Heroin will enable us to care less about pain, whether it be physical or emotional pain. Marijuana will mellow us out, calm us down, make us giggle, or make us more pensive, or make life feel more acceptable. No attempt will be made here to go into detail about any particular drug of abuse. That constitutes a book. 

In America, nicotine and alcohol are the recreational drugs of the majority. Of all the common drugs of abuse in America, these two are also the most toxic common recreational drugs. Nicotine is by far the most toxic to our bodies. Alcohol toxicity is dependent on dosage, frequency, and genetics. Some people, with a genetic disposition to alcoholism, should never touch alcohol at all. For others, one drink a day may even be beneficial. How much alcohol anyone can tolerate varies a lot. The medical costs for treating conditions caused by alcohol and nicotine are exceedingly high. Those not addicted end up helping to pay these medical costs.

So why has marijuana been so harshly treated legally in the United States? Marijuana use was originally associated with latino workers who found marijuana their favorite recreational drug of choice. It was a cultural thing. Then it became a political football. These migrant workers wandering around the country using marijuana were not going to become something to bring down others in this country to their level. Of course their level in our society had nothing to do with their use of marijuana, but more to their inability to make a decent living. If we take drugs to alter the way we feel, then common sense dictates that the poor and least fortunate in life will be more likely to use drugs to feel better. Unfortunately, most people prefer to think drug use caused their situation rather than their situation cause the drug abuse. Interestingly, affluent people are hardly immune from a perceived need to use drugs to alter their emotional state. Thus, the problem crosses economic levels. It also shows that one doesn’t have to be poor to be unhappy about their lives. 

President Richard Nixon was the first modern President who attempted to line up science behind our drug laws. He authorized scientific studies to straighten out the ‘drug mess’. The results of the studies did not support political and cultural realities and he never released these studies. The political pressure back then, and up to now, has been to ‘get tough on drug use’, at least those drugs not used by the majority of Americans. The tougher we got, the more our jail population rose, the higher the crime rates in the country, the the more barbaric our ghettoes became——and these ghetto populations became poorer and poorer, and in a sense our ‘drug war’ bombed these communities back into some sort of ‘stone age’. 

Over time the illegal drug industry became one of our biggest industries, and not only did it not eliminate illegal drug use in this country, but it destroyed the political stability of many foreign governments who supplied the drugs. These foreign countries, most of them poor to begin with, were terrorized by drug cartels which were as well armed as government police, and terrorized communities across their own lands. The ‘war against drugs’ is over 50 years old now and has only made the situation worse for many of our domestic communities and foreign countries.  In this country the affluent can ‘gate’ themselves off from the turmoil and poverty associated with this war, but the cost of subsidizing all this created poverty has created one budget crises after another. Between the ‘war on drugs’ and the refusal to tie the minimum wage to any rise in the cost of living, as is done with social security, the poor in this country cannot sustain a living without 2 jobs or unemployment benefits.  If so many people need two jobs to make a living wage, then of course there will not be enough jobs for everyone to find work. All this mess is called positive feedback, and the problems grow, not decrease. The driving force behind all this is the obsession of the wealthy to acquire more wealth—enough is never enough. For them to do this, taxes and all kinds of laws are adjusted to make it easier for the wealthy to acquire even more wealth. But that added wealth has to come off the backs of others. Today, no more of this addicted additional wealth by the wealthy can come from the poor so more and more of the middle class need be driven into poverty as their share of our countries wealth decreases. 

So what is it that makes the use of marijuana so harmful to the users? From a physiologic standpoint, the effects on the body, compared to alcohol misuse, or nicotine use at all, are miniscule. That is hardly surprising since we are well aware of the behavior of alcoholics and we see every day the medical consequences alcohol or nicotine takes on the users. But who are all these people who use marijuana? We really don’t know, for the most part, since there is little to observe and they are not clogging up our medical facilities with medical problems. The most common charge of those who strongly oppose legalizing marijuana is that the drug lessens motivation and impairs memory. And of course, marijuana is often a precursor for the more hard drugs. The trouble is, the most toxic drugs drugs are the two most drugs in popular use—alcohol and nicotine. These two drugs, from a medical standpoint, are hard drugs. 

