“I am the wisest man alive and I know one thing and that is that I know nothing.” When I read this quote from Socrates it resonated with my experience.
Patients after experiencing a remarkable healing through an alternative approach such as Homeopathy will often ask why aren’t other doctors doing this. The best way I know to answer this is to say that many doctors feel that once they graduate from their 7 + years of training they feel that they know everything that medicine has to offer. And more importantly, they feel that if it is not taught in medical school and residency then it is of no value.
Many Americans are left feeling dissatisfied with care received from traditional or conventional medicine. Recently, there has been an increase of patients looking to alternative modes of medicine to heal their chronic illnesses that are often left without much improvement in condition with your run-of-the-mill physician.
NBCnews.com details the rate of Americans switching to alternative medical practices:
“More than a third of American adults used such practices in 2002, according to the government survey of 31,000 people, the largest study on non-conventional medical approaches in the United States.
If prayer is included, about 62 percent of U.S. adults used some form of alternative medicine.
The results seem to indicate more people are turning to alternative medicine, though the 2002 survey could not be directly compared to previous studies because of differences in size and survey methods, health officials said.”
I chose to go into alternative medicine because of how I saw conventional medicine treating chronic diseases. More often than not the approach was to suppress symptoms using medication that often exhibited adverse side effects which then had to be addressed with another medication.
Medicalnewstoday.com lists the following most common side effects of prescription drugs:
- Constipation
- Skin rash or dermatitis
- Diarrhea
- Dizziness
- Drowsiness
- Dry mouth
- Headache
- Insomnia
- Nausea
Examples of more serious effects include:
- Suicidal thoughts
- Abnormal heart rhythms
- Internal bleeding
- Cancer
With a list like this, it is easy to see why many people are seeking other ways to receive medical treatment. This list is one of the many reasons I practice Homeopathy.
As I have gone down this path of seeking therapies that can stimulate the natural healing properties that our bodies possess, I’ve come to realize that I could learn and practice for another 50 years and still not know everything.