Many might point to the gratifying dramatic increase in public awareness and utilization of natural medicine as one of our greatest accomplishments. However, I believe far more significant is the remarkable advancement in the quality of our practitioners and the health care they provide. Several factors have contributed to the increased efficacy of natural medicine practitioners. Four are especially significant: burgeoning research in nutritional and other specific natural medicine therapies, improved quality of education, increased availability of high quality natural medicines, and newly available laboratory assessments that allow more objective evaluation of our patient’s health and function.
The quantity of good quality research supporting natural medicine interventions has increased substantially the past two decades. Many conventional and natural medicine educational institutions are actively engaged in research and the US Congress’s elevation of the Office of Alternative Medicine to an NIH Center and increase in budget to $70 million is providing ever more funding and opportunity. The newest edition of the Textbook of Natural Medicine now cites over 10,000 peer-reviewed research studies documenting much of our practice.
Education in natural medicine has been dramatically improved by accreditation. This was accomplished by the willingness of the natural medicine professions to engage in the onerous process of establishing accrediting agencies of sufficient quality to meet US Department of Education standards and then subjecting natural medicine institutions to the rigors of the process. Also of importance to improving practitioner quality has been national standardized professional examination boards, increased numbers of states establishing licensing and the continuing efforts of the professions to establish standards of care.
Product quality has been significantly improved by the increased utilization of pharmaceutical production standards by many of the manufacturers of natural medicines. The relatively recent availability of standardized botanical extracts has greatly facilitated more objective research. Equally important has been the internet and other electronic tools which have made all this information much more readily accessible.
Finally, I am especially excited by the great increase in number and quality of laboratory methods for assessing patient function and health. For so long the only laboratory tests available were only for the detection of diseaseóuseful but too late! Instead of having to guess, we can now detect physiological imbalances long before they progress to far more difficult to treat pathology. Systemic toxic load, bowel toxemia, efficacy of the liver’s detoxification enzymes, immune dysfunction, all these age-old natural medicine treatment precepts are now measurable.
Public access has also been greatly improved through both political and financial progress. Insurance companies now compete with each other to offer alternative medicine benefits to attract enrollees while more and more state legislators now mandate insurance equality. Public officials and legislators, after successfully using natural medicine themselves, no longer blindly believe the medical political lobbies. They are systematically dismantling the system of special privilege for medical doctors that created so many barriers to public access to natural medicine. Especially significant has been the establishment and funding of demonstration projects such as the landmark King County Natural Medicine Clinic. Fully funded by a combination of Federal, State and County funds, this innovative program demonstrated that natural medicine and conventional medicine practitioners could work together in a public clinic for the benefit of their patients, Their pioneering successes engendered tremendous media attention.
The public is voting with their feet and their pocketbooks. They want a new health care system. They want respect, personal control and better health. They want what we are offering.
Joseph E. Pizzorno, Jr., ND
President, Bastyr University