It must be made clear again that people who abuse recreational drugs are people who, for whatever reason, feel a need for the emotional state created by their recreational drug use. This has nothing to do with ‘bad’ people vs ‘good people’. It has everything to do with circumstances (environment), personality, emotional stability, success in achieving goals in life, family situation, work situations, or social situations, and genetics. Every person exists in a unique mental state for many reasons, and if a current mental state leaves someone with a need for a particular drug, then that is just the reality of it.

It is the mental state which determines the particular recreational drug selected. If you want to lose inhibitions in a social setting you use alcohol. If you simply want a little ‘buzz’ with your meal or to relax at home, you use alcohol. If you are used to having your nerves settled a bit with nicotine, you smoke. If you want to reduce mental or physical pain you gravitate to heroin/morphine (they both operate via the same body receptors). If you want to elevate your energy level and get higher levels of emotional responses you gravitate toward cocaine/amphetamines, if you want to simply mellow out from stress you use marijuana. We need keep in mind that everyone’s mental state is different, and it is the mental state which determines to what extent and for what effect any particular drug will be employed. 

Clearly, drug abuse cannot, for the most part, be stopped until our mental state is changed. Addiction to anything, compulsive behavior about anything—all this has to do with achieving a desired mental state. Judging how successfully we are living our lives can, to some degree, be done by just how much need there is for drug altered mental states or compulsive behaviors to drive our lives. Contented people have minimum need for compulsive behaviors, and that includes recreational drug abuse. Recreational drug abuse is not simply a matter of toxicity to the body. Any compulsive behavior can at some point interfere with the rest of your life endeavors. It can harm family relationships, performance at work, our financial situation, and all kinds of social situations. 

While smoking marijuana is not a dangerous medical situation, dependency on it for us to feel ‘good’ can distract us from other obligations. When people say pot heads are less motivated because of marijuana use, this can, in some cases be true JUST AS IT CAN BE TRUE with any other compulsive behavior. Compulsive behaviors always tend to distract us from other objectives which are important to our lives. The reality is this: whether it is recreational drug use or other compulsive behaviors, a balance needs be established so that we can still get our pleasant buzz as sort of a treat to our mental state, and yet not become compulsive about what we employ to get our ‘buzz’. 

Young people (or others for that matter) are better off getting high with marijuana at a social event then binge drinking. All of us need find ways to make our lives more bearable, if they are unbearable, rather than take heroin to lessen the pain we feel about our life situation. We all need to find real activities in life to give us more energy, not resort to stimulatory drugs. 

Instead of teaching the public to understand why people abuse drugs, the government has always chosen to go the path of portraying these drugs as chemical toxins. In terms of physiological addiction, nicotine is the worst. The body really often does create genuine physiological havoc during withdrawal of the drug. Cocaine and amphetamines can be a a problem here as can alcohol withdrawal. However, most of the time the addiction is psychological in that we simply miss the changed mental state. 

For example, the Government has for years, and still does to a certain extent, warn the public that if you ever start taking heroin, you will be hopelessly addicted. They used to preach the same nonsense when it came to hospital relief of pain via morphine (remember both morphine and heroin use the same body receptors). Patients not too long ago had to beg for more morphine for their pain and were told “NO, you might become addicted to it”. Only recently has the medical field given in and actually gives the patient a button to press when they need more morphine. Once the pain in a hospital situation goes away, no patient runs around screaming for more morphine. While in Vietnam many soldiers on the battle fronts used heroin a lot. When they returned home, away from the stress of the battlefield, only 2% continued heroin use and the 2% probably faced stresses back home great enough to generate continued use of heroin. It is very simple. No more pain, no more need for heroin. And we need remember that the pain can be physical or emotional. Another exaggeration by the government is that heroin overdose can kill you. Because the body produces its own endogenous opiates under certain conditions, heroin/morphine is the least toxic major recreational drug out there. It is a natural substance to the body. Of course too much of most anything can kill us, but practically all heroin overdoses involve the use of alcohol and heroin at the same time.  The combination can depress breathing enough to kill a person. But the government invariably prefers to say the person died of heroin overdose. 

People who are emotionally pained by their life, for whatever reason, may gravitate to heroin simply because heroin reduces this emotional pain about their life. Their life hasn’t changed, but how they feel about their lives has. Same way with physical pain. Heroin/morphine only blocks the emotional pathway of pain. That is why, in a hospital setting, it is so valuable. The doctor gives you morphine for the pain and the next day will ask about the pain, and the patient will say essentially, “It still hurts but it doesn’t bother me as much.” And when the pain really goes away, they have no interest in taking any more morphine. What for? There is no pain to eliminate. 

