In
October, I was able to break away from publishing and doctoring for
a brief visit to Israel. For a number of years, I had promised my wife,
Deborah, that we would see my aunt and uncle in Tel Aviv, but I kept
procrastinating. My uncle died in June, and our visit with Aunt Lucy
became all the more important so that we could share her grief as family.
In the weeks before we left, friends and strangers advised us to "have
a safe trip." And it turned out to be a very safe and enjoyable
trip! Our reunion with Lucy was hospitable and comforting and too short.
Lucy shared her friends with us when we visited restaurants in Tel
Aviv, giving us another reason to yearn to return. The experience almost
was counterintuitive: how could a place so threatened with peril give
us such a wonderful and invigorating experience?
Our stay at a hotel beside the Dead Sea could have been filled with
spa treatments, but we opted just to soak in the warm mineral waters.
Wading in Dead Sea waters
is proffered as a cure, and we may have had some healing of our dry skin and
nails. We also had a Bedouin driver who took us around to see the ancient Israeli
fortress Masada. He shared with us his love for the desert. During one of his
spirited impromptu demonstrations, he pulled his vehicle to the side of the road
and had us jump out in the middle of nowhere to look at the desert flora. The
scraggy, desiccated old plants were nothing to look at, but the driver exuberantly
proclaimed that the desert life was right before our eyes, and to demonstrate,
he poured water on the plants. We watched the seemingly dead buds of flowers
open within seconds. I thought of how dried tomatoes in my kitchen take on a
life of their own after pouring water on them, but the real spirit of this desert
inhabitant, offering us a little science experiment on a tourist trip, made me
reflect that we can find meaning and happiness in the simplest of things and
in the most uninviting places. During our drive back to Tel Aviv a day later,
our driver offered us lunch in his humble Bedouin home with his wife and family.
He bridged the communication barrier for us – we spoke English, and his
daughters and daughter-in-laws and grandchildren and wife spoke Arabic. We shared
a meal on the floor of the dining area and found a common ground and love – unusual
given the separateness created by Israeli security forces. Why can't we
find that common ground and love to settle differences in Israel and the world-at-large?
The primary elections are scheduled to begin shortly. Christmas and the holidays
are behind us, and while we put away the decorations and stow away or return
unwanted gifts, we contemplate the difficulties that we face as Americans. Deborah
and I did not experience ill-will as tourists in Israel. Yet the United States
is perceived around the world as tarnished – ill-tempered and gun-happy.
Our dollar, once treated as the monetary standard of the world, has fallen in
value, not only to the euro, but also to the currency of Haiti. The credit crisis
of the banks and the mortgage industry, the rising price of oil, and the relentless
engagement of our troops in places where people do not want to see us is a formula
for the fall of the American civilization. We need change, and the politicians
seeking office are making all the promises. But are we ready to bridge the communication
difficulties and find the common ground to settle our differences around the
world? There may have been a time when the status quo – corporate mergers,
the building of institutions, and the bottom line – was the most important
thing in life. No more. We need to reconcile the differences perceived in Tehran,
Islamabad, Cairo, Djakarta, and Jerusalem. We need to put an individual in office
who will not only be respected and talked to in Washington and Des Moines, but
also in Damascus and Pyongyang. If there were ever a moment for the US to bring
common ground to the world, this would be that time. Let's hope that we
can find the wisdom and fortitude to elect such an individual.
Lab Testing for the Alternative Medicine Clinic
When most people think about alternative medicine, they talk about herbal medicine,
acupuncture, massage, traditional therapies, and healing through visualization
and prayer. They usually don't think about laboratory diagnosis. But
the laboratory has always played an important role in natural medicine. Examination
of the sputum, stool, urine, and blood accompanied the medical examination
even before the invention of the microscope. Primitive chemistry techniques
assisted the medical diagnosis in the nineteenth century, and the early microscopic
examination of bacteria set the groundwork for antibacterial detoxification
approaches. High-tech instrumentation development in the last 60 years has
brought about lab diagnostics frequently ignored in conventional medicine
but openly accepted in naturopathy and alternative medicine. Perhaps the
most ballyhooed diagnostic method embraced by alternative practitioners has
been the hair analysis used to assay metal levels. Despite the fact that
pathologists do not accept hair analysis as an appropriate means for diagnosing
increased toxic elements or reduced essential trace minerals, such diagnosis
is often employed in the alternative medicine office today. Hair analysis
is used for recommendation of further toxic element screening and possible
chelation therapy as well as supplementation of minerals and trace elements.
Blood, urine, stool, and fingernail clippings are also now employed by alternative
medical laboratories to assess toxic elements and trace minerals.
Many traditional healing techniques do not require laboratory examination:
acupuncture diagnosis depends on an accurate palpation of the pulse and careful
observation of the tongue rather than on lab testing. Homeopathy eschews the
laboratory and depends exclusively on symptom presentation and analysis for
determination of a homeopathic remedy. Yet these healing fields have been transformed
by the advent of alternative laboratory diagnostics: electro-acupuncture is
an innovative approach to acupuncture, using devices such as the Voll machine
to diagnose acupuncture weaknesses and design electronically individual-specific
homeopathic remedies. Traditional acupuncturists and homeopaths dispute the
validity of using electro-acupuncture for both acupuncture diagnosis and homeopathic
treatment. Yet those who employ such devices argue that they not only are able
to offer innovative alternative treatments to their patients but that such
treatments can be integrated with other therapies in conventional medicine
as well as in naturopathy. Hence, alternative lab diagnostics offer a "second
level" of alternative medicine treatment that deserves consideration
in assessing unconventional therapies.
In this issue of the Townsend Letter, we focus on alternative medicine laboratory
diagnostics. Christa Hinchcliffe, ND and Wendy Ellis, ND of the Tahoma Clinic
in Renton, Washington examine the utility of urinary hormone lab studies. Hinchcliffe
and Ellis pose the argument that hormone replacement therapy, particularly
in women, is done without the benefit of laboratory diagnosis. Hinchcliffe
and Ellis review the value of studying hormones in serum and saliva and compare
both to measurement in urine. One of the compelling arguments they make is
that urinary hormone studies permit the evaluation of "downstream" hormone
metabolites in addition to the actual parent hormones. Frequently, the metabolites
are increased to levels that are not appreciated with study of the sexual hormones
alone. Alexander Bralley, Robert David, and Richard Lord of the MetaMetrix
Clinical Laboratory in Duluth, Georgia are concerned with accurate assessment
of organisms in the gastrointestinal tract. Stool cultures are useful for gross
organism overgrowth with pathologic bacteria and parasites. However, in many
situations, cultures are not capable of distinguishing normal from pathologic
organisms. Bralley, David, and Lord review the benefit
of using DNA methodologies to study gut microbiology. Such techniques are of benefit in the naturopathic
practice that focuses on bowel detoxification, including detoxification through
the use of colonic enema therapies.
Jonathan Collin, MD
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