Trend: More physicians offer alternative medicine

May I point out that what is being called complementary alternative medicine treatments are actually none of the above? They are not complementary they are, in most cases, opposed to and replacing that treatment. They are not alternative because most of my treatments (I am a certified Wellness doctor) have a totally different paradigm. I look to the health of the individual before I look to the symptoms that the disease is causing. Fix the deficiency or the toxicity and ALL disease leaves because the body is designed to be healthy. Allopathy assumes that the body is designed to get sick and needs drugs or surgeries to correct the natural state of the body. Finally, it is not medicine. I want this to be a message of hope! Your body is designed to be healthy and well. It does not code for illness unless it has spent a chronic amount of time in an unhealthy environment. Taking a sublethal dose of a lethal toxin will not make you healthier. It can save your life long enough for you to make the appropriate changes!
Good health and happiness,
Dr. Bruce

Dr. Bruce places all of CAM outside of the conventional paradigm and infrastructure. Where these therapies are beneficial for helping us achieve an optimal personal wellness, that is true (and is a value we should declare separately from the "fix-it, cure-it" system of today). But when acupuncture and therapeutic massage are applied to reduce pain, one must describe them as an alternative.

Bruce's assertion that we are born at a condition of 100% well being -- or that there is a potential for such a condition -- is where this argument breaks down and creates an unnecessary barrier between the healers who ascribe to this idea and to those who are part of our "conventional" system. The latter, as this article points out (and I see this every day), are adopting the practices and the practitioners of the former. Both "sides" in the healing realms are merely following consumers.

"Our body is designed to be healthy" is far too simplistic an assertion. We arrive with predispositions and frailties that subject us to ailments and illness in the mere course of life. One has to start there to assemble the knowledge and practice experience to create a realistic approach to well being and how to get there, one person at a time.