Into all the above context comes, at last, a more honest look about the place of marijuana as a recreational drug. Of course any drug which mellows us out is going to often reduce our motivation. If it has been a rough week there is nothing all that wrong with taking marijuana to mellow out. It is physiologically risky to let ourselves get too stressed out. There is a balance here which is very individualized.  Does marijuana affect our memory? I suppose to the extent we get too mellowed out our memory is affected. It is probably not too smart to tackle algebra while high on pot. It does not follow that there are not situations when smoking pot will do you more good than harm.  That is why the term drug abuse is so useful. It means what it says——that you are using a drug too much or at the wrong time. 

The marijuana question has become so silly, that we actually start making it legal for medical purposes first. In Illinois there are now 36 medical conditions in which marijuana can be legally used. In many states the possession of certain amounts of marijuana is now legal. In some states marijuana use is no longer illegal period. To my knowledge, nothing much has changed in these states.  If we can survive nicotine and alcohol being legal, we sure as hell can survive marijuana as being legal. Incidentally, I have used marijuana maybe a half dozen times in my life. I guess I can get high without the use of drugs. Of course a huge unregulated, unrestrained, predatory corporation like the NFL still suspends a player who uses marijuana to mellow out a bit from all the stress, but allows binge drinking, and if a player has behavior problems off the field with assaulting others, they permit assigning a 24 hour security detail to a player to safeguard the public.  How ridiculous and unfair can it get?  Well, I suppose generating contracts with players which are binding only to the player, is a far more pervasive injustice. Naturally, when you have no bottom line to worry about, can set up your own legal system with the Commissioner being the police, the Judge, and the Jury, and have it all run by a cabal of billionaires, thus you end up with the biggest, most powerful, and most predatory on the public, corporation imaginable. It is no normal corporation since it is exempt from most taxation, with no regulation and no limits. I reckon, if one of these billionaires were to kill some one in public, our regular legal system might kick in, but then we all know the advantage a wealthy person has in our regular court system. If most of us kill someone in public, the trial is over in a few days. If a wealthy person commits the same crime the trial will take months.  Reasonable doubt becomes, for jury members, a question of reasonable doubt whether they can digest months of testimony. In most cases, months of testimony can create reasonable doubt just by the volume of testimony.

It took less than a decade for us to decide alcohol prohibition simply generated more harm than good. It has taken us more than 50 years to conclude the same thing about marijuana and it is far less toxic than alcohol and is far less likely to raise havoc with our personal or professional life. We seem to be on a slow learner track the past 50 years. We are only now beginning to realize, after Vietnam, that we really cannot make other countries do our bidding, noble or otherwise. Our choice always seems to end up bombing them into the stone age, or, after many years, declaring victory and leaving behind a more chaotic situation than when we entered the fray. Let’s face it, war makes a lot of people really rich. 

In summary, marijuana use is like most anything else we do to alter our mental state, including compulsive behavior about anything——we need to know ourselves well in order to know when enough is enough. Except for nicotine, which no one should use at all, recreational drugs can be used responsibly, at least most of them, but we all need to be educated about the dangers of excessive use. Recreational use of drugs is an artificially created mental state that has no connection with reality. It is our other behaviors and priorities which generate a genuine contented mental state. It should be noted that genuinely contented mental states are not dependent on economic or social status. And they certainly are not dependent on drug use. Drug use, when done properly, can only provide some pleasant moments, temporary moments, which is like a little dessert in our lives. For those of us more fortunate, such temporary moments are never excessive.

Left in limbo is how best to proceed after the criminal ‘war on drugs’ is ended and replaced with addiction centers to help those with addiction problems. Perhaps it need start with individual accountability for becoming addicted to toxic substances. For example, cigarette smoke contains over 7000 chemicals, 69 of which are known carcinogens. Smoking is responsible for around 90% of lung cancer deaths and 80% of deaths due to emphysema and chronic bronchitis. So perhaps those who smoke and get lung cancer, emphysema, and bronchitis should have to pay like 70% of the associated medical costs out of pocket, not via insurance.  

