HPC readers write in about the details of sleep phase cycles, and a novel approach to preventing Alzheimer’s disease.
6/25/01
Your approach to Chinese herbs (in the article, “Six Chinese Herbs Every Doctor Should Know,” HPC June 15, 2001) is very Western. Chinese herbs are not taken individually, but complexed in unique formulas which balance them.
Also, other herbs are used to neutralize potential ill-effects of the toxic herbs. For example, when Fu Zhi is cooked with licorice, the toxicity is almost eliminated. This concept of taking individual herbs for symptoms is so anti-Oriental medicine.
Cinnabar (a mercury containing compound mentioned in the article) is not even available any more from reputable herbal companies.
Please try looking at herbs from the paradigm they come from.
It’s been a rough season for Big Pharma. No sooner does Marcia Angell, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine publish The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It, her scathing book detailing the drug industry’s lockhold on academic and clinical medicine, then Merck recalls Vioxx, its superstar $2.5 billion a year anti-inflammatory.
Ten years ago, I was a reporter for a major medical news company, and I logged a lot of hours covering socioeconomic issues in medicine. The Clinton administration had just unveiled its plan to reform the health care system. Mr. and Mrs. Clinton argued it was simply unacceptable that the wealthiest, most advanced nation on Earth had more than 30 million citizens—most of them active and working—who could not afford health care coverage.
“The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy,” US Marine Corporal Ryan Dupre told the Times of London reporter Mark Franchetti (The Times, Mar. 30, 2003) shortly after a bloody battle outside the Iraqi city of Nasiriya.
For the last two centuries, Western medicine asserted that its practices and modalities are based exclusively in scientific fact, objective observation, and rational deduction.
Your recent article on Insulin Resistance in the Winter 2006 edition was an excellent review of many issues confronting the clinician in diagnosing and treating Metabolic Syndrome. Several issues, however, require further clarification.
Is the ancient Scriptural passage referring to the genetic code? That’s debatable. But one thing is clear: the language of DNA, the Holy Writ shared by all living things, does indeed become flesh. The quaternary code of the nucleotides contains blueprints for health, as well as recipes for illness.
The coming of Spring, the Season of Renewal, has a very special significance for us at Holistic Primary Care this year. With the first buds, the lengthening days, the festivals of Redemption and Resurrection, comes our first issue since the attacks of September 11.
Five years ago, Holistic Primary Care was little more than a dream and an 8-page prototype. Fired up with all the enthusiasm and naivete typical of a start-up, Meg and I set out to build an information bridge between conventional and “alternative” medicine, between ancient healing wisdom and modern scientific knowledge.
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