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Sunday, December 11, 2005Three years ago, Treuman Katz got some troubling news: At 60, he was on his way to becoming a diabetic. Katz, CEO of Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center at the time, could have relied on the region's top specialists. Instead, the man who had spent nearly 40 years running two of the country's pre-eminent hospitals reached out to a naturopathic doctor. He took herbal supplements, changed his diet, started yoga and hired a naturopathic trainer. Soon, his blood sugar dropped and he began to feel healthier than he had in years, he said. He could have skipped the herbals, the yoga, and the naturopathic trainer and gotten the same results with diet alone. Although the yoga probably helps with compliance to the diet. Relieving stress with meditation can head off reflexive eating habits. It's true that there are some ailments that respond well to things like diet, yoga, and exercise in general - things like diabetes and degenerative joint disease. And it certainly makes you feel better overall to eat right and exercise regularly. But, treating a juvenile diabetic or a cancer patient solely by naturopathic means would be a disaster. And he does have a point about the potential interaction between herbal remedies and traditional medications. That risk is very real and needs to be taken into account whenever a patient uses herbal supplements and other non-traditional cures. That's one of the reasons that drug databases such as Epocrates is so useful. It allows cross-checking for interactions with popular herbals. Unfortunately, however, the potential interactions aren't known for a substantial number of the herbal supplements. They just don't get the same scrutiny as traditional medications before they go to market. posted by Sydney on 12/11/2005 08:25:00 AM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Hi,
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