While this seems perhaps fair enough with nicotine, it does get complicated.  For example, alcohol abuse can contribute to over 200 medical conditions. But it also may benefit some people when used in moderation. Putting any fair monetary penalty would be elusive. 

There are no recorded death from marijuana use. So it would be ludicrous to penalize them in terms of medical benefits. 

Then again, there are so many things which contribute greatly to medical costs, like being overweight. Or never exercising, or being on a stressful job, and the list goes on. In other words, charging people for engaging in activities of any sort which are bad for their health gets impossibly tricky. 

Perhaps nicotine is so directly related to particular diseases (3 total) that a monetary penalty for medical costs could be justified. The trouble is nicotine is the most addictive recreational drug out there. How easy it is to quit smoking varies all over the place. There are people who lose a foot over gangrene from smoking who still can’t quit even though they may lose another foot, or more of the amputated limb. Perhaps the only solution is to grab a person when they first start smoking and start hitting them with huge fines right away, before they can become too addicted. If this seem heavy handed, it is, after all, often a matter of life and death. 

For me, when I want to cool out, mellow out, be pensive about matters, I don’t think of marijuana, I walk out into nature alone and walk for 5-8 miles—not a power walk, just sort of meander along. Walking through major safe city neighborhoods, and riding public transportation is also interesting if one likes to people watch. Two totally different environments but intriguing. Watching evolution in action brings an appreciation for the process, and for the Creator of the process, and the laws which govern it. That appreciation is about as much as we can really get from life. Only then can we accept that TIME stays, WE go.  

Alternative Medicine

Alternative Medicine

The growth of Alternative Medicine has been remarkable in the last decade or so. Any reflections expressed in this musing are based on my view as a retired physiologist. I suppose it would not be unfair to translate the word retired as ‘out of date’. That granted, only to what extent might be at issue. Medical Doctors are trained scientists with extensive education, and usually are selected for medical school from among some of the best academic performers in college. Of course, many doctors in this country are not graduates of American Medical Colleges and so the competency of these doctors can vary considerably. Like so much else in current economics, the bottom line is money. Medical schools are very expensive propositions, and so we simply do not have enough medical schools to train the number of doctors needed. Actually, if it is not a military related expenditure, the U.S. is falling further and further behind other industrialized countries in terms of education, infrastructure, transportation, good health care for ALL its citizens, etc. If it is not military related we can’t find the money. Guns and policing, domestically and globally, are our major industries. So far we have only established that violence begets violence. When it comes to the killing fields we are far out in the lead. No other country is remotely close to us in that tally sheet.  

While, by profession I am a medical scientist, I am not a medical doctor and while my doctorate in physiology is from a medical school department of physiology, I am not a trained physician. I am by no means qualified to practice medicine.  A medical doctor is trained to use scientifically proven treatments to cure disease. A physiologist is trained to understand the normal function of every human body system. The focus is simply different. If a treatment is not supported by vigorous scientific testing, a legitimate medical doctor will not go down the anecdotal road, or at least very often. Medical doctors have to be very careful—if they use non scientifically proven methods of treatment, they can be sued in court and will lose. And that is how it should be. Good doctors are very limited as to the situations in which they can operate via hunches, hearsay, or anecdotal tidbits. 

Many medical concerns a person might have are not yet solvable by known scientific facts or proven treatments. Many of us can have symptoms which are vague, and from a medical standpoint, mysterious. These vague symptoms are often related to the digestive tract, but other systems are often the origin too, as can symptoms in the digestive system be the cause of, or result of, malfunction elsewhere.  It can get complicated. In the absence of known scientific evidence, a particular problem can become frustrating for the patient and the doctor. I myself have had numerous minor, but annoying problems, for which there was no known scientific solution. That does not mean, however, that there is no solution out there. On top of this, because there is a shortage of good doctors, these doctors cannot spend much time chatting with a patient about symptoms which present no obvious solution. The patient will be sent for more tests and assigned a specialist who, if there is no known scientifically proven cure, is stymied. If all medical doctors were to spend a more reasonable time listening to individual patients there would not be enough MD’s available to do such a thing. We have simply boxed ourselves into a difficult position.

