In contrast, the approach of natural medicine is to treat the individual, not the disease. This is a key distinction between a holistic versus an allopathic approach. Some people with HCV infection lead completely normal, disease-free lives, while others have severe liver complications as well as other associated health problems as a result of infection. The natural medicine practitioner asks why people respond differently to HCV infection. How come this person suffers from depression, while another has liver necrosis? Why does this person seem to respond initially to interferon, only to have their viral titers (viral counts) skyrocket a few months after the discontinuation of the therapy? The nutritional practitioner will consider how HCV uniquely manifests in each individual, and establishes a protocol that addresses each patient’s specific health needs. Allopathic physicians tend to put all patients with HCV on one of very few drug regimes, without giving due consideration to the unique manifestations of HCV infection from one person to another.

The brain-washed
It is virtually impossible to watch television or listen to the radio without seeing commercial after commercial advertising various medications promising to relieve symptoms like acid indigestion, headaches, yeast infections, sinus infections, allergies, esophageal reflux disease and menstrual cramps – the list goes on and on. The problem with such mass societal conditioning is that it reinforces the myth that symptom suppression equals health.

Pharmaceutical companies target the vulnerable consumer with their advertisements. The result is a brain-washed consumer who tells his/her doctor what drug to prescribe. People who watch such advertisements ask for and often strongly insist on getting the medications they have learned about from mass media. When symptoms are masked, people fall victim to a false sense of wellness the cause or causes of symptoms remain unaddressed and disease silently progresses. And why shouldn’t they? The predominant message we have all received by our doctors, the mass media, and even from our loved ones and friends, is that if we feel well (and have no symptoms) we are healthy. The unfortunate consequence of a lifetime of symptom suppression is that most of the major chronic degenerative diseases that afflict human beings are advance unchecked with increasing incidence and severity. When symptoms finally do reappear, we often have multiple symptoms or disease “clusters.” Unfortunately, for all of the scientific research and medication prescribed today, the incidence of degenerative diseases and conditions including cardiovascular disease, cancer, infections, depression, anxiety and autoimmune diseases (i.e. lupus and multiple sclerosis) have not declined.

Killing the messenger – Symptom Suppression
 Symptom suppression is akin to “killing the messenger.” If there is a fire in your home and your fire alarm sounds, you would not simply shut it off and ignore the fire. More likely, you would seek out the cause of the alarm, namely if there is a fire, and call the fire department. As simple as this example sound, when it comes to the symptoms we experience many of us take symptom suppressing medications and fool ourselves into believing that the “fire is out.” Consider that our symptoms are many “small fires” which can be handled safely and effectively with a little natural attention.

A naturally oriented practitioner views persistent symptoms as the body’s natural defense mechanism that may need a “natural” nudge in the right direction. Optimal nutritional intake and absorption and assimilation help to insure that the body has all of the basic materials for maximum repair and health maintenance. Foods and nutrients are the building blocks of our health and provide the necessary substances for all healing. Medications, necessary when all else fails, will likely work better in well-nourished individuals.

It is important to understand that life’s stressors create increased nutritional needs. Bodies trying to heal, repair, cope and eradicate an infection, including HCV, are particularly affected. HCV taxes some of the body’s metabolic functions, tissues and organs, and increases the need for