Alternative Or Complementary?

Which sounds better to you? I like complementary.

Main-stream medicine is what it is. Alternative medicine (AM) is, presumably, everything else that purports to improve one's health or prolong his healthy life.

AM as practiced in this country is restricted to a smallish segment of the populace. (Many of AM's most hallowed principles, meditation, herbal therapy, yoga, etc., are taken from "native" practices in countries thought to be "third world.") AM has it's firmest foothold in places like Sedona, Arizona, and in Marin County in California, where the average income is close to astronomical, thus suggesting that the poor aren't likely to be involved. In fact, it would be interesting to learn how much is spent on AM in the South Bronx, or in the rural South.

Those who make use of AM fall into a few categories. First are the ones who are dissatisfied with the depersonalized aspects of present day main stream medicine. AM is typically very heavy on personal involvement. Second are those who are interested in covering all of the exits - the ones wearing both belt and suspenders. Third are those who might be classified by wise guys as "health-nuts". These people are already doing everything possible to guarantee that they will remain among the non-sick, and AM simply seals the bargain.
In some circles, "alternative" is replaced by "complementary."

One of our main goals at azcountrydoc is to try to put things in perspective, and we are going to use a geologists' analogy for the purpose. They note that if the entire history of our world is represented by an arm, the history of humans can be indicated by about the length of a small fingernail clipping. In our modification, we are going to let the length of the arm represent the total benefits from various influences on health and life expectancy. We'll start with the obvious, which is parentage.

Lifetime healthy living advantages due to inheritance will be represented by the distance from the shoulder to the elbow. This distance is shortened if your parents died young due to, say, heart disease or certain cancers. It may be lengthened if both your parents lived into their ninth or tenth decades.

Next, where you live confers certain benefits. If it's the US, Canada, Australia, and Northern Europe, move the marker about halfway down your forearm. If it's Sub-Saharan Africa or Afghanistan, leave the mark at your elbow.

If you never smoked cigarettes, the marker goes down to your wrist. If you quit smoking a long time ago, that works too, and the wrist is still a good spot for your mark. If you are currently smoking, move the marker back toward your elbow. If you smoke a lot, what the heck are you doing reading this? Your marker belongs back up in your armpit.

Now, if your diet is low in fat, or vegetarian. the marker can go out onto your hand, about where your life-line is located. Included here is moderation in consumption of alcohol. (Weight control is also a benefit of a "good diet".) This is what you've achieved in healthy life-span, and there's more to come!

For daily physical activity, even simply walking, plus control of your weight, your mark moves out to the first joint on your index finger. If you are just a remote-clicking couch potato, move it back to your wrist.

Let's see, we're out onto the finger. What's next? Oh yes, if you practice stress reduction (petting the cat, listening to music, watching the sunset, etc), you may move your marker to the second joint on your index finger. If you are chronically angry, the mark goes back to mid-palm.

Practicing safe sex (always monogamous) moves your spot out to the base of your fingernail. It can be pushed a bit farther by wearing your seat belt while driving your car in a non-aggressive manner. Avoiding other potentially life -threatening violent situations (careless handling of guns, diving into unknown waters, driving while intoxicated) will take the mark out beyond that little white arc in the fingernail.

Screening health procedures (mammograms, cholesterol checks), and immunizations against pneumonia and influenza will take the marker out close to the end of the fingernail. (Actually, immunizations early in life are a part of living in "developed" countries, and contribute to the geographic benefits noted above.)

Allowing for some wriggle room in our model of appraisal, there still isn't much left over for the benefits of treatment, traditional or alternative. In fact, the way we've illustrated health-care in this exercise makes any treatment seem like an, "Oh. by the way --" sort of thing. This is ridiculous! In this whole "arm", shoulder to finger-tip, treatment accounts for part of the fingernail?

In fact, there are undisputed gains in healthy living attributable to traditional treatment - antibiotics for killer pneumonia, blood pressure control with drugs, cholesterol lowering, better medication for diabetes, etc. And let's see, what is the alternative to a kidney transplant?

Life style modifications are a strong part of "alternative" medical practice, as is the ability to impart to a person a sense of well-being. In both of these senses there is great "complementary" value, but neither represents a specific treatment. Smokers who drink green tea and take lots of vitamins are still going to acquire diseases that will worsen their overall health. There is little evidence that cancer patients who leave the main stream in favor of something else do any better than with an oncologist. And some of the "treatments" are degrading - coffee enemas?

So, bring it on, all of you who disagree. It is quite obvious where our loyalties are placed. In the interest of fairness, we can make room for a rebuttal, as long as it contains no threats of bodily harm.