It is into this kind of frustration that the alternative medicine industry has blossomed so quickly. Before modern medicine, anecdotal medicine prevailed by default. For the patient with symptoms not readily treatable via modern medicine there is the alternative medicine field, or do nothing.  Even if the symptoms are psychological in origin, the patent still is suffering and it solves nothing to insist it is all in their mind. Of course it is all in their mind—all suffering is. 

Who are these alternative medicine practitioners? This area is without any real government regulation. Nor do these alternative practitioners want to be regulated. Just about anyone can practice alternative medicine if they can attract patients. Some of them tried so hard to get into medical school but were not strong enough academic students to gain admission. Most really do want to help patients with their problems. Others, less noble, recognize it is becoming a lucrative financial industry. Most alternative medicine practitioners probably could not pass any rigorous test regarding the physiology of the human body. That is a shame. The government should at least require this. My heavens, we can’t drive a car without passing a test and yet people can hang out a shingle to alleviate health problems without any government regulation.  Some, not all, of their ‘beliefs’ are really over the top, and some are simply stabs in the dark, and others are borrowed from anecdotal tidbits, some of which may actually be of help.

The obvious question arises as to why some of these anecdotal treatments are not given rigorous scientific testing. The answer is simple. Most of these treatments involve herbs and other substances from nature, harmless manipulative procedures, or programs to alter one’s mental state/priorities. None of these treatments are patentable.With few exceptions, these alternative medical practitioners are not going to endanger the patient’s health. They are kind of exempt from being sued. If a person dies from high blood pressure complications they can’t sue an alternative medical practitioner because the person was never licensed to be a medical doctor, so the patient has no recourse. It is difficult to sue anyone outside of a licensed medical field if they give us advice and we take it knowing they are not a licensed medical practitioner. These treatments being offered by alternative medical practitioners are not subjected to scientific testing simply because none of the treatments can be patented, so who is going to pay the cost of scientific testing?  The government should pick up the tab, but again, only military matters get any real priority. All the rest is pure political babble. Every politician is for good education, freedom, good health care, fair wages, the poor, minorities, peace, well maintained infrastructure, etc. Of course it is campaign rhetoric and non of their campaign commercials give a hint as to how they are going to help anyone. Most politicians get elected by preying on the prejudices of their target base. 

Given the above circumstances, alternative medicine practitioners are the only avenue open to patients with mysterious medical symptoms. To be sure, there are many, many medical problems—real problems—which are not yet solvable with proven modern scientific medical treatments. There are two alternatives to solving symptoms for which there is not yet scientifically proven treatments. One is alternative medical practitioners and the other is for an individual to, on their own, read about and try some of these anecdotal alternative medicine treatments. It would be anyone’s guess as to how many go the alternative medicine practitioner route and how many search out these same possible treatments on their own. Those with a scientific bent and background probably go it on their own, and those with no scientific bent probably use the alternative medicine practitioners. Fair and logical enough.

The government could help out alternative medicine with scientific evaluation of the varied treatments, but it simply will not. If the government did the proper scientific testing it would no longer be called alternative medicine. The government could financially support those who conduct scientific studies on natural substances being used for medical conditions as a way to ensure there is the statistical data available.  Right now, if I absorb the expense to prove that herb X really does help those with particular symptoms, I get zero compensation for having proven it. The government could also help scientific medicine by opening more medical schools and ensuring there are enough qualified medical doctors to provide good health care for all citizens. When people rant on about there is too much government it is a pitiful argument. Our major problems are all due to our government not doing what it should be doing to promote better health care, maintaining infrastructure, protecting the environment, securing a livable minimum wage that rises automatically with cost of living, instituting tax laws which stop the gravitation of our nation’s wealth into the hands of 5% of the American population, ensuring all kids get good schools, and the list goes on and on. We don’t suffer from too much government, we suffer from irresponsible government. 

Look, the government regulates medical doctors carefully to protect the public. The alternative medicine field does not need the same degree of regulation, but it does need help to make it more effective in practice. Right now it is often a joke. Let’s say, for example, that the suspicion probiotics may really help a lot of people with digestive issues has some truth to it. Of course we then need to know what specific probiotics are most helpful, and for what symptoms, and in what dose. I choose this because some probiotics have helped my own digestive issues, but this had to be arrived at by trial and error. On top of this, while trial and error, over time, can help solve a problem, I still do not know what dosage is best and even worse, there is no government regulation whatsoever. When I purchase a probiotic I have no idea whether the dosage on the container is actually true. No one is checking up on the manufacturer. Thus, the best I can do, if a particular brand happens to help, is to stick with that brand.  Also it would be nice to know just how long these organisms stay viable.

