Integrative and Other Medicine: Are We in a Trap?

The situation is somewhat strange, to put it bluntly. This article is by no means an excuse for an alternative, but rather a statement of facts and the current state of affairs in the world on the subject.

Among this chaos of pseudo-medicine, there are 2 categories:

• Alternative medicine (when all kinds of methods are used INSTEAD of normal treatment)
• Complementary medicine (when all methods are used TOGETHER with normal treatment)

That is, it is a division according to the degree of substitution of normal treatment. Instead of/Together.

At the same time, we also have:

• Preventive
• Integrative
• Holistic
• Functional
• Naturopathic
• Anti-aging and probably something else.

In fact, this is all a rebranding of the same phenomenon, the same medicine, depending on fashion/business trends and other monetary earnings.

Why do I think so? because it is worth looking at the 10 most popular COMPLEMENTARY procedures (that is, those people who are treated TOGETHER with normal treatment with all sorts of non-traditional methods), it becomes clear that all these procedures make up each of these medicines to one degree or another.

Let's see: these are adults, 2012. Dietary supplements are in the first place.

Why is everyone so against it?

In fact, I'll write terrible, but not everyone is against it. And alas, we will not win.

Journal Pediatrics, from the American akaDemia Pediatrics, 2017, open article, very good, with an analysis of the spread of integrative pediatrics in the minds of pediatricians.

Results from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) showed that the prevalence of complementary therapies use among children under the age of 18 had remained at about 12% over the previous 5 years, reflecting the fact that more than one in ten children had used some form of complementary therapy in the previous year.

Non-vitamin and non-mineral nutritional supplements (e.g., herbal preparations, probiotics), osteopathic or chiropractic manipulations, and yoga, tai chi, or qigong were the complementary therapies most commonly used by children (NHIS).

9% of infants, including newborns, received dietary herbal supplements or teas during the first year of life.

And if we are talking about a child with a chronic disease, any disease, then 50% of children are already on complementary medicine, among the techniques, the largest share is in "natural dietary supplements".

NHIS data for 2012 showed that the prevalence of complementary medicine use among the adult population remained unchanged at 33.2% in the previous year.

This represents approximately 354 million visits by complementary medicine practitioners and approximately 835 million individual purchases of groceries, activities and materials, representing approximately US$30 billion and up to 9.2% of out-of-pocket health care expenditures in 2012.

But that's just the beginning. Pediatricians believe that they should tell patients more about alternative treatments, but they cannot, because they do not have a deep knowledge of the techniques, contraindications/indications/compatibility with conventional medicine/side effects. And it's a good idea for pediatricians to have integrative medicine training courses to better treat their patients.

Of course, in order to dissuade any method of treatment, you need to at least roughly understand how the method works, what side effects it has and how strong the positive effects are, and most importantly, whether it interferes with conventional therapy. BUT it's also a terrible trend. Because if you say 100 times that a person is a fool, he will believe it. And it is not difficult to bring the background and logic under any postulate. It should also be admitted that the majority of doctors, both in Russia and in the United States, do not read a lot of literature, and are not very good at critically reading/evaluating research. All this creates a danger and, in fact, integration and acceptance of an alternative approach is already underway in society, it has been very actively clearing an official place for itself over the past 10 years, where there will be a legal sale of parallel pharma in the form of dietary supplements and other nonsense. When something is woven into government agencies/systems, presented as the official position of the ministries of health, it inspires great confidence among the masses, and increases the number of "patients" who will buy the product/service.

Am I unfounded? I'd like to.

