Does Alternative Medicine ACTUALLY Work?

Hey guys, Dr. Hein. I thought I would do something a little bit different today. Do a little bit of a holiday vlog. It's Christmas Eve and I'm just going for a little walk to get some quiet time. Something that comes up a lot when people ask me, that they ask me, is if alternative medicine or if Chinese medicine can work so well why is it not more popular? And I hear this from a lot of my patients that get really good results and they're wondering why their physician never sought to recommend what I do for example and why they just put them on very strong drugs for a very long time. And I think there are three very good reasons for that and I think we would talk about them here today and that'd be very useful. So reason number one. I don't actually think most alternative medicine is that clinically effective. Sorry. I mean my own journey of this kid with lifelong digestive problems going all around the world to try to find healers and alternative doctors and herbalists, acupuncturists, naturopathic doctors, everyone. I did not find it that easy to find people who were clinically skilled enough that they could get me, someone with very basic digestive problems, better. And I think the general state of alternative medicine, I think people should be skeptical because I don't think most of it is really that clinically effective. And I hate to be Mr. Poo Pooing everyone else but I also don't think the actual state or the skill of most people in my field is that high. That's also discouraging because it means that I can't recommend 95% of people in my own field because I don't think most of them, I don't think most of us get the training inherently in school. We need to be good clinically. I mean I had to go outside of school. I had to find three great doctors on my own and put in a lot of extra time to try to find people who are really successfully treating illnesses of all kinds successfully. So one, I don't think really most alternative medicine is actually that clinically effective. You know when I hear people and they're just talking about going to like a healer or a Reiki master or massage therapist, I'm not trying to throw anyone under the bus, but I do think most alternative medicine falls into the category of emotional and psychological healing. So the therapeutic relationship being very important for the patient to get results. If you track objectively, were their symptoms really improving a whole lot, I'm not really sure most people would be able to say that they are. So that's my opinion for number one. The people who are so clinically good that they have the results, they have physicians as their patients. And I know practitioners who do and you know I'm starting to have some as my own as well. Reason number two that alternative medicine is not more popular is because there are powerful economic reasons that most people don't see studies done on alternative medicine. I mean first of all you have to run a randomized trial which costs money. I don't remember the last time I checked but somebody suggested I believe a couple hundred thousand to potentially a million dollars for a properly randomized placebo-controlled trial with a sample size big enough. Most people in our field don't have that much money because well one you have to be popular enough and make enough money to do that but two if you're pretty damn confident something you're doing is working where's the incentive financially for you to run a trial? Right so that's a problem and a lot of the people who do have the money to run the trials are like pharmaceutical companies and are you going to fund a trial to see that something you do is ineffective? Or are you going to run a trial that finds that like an herbal compound works just as well as most of your antidepressants, most of your SSRIs? Why would you ever run a trial to put yourself out of business? So this is often called publication bias where for example the studies that are are really do not show a favorable outcome are discarded or or not included from what's presented and the ones that are only showing favorable results are then presented and and publicized. Now this is very tricky and I think it's the FDA maybe that has recently created laws that those documents have to be accessible. The other trials that were not shown to have benefit for example in antidepressant studies. So one of the big problems is that we have to have enough money to be able to run those trials and two a lot of the people that do are pharmaceutical companies who of course they're not evil by themselves but of course they want to see favorable results on their own products. Otherwise why publish data that says like I run John's Bagel Shop. We did a study that found that we have the worst bagels in New York. Like that's basically what would happen. We found that we have some of the the least favored bagels in New York City. Come on over. Just no one's going to do that because no one wants to be put out of business. So reason number two is you need to have the money to really study a lot of these compounds whether it's something pharmacological like a plant or a mushroom whatever it is you take or if it's an intervention like acupuncture or a massage or a walk in the woods versus an anxiety drug. You need to have the money to put in to doing a study. The third reason is because there are a lot of different organizations working together to lobby against even alternative medicine. I mean it really is just old school business practices. You know physicians if physicians are losing patients to chiropractors and naturopathic doctors and acupuncturists then there are bodies lobbying bodies that try to put all of us out of business. Just like there are lobbying interests that got chiropractors the ability to do acupuncture and call it dry needling. Just like PTs can do acupuncture and call it dry needling. Or MDs can do a very very short course on acupuncture and then do acupuncture. These are all usually lobbying efforts basically to get a piece of the pie. And that's just standard business stuff you know everyone is trying to make a living that's okay. But there are widespread reasons for that. You know for example one of the interesting things I found was that in Japan a high percentage of physicians that are OBGYNs use classical Chinese herbal formulas because they are so clinically effective for women's health issues and gynecological issues that they have the clinical efficacy. And they're even some Chinese compounds are actually OTC like OTC drugs almost. Shen Qi Wan for middle-aged men with urinary dysfunction or Ge Gen Tang which has Ma Huang for acute colds. That's often in markets in Japan with the Ma Huang via Phedra. And so you see in other countries you know where the clinical efficacy really is at the forefront and the cost saving for patients is at the forefront. And it's not America where physicians have high salaries and they're also really just primarily learning about drugs as their intervention. That's kind of you know no matter how well-intentioned your physician is unless they recommend something that they're not giving you you found a gem. They exist I know but many times you know it's not clinical efficacy that determines what your physician tells you. That's been great marketing on the part of the AMA and the you know the Flexner report going back 100 years. You know these same formulas used for the same conditions are used in Japan by gynecologists a huge percentage and they're even covered by insurance. So it's tricky in America because our health care system is some of the least effective and some of the most expensive. We have some of the worst patient outcomes anywhere in the developed world and have one of the most expensive health care systems. So I don't know about you but if I bought the most expensive broccoli that tasted the worst I would call that a racket. And in Europe where physicians don't make a lot of money necessarily and Europe is very advanced in terms of like outlawing pesticides and maybe pulling drugs off the market sometimes when there are problems. Why America is 10 or 20 years behind I don't know. But the third reason is that really there are multiple bodies together that want to make sure that pharmaceuticals are the main form of intervention and surgery and that the hospitals are getting reimbursed properly. And so it really works back and forth. There are multiple you know businesses, let's just call them that, that work together that have decided that this is the way they want the medical interventions to be. Not that it's going to be you know the most evidence-based cost-affordable medicine for the patient. So that was not accidental that was deliberate and that was really the third reason I would say why alternative medicine if it's so effective why is it not more popular. It's kind of an question that people ask without directly asking and I think it's a great question. So that's all I got for you today guys. Catch you in the next video. If you like these vlog styles let me know. I'm happy to do more of them. It's very easy for me to just go take a few cents on. So if you like it let me know and otherwise I'll catch you in the other videos soon.