Mayo Clinic is the brightest star in this ridiculous situation. Not only is Mayo Clinic the best source of scientific medical information, and shares it the most, but they make an attempt to make some sense out of the anecdotal alternative medicine field. They have so little scientific evidence to go on, that the best they can do is to steer us away from anything to which there is evidence the substance involved, or procedure involved, can harm the body, short term or long term. One feels much better trying something anecdotal if there is no evidence it will harm our body. It’s one thing to spend money on something that proves to be of no help over time, and quite another thing to spend money on something that not only doesn’t help, but may be harming your body. The internet enables us to be our own alternate medicine practitioner. You use google to plug in the symptoms which persist after scientific medicine has come up with no solution. You will find all sorts of suggested remedies. Let’s say someone is pushing a particular herb. You then use google to plug in the herb followed by Mayo Clinic. There is a good chance Mayo Clinic will have at least investigated whether there are any known medical dangers to the herb. If nothing comes up from Mayo Clinic then simply plug in the herb and browse through the leading articles to see if there are any there which would give you pause to proceed. If you are satisfied there is not enough evidence to scare you away, you try it. If it works fine. If it doesn’t work you keep searching to try something else. Most of us are into alternative medicine but it is only a matter of degree and how we go about it.

There is an important caution here. If a herb works for you, you have proven nothing more than it works for YOU. Many of these vague symptoms are caused by a lot of different physiological, and some times psychological, situations. And never forget, the symptoms may well have subsided for reasons which have nothing to do with the herb in question. Many vague symptoms often disappear with time. The body is not always quick to restore normalcy to many changes. The above depicts the inherent weakness in alternative medicine. One has no idea whether it really cured anything, and if it did, how often this would cure anyone else with similar symptoms. If this herb begins to bring a cure or relief often enough then it begins to gain more popularity. 

It is difficult to read the news on the internet or via the print page and not see endless articles about food substances and how particular kinds of food can be purported to relieve or solve certain physical or mental symptoms. I know two people who suffer from tinnitus (ringing in the ears), which can be a real endless annoyance, and frequently I see media articles selling relief. The latest claimed eating olives will cure it in several days. What should be a reasonable reaction be to all these proclaimed solutions to a medical problem?  First, google the author or authors of the article. Invariably they will end up being housewives or Professional writers for particular publications. If there are no references in the article they wrote, or they do not quote a source, forget the article. If they mention a source google the source. Or, go ahead, for example, and eat a lot of olives for a week. More often, naturally, it is not something you can buy in a typical grocery store but some concoction which is being peddled simply to make money. The favorite word these days are ‘natural’, ‘organic’, and ‘no genetically modified ingredients”, and so on. While not entirely useless words they are fairly disingenuous.  Arsenic and lead are ‘natural’ substances. Too many calories and too much saturated fats are perfectly natural ingredients. Organic labels can be found on almost anything these days and yet there are no strict regulations regarding what can be labeled organic. Any proven harmful ingredients should of course have to be labeled by law, otherwise quibbling over organic or laboratory made substances is of little significance. All of evolution depends on genetic modifications. Only genetic modifications which can be proven to be bad, are harmful. Breeding for a certain kind of beef is not harmful unless the results are proven to be harmful. That I guess is natural genetic alteration. But not really, since human manipulation is involved. Genetic modifications in the lab is just an alternative way to achieve genetic alteration.   

In some sense, anecdotal medicine is replacing religion as many people’s mantra of faith. And to me, that is good. Blind faith in religion causes nothing more than endless global and domestic conflict. If all the major religions could just disappear and be replaced by the Golden Rule the world would be so much better a place to live. Alternative medicine is a reality for many of us, with symptoms that are not yet solvable with scientific medicine. Even if some alternative medicine therapies are mental in nature, so what? The power of placeboes has long been known. It is an accepted practice of medicine. No one has to be crazy to find solace in solutions that are purely mental.  After all, many problems we have are mental in nature. The brain is an organ too, and it often needs help to function well just like any other organ. A lot of people find ways to reduce the stress in their life with all sorts of varied mental exercises, including yoga, meditation, nature walks, dancing, sports, cooking, shopping, and the list goes on and on. 