• The Bureau of Alternative Medicine was created within the NIH (United States Department of Health) by Congress in 1992. In 1998, the Bureau of Alternative Medicine became the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and in 2014, its name was changed to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
• NCCIH Increases Its Appropriations for FinanceIn 2014, it went from $50 million in 1999 to about $124 million in 2014.(∼0.4% of the total NIH budget) and $170 million in 2023. This is official state money. It is an official institution from the state for alternative medicine in the United States. Since the USA is deservedly the leader of biomed in the world, and everyone else looks and does the same, there is no reason to be surprised by the presence of homeopathic departments in institutes of other countries (of course, I am hinting at Russia. This is a statement of fact, the United States rules the world trends in biohoney, like it or not, you will look at them, whether it is good or bad). I no longer believe in the legend about "they wanted to bring them out of the shadows and control", no. They just wanted to control the cash flow of profits from this business. Nobody ever thinks about patients anywhere. You may disagree with me. Here in the paragraph there is the fact of the existence of a state institution with state funding. As for the rest, all my conjectures and opinions.
• Let's see, for example, the department Thoracic Surgery (including Breast Cancer) Hospital of the State of Columbia, one of the best centersAn evidence-based modality that uses essential oils extracted from plants, flowers, and herbs to support health, and the whole article is a delight for the eyes. Everything is presented as a complementary treatment for breast cancer that will alleviate the condition. (And I'm not talking about the fact that it won't make it easier, maybe it will, I'm talking about the legalization and official recognition of all these techniques).
• Let's see the Cleveland Hospital, where they opened a huge Department of Preventive Medicine, where you can get the full range of integrative and preventive approach from the professors (covered by most insurances). Robert Minesweeper, preventive doctor, 4.9 stars out of 5. Everyone is satisfied and happy. Do you know what they say on the official website about the Department of Integrative and Preventive Medicine at Clivland Hospital?

Instead of considering complementary therapies as a complement to mainstream medicine, integrative medicine combines the best of both worlds to meet all your needs.

Understand?

He bluntly says "integrative medicine for everyone, and for the healthy too" – the actual treatment of the healthy has been in the air for a long time. Finally, it was implemented.

Well, who was left in the lurch in the end? I think we are.

Because I can list both centers and departments for a long time, everything is official, beautiful, with classic phrases and postulates. And it will be more and more introduced into practice officially. Why? because it brings MONEY to the structures. Big. I didn't write about parallel pharma for nothing. Pharma, which brings maximum income and minimum expenses, because research is not needed to bring dietary supplements to the market. Generally. Everyone will believe it.

BUT! For greater adoption and smoother implementation and niche expansion, research is needed.

• According to the plan, a lot of money is allocated for this matter. And here is a subtle point, I can't keep silent about it, it is important for objectivity (otherwise suddenly the dietary supplement from the testicles of the dragon's testicles works and it will be proven in 5 years): if with docmed there is a large imbalance in the printing of most of the studies with a positive outcome, and almost no studies with negative results, then in alternative medicine it is the opposite: journals, especially high-quality ones, Also positive publications are mainly in Chinese and other languages, not in English.

These are all important factors that will inevitably need to be addressed/accepted/not accepted. Although the issue of articles will be solved by the creation of its own journals, which has already happened/is happening, the journal integrative andresearch works great. Editor there is Professor Jin Yong Lee, KMD, PhD, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, Daejeon, South Korea. Do you think he's an obscurantist? I assure you, very unlikely. Or the Journal of Integrative Medicine, with an IF of almost 5 (which isn't terrible at all, and even higher for the kind of people they publish). And then there's the Journal of "Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine"... or the American Journal of Chinese Medicine with an IF under 6.. In general, there are many of them with different names, the problem of imbalance in publications will soon be solved. In the 10 years from 12 to 22, the number of publications increased from 30 to 60 thousand.

So why are you opposed?

Because it's brainwashing. It's simple.

The brains of ordinary people, who are outside of medicine/biomed on average, are completely incapable of separating the wheat from the chaff on biological topics. It's complicated. Only a few can do it. The sickest population in the world with the largest flow is pensioners and their comorbidity. The pensioner has studied biology for too long to bother with the tight joints of the current intestine. And even if he reads Dusya Kartoshkina's post about this very current intestine, it will not help 99.5% of pensioners. When an understanding, gentle doctor appears in front of him, who PROMISES to cure the disease with NATURAL products, it is normal to believe. Especially when it is a real doctor in a white coat of one of the most famous hospitals in the advanced country.

You know, not so long ago I had to go to the local Paris hospital, the central one, for minor surgical care. And so, before the surgery, I was taken to the meditation room to relax, a woman was assigned to me, who broadcast positive passes to me in the voice of a yogi, singing that I was on the seashore, and not in a cold chair, naked, waiting for bloodshed. And I was terrified. Because, firstly, it began to seem that I was losing touch with reality, I was in an insane asylum, and secondly, I panicked that I would not be anesthetized normally. Because there are these dances with tambourines, and I watched a lot of police series about maniacs and other bastards... In general, I have a rich imagination. And as it turned out, it was not in vain that such thoughts came to me, since the surgical department of one of the best hospitals in the United States is trying to use less anesthesia, replacing it with meditation and other dancing with tambourines.

