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Friday, November 29, 2002What draws people to CAM and integrative medicine is not a desire for efficiency but a longing to be cared for. Then, they use as an example an oncologist who incorporates meditation classes into his practice: Harris thought the doctor was planning to make pasta when he arrived at the meditation class bearing an assortment of metal and crystal bowls. The bowls were in fact musical instruments from Egypt and Tibet. As Gaynor tapped them with a wooden mallet, Harris says she felt the music “washing through every cell in my body”—a fair description considering that water (which makes up 70 percent of our mass) is a perfect medium for sound waves. The words of the other doctors—”incurable,” “medically untreatable,” “nine months if you’re lucky”—were still echoing oppressively in Harris’s head. But meditation helped her quiet them and summon her dad’s old refrain: “We’re survivors; we don’t give up.” Within four months, she had changed her mind about chemo. With Gaynor’s encouragement and the support of her peers, she was able to approach it not as perdition but as “a wonderful gift.” She experienced what she now recalls as “a state of grace and healing.” Four years later, she’s as happy as she has ever been in her life. Why is such care still the exception instead of the rule? Maybe because fewer people are interested in watching their doctor beat a bunch of crystal and metal bowls than the article would have you believe. I’m glad things worked out well for Gaynor. She obviously wasn’t put off by the Tibetan music, but a lot of people would be. The true art of medicine is tailoring your approach to the beliefs and personalities of each individual patient. You don’t have to enlist Tibetan meditation practices to do that, and in fact using them across the board would alienate a good many. Pediatric Alternatives: The same issue also dealt with the use of alternative medicine in children, which is something you don’t read much about in the popular media. This one was particularly well-done, with the right note of caution about side effects and safety and the untested nature of many treatments. It, too, focused on harmless and often effective techniques like biofeedback, diet, and acupuncture. It’s not on the website, but the print issue had a prominent photograph of a teenage boy getting cupped for low back pain. Cupping involves heating up a glass bowl and applying it to the skin to create a vaccum that pulls on the skin. It can leave the back marked with burns and hickeys. There’s also no reason to think that it would be effective for back pain, except in its ability to distract you from it. My other concern is that a teenager with chronic back pain should have a thorough work-up for treatable causes before going to alternative methods. Chronic back pain in kids is unusual and warrants more aggressive investigation than it does in the middle-aged. Then, there was the reference to chamomile tea, which made me smile and think of Peter Rabbit: I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter! "One tablespoon to be taken at bedtime." posted by Sydney on 11/29/2002 09:12:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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