Hope is a very important emotion for normal human body function. Alternative medicine can give hope to many frustrated by vague medical problems.  A hopeful mental state helps the body to function optimally. A strong belief that something will help can sometimes be the little extra shove that enables the body to recuperate from pesky malfunctions.  

One of the biggest problems facing alternative medicine is that the followers get carried away, and when they find something that works for their particular symptom, they start start preaching their ‘finding’ to others.  Naturally, those without the same identical problem, have no reason to listen to them. It is not unlike an avid follower of one religion preaching their religion to another person. After all, both are acts of faith. I suppose the difference is we don’t really know if the followers of a particular religion are going to Heaven until they are dead and then we really for sure don’t know. We at least know an anecdotal medicine patient found help with their situation.

The least admirable players in this topic are the few M.D.’s who become very wealthy by simply catering to the whims of patients searching for solutions to their real or perceived problems. If the patient feels there are insidious organisms loose in their body the M.D. goes along, or maybe the patient suspects there are dietary causes, and the list goes on and on. It’s the old saying “give them what they want and they come in droves”. This all may seem harmless enough, but it is extremely unprofessional for any M.D. to do that and fortunately few do. They don’t have to, their practices are usually inundated with patients. Alternative medicine patients may become lifetime hypochondriacs, endlessly concocting some pretty silly notions about their body and spend a fortune, often lurching from one alternative doctor to another, sometimes coupled with workshops of all sorts geared to giving the person the proper mental state to bring them some sort of nirvana. Having said all this, it is not a situation amendable to any neat solution. Going down this road gives a lot of people meaning to their life, just as religion does to others. The difference is that alternative medicine addicts don’t lead to wars and intolerance of other people. Religions do. Addictions and compulsive behaviors are rampant among humans and we all become compulsive about different things. Regardless of our own addictions and compulsive behaviors, none of these kind of behaviors can ever bring contentment. What avid sports fan is ever a contented person because of that addiction, or someone who thinks money is the road to contentment? Like a Donald Trump is a contented person. The point is, it is irrational to pretend that alternative medicine addicts are especially foolish, and make a big deal about it.   

The biggest positive aspect of anecdotal medicine is that these followers are almost invariably very health conscious. Health conscious people live longer independent of whether they are active in anecdotal medicine or not. It is the people who are not health conscious who are the fools. They do a lot of things which are absolutely harmful to their bodies. They die, on the average, at a much younger age. Ignorance can be bliss, but it also shortens life span. Depending on your quality of life, this can be good or bad. In the long run we are all dead, and one of the biggest challenges in life is to accept this fact, and not fear death. I don’t fear death, I just prefer not to be there when it happens.

Addendum: This extension makes this musing rather long. So if you read the following maybe do it another time. 

Most people who are serious about pursuing alternative medicine for some of their vague, or mysterious medical problems, should either take a Human Physiology course or do it at home via any of the many DVD sets out there by highly qualified Professors. This prevents us from pursuing some of the more silly alternative medicine practices. 

The following is simply a sample of things anyone need understand before he/she starts searching for potential alternative medicine solutions.

The first generalization to understand is that too much of most anything is bad for you, and often kills you. That includes oxygen, glucose, carbon dioxide, and so on. Most of these good things are only good if present at the proper level. Most of the time our bodies do an amazingly good job of keeping the right things present at the right level. This is called homeostasis. 

Always remember that the digestive tract is essentially a tube-like tunnel that passes through our body much as a tunnel passes through a mountain. Nothing can affect the physiology of our body until it is actually inside our body; that is, has passed through the wall of our intestine into the blood stream. This is not to say that some substances will not affect the motility of the digestive tract or interfere with the digestive process. If we are allergic to something, the inflammatory response can damage the wall of the intestine and interfere with getting enough needed molecules into our blood stream.

While the variety of food we ingest can vary immensely, what passes from the intestine into the blood stream is quite limited. We need glucose, certain amino acids, fatty acids, and certain trace elements. Some trace elements from the periodic table are toxic, like arsenic or lead, etc. Many are toxic at certain levels. Avoid any tendency to think that if we eat a banana, for example, that we have banana molecules floating around in our blood stream.  We don’t, and the glucose, for example that we absorb is glucose no matter what food source it came from. Two people can eat vary varied diets for a month and examination of the blood is not going to find differing molecules in the blood. The best we might find is altered levels of blood chemistry for particular substances. 