Brains drain quickly in this topic, fog in the head and come on, bye, you are already with bowls at the retreat and a list of dietary supplements in the locker.

Among the methods of integrative and other medicine, there are several blocks of approaches:

• Nutrition (e.g., special diets, supplements, herbs, and probiotics)
• Psychological (e.g., mindfulness, meditation, aromatherapy)
• Physical (e.g., massage, spinal manipulation)
• A combination of psychological and physical techniques (e.g., yoga, tai chi, acupuncture, dance or art therapy) or psychological and nutritional (e.g., mindful eating).

As you can imagine, among these methods there are those against which it is strange to be a doctor of normal medicine, such as tai chi, why not, if you like it? Physical activity. Breathing Exercises - Why Not? massage? Well, so be it, do you want to meditate? (I still laugh at their "evidence", that is, meditations are proven, but chatter with a friend is not, yes) yes, please! Meditate! Oh my God, you can even stick needles in a normal specialist that won't pierce your lungs. Well, maybe you have such hobbies. And your brain gets pleasure from all these body movements.

But first of all, I don't want to call it medicine. This is NOT medicine.

• It's leisure, psychological relief, and whatever you want. But this is NOT the medicine listed above. IT DOESN'T HEAL. yes, it's more or less safe, but it DOESN'T heal. Does it relieve your symptoms? Are you feeling better? Well, that's great. Don't ask for an indulgence just for these procedures and do what you want. And physical activity is simply necessary and useful, in any form in which you can/enjoy.
• You could argue that this is preventive medicine. We need evidence here as well. That acupuncture prevents anything. Or tai chi prevents this particular disease. There is no such thing. Physical activity prevents, yes. Not tai chi specifically. Squats at home will also be prevented. free by the way. I don't want to think of it as medicine. We have our own excellent prevention, for this we do not need a parallel structure that repeats the rules of a healthy lifestyle for money.

In addition to these "harmless" methods, there are "offensive" ones. The first point is nutrition and everything related to it. Diets, of all colors and shades. And dietary supplements are a river, through the analysis of the biochemistry of the cell at the individual level with the appointment of a collective scheme under a personalized sauce powdered with scientific articles. And this is already dangerous.

Also dangerous is the different bone-setting community of osteopaths and chiropractors, especially when it comes to children, who flow like a river in these offices, starting from the 4th day of life (on the 3rd day they were discharged from the hospital, on the fourth day the nurse is already in line to the osteopath to check the neck of the child, because vaginal birth, you never know, and the midwife whispered it to her).

But the most important thing is that there is no evidence that all this can help the patient, and this help will outweigh the risks, both for health and for the wallet, for the patient's compliance and so on. So far, everything is more than deplorable at all tops, not a single dietary supplement or lists of dietary supplements has proven any effectiveness, much less any clinical efficacy, for the treatment of real diseases. (Just don't poke me with psyllium).

And the other aspect is the constant lies and distortion of scientific facts on all issues by all integrative physicians that are represented. I don't know how they do it, but test-tube research is instantly practiced on humans. As we increasingly temper doctors even with real clinical studies that are done on the population, but not on your specific patient, and this abyss between clinical research and practice is very difficult to navigate, and this requires the clinical experience of the doctor and his ability to interact with the patient, the doctor's erudition, the ability to control logic and reasoning, generalize what he has read, draw conclusions with an eye to the patient, Integrative medicine goes out all sorts of nonsense just to sell a service, with a huge price tag and always promises of personalized care.

We say openly that guideline medicine (this is a rudimentary docmed, when a doctor treats according to a cookbook guide, thoughtlessly) practically does not work on comorbid patients, simply because guides are written mainly for one nosology, and here you need to master all types of brain dance in order to competently treat such patients. Integrative medicine shares the same personalized dietary supplement scheme for everyone. Yes, "the same personalized". At the same time, they told in every possible way how they studied all the molecules in a particular cell in the patient, because he passed a bunch of tests for a hundred thousands. Although everyone knows perfectly well within themselves that a molecule in the blood does not reflect the state in the cell, and in order to find such markers are valid, scientists have been struggling for more than a dozen years and have been unsuccessful. But integrators aren't bothered by this like IgG4 is. In the same way, they ignore the real scientific results, while saying out loud that everything is according to science.

In general, what am I getting at.. It's already very long. It's rubbish. Money rules the world. Adequate doctors of normal medicine have great strength to restrain the onslaught. Although it is already clear that it will not work out and the rules of the game will have to be changed.