Through proper eating we can help ensure we get enough trace elements (normally not much of a problem), not too many calories, the right kind of fat, proper plasma concentration (water balance),

proper ion levels, and so on. The list does not go on forever. And we need remember, that many people lived long healthy lives well before we had modern science. What modern science has done is to enable more people to live longer with decent health. The downside of modern science is that often people who are very incapacitated can be kept alive that way for years, even decades. How good this is, is debatable and personal. 

Be careful how you view the presence of microorganisms in the body. Most of them are necessary for proper body function. There are trillions of microorganisms in our body.  They outnumber our own cells by 10 to 1. Because they are so small they only comprise 1-3% of our body mass. So when an alternative medicine practitioner starts talking about ‘cleansing’ the body, whether it be the internal body or the digestive tract, beware. It is never smart to try any cleansing until one knows exactly what it is that needs cleansing. Our microorganisms help us maintain proper homeostasis in the body and it is the proper homeostasis which determines our health. 

Cleansing of the body is done by the liver, the kidney, the lungs, the endocrine system, and the digestive tract in terms of destroying or getting rid of undesirable molecules or microorganisms. So when we start talking about cleansing the colon as a healthy practice, we better know exactly what we are replacing and why. It is senseless to start making the body recreate a healthy microflora just for the hell of it. It may well be, considering the trillions of microorganisms in our body, that some vague symptoms might be the result of a bad micro-orgasm mix. This is really a whole new field of study, and until we can be specific about which microorganism we want to get rid of we are stymied. If we have a group in a room and we know someone is causing a problem, but not who, we don’t just throw out everyone in the group, bring in a new group and assume we have corrected the problem. The problems that may then exist in the new group might be far more harmful than the problems in the old group. Blindly interfering with physiological homeostasis is an unpredictable and irrational exercise.

When people start taking certain food or drink because they claim it will cleanse the liver, or the colon, or help remove toxic things from the body this is a pure uneducated act of faith. Fortunately, almost all of these foods or drinks will not harm our body. Of course they can’t identify what molecule it is that is cleansing anything or that the molecule ever is absorbed by the intestine or what it is that such molecule does that cleanses or detoxifies anything.  If such a unique molecule were to get into the blood stream it will just be another ‘strange’ molecule that the liver, kidney, lungs, or immune system would work to get out of the body. The word ‘cleanse’ sounds so good that many people simply cannot resist a lot of foolishness. 

The key is to approach alternative medicine with caution and ask the right questions. 

It is hard enough to find the best medical doctors and even harder to find alternative medicine practitioners whose knowledge can be trusted. Even with a medical doctor we are better off with one who chats little but gets the right diagnosis and prescribes the right treatment. But often how much we like one doctor compared to another is often a matter of personality, their verbal skills, and how much time they will spend with us. The following may help when dealing with alternative medicine practitioners.

Always ask what the active ingredient is in any substance prescribed. They may not know and just indicate, for example, that this substance has been used for years by the Chinese or some tribe in Bolivia, etc.  And perhaps there is truth to it. But you need to Google it, check with Mayo Clinic on line and go from there. If it is a manipulative procedure, especially for the joints, if no relief comes in a relatively short period of time, it is best to get to the proper medical specialists for examination. Many manipulative procedures make us feel better and that is why some people seek out massages frequently. Others find massages not worth the money. Some find motivational speeches help their emotional state and sense of well being and others do not. These things are highly individualized.

Eating preferences and dietary habits can become as varied in any population as sex preferences and habits. A lot of our personal habits have to be worked out by ourselves and succeed often based on how well we understand ourselves. Other assorted practitioners may be of help to us, and to the extent they are, there is no reason to stop using them. 

Basically, alternative medicine practitioners mostly do no harm, and sometimes anecdotal medicine actually works. It is always best to use Mayo Clinic or other reputable scientific organizations to make sure the substance or procedure will not potentially harm us. It is not unreasonable, when known science fails us, to try alternative treatments if we are reasonably sure no harm will be done. Tons of people buy a lottery ticket even though the odds are against them winning, and it is hard to fault someone who wants to try some anecdotal treatments hoping, against odds, that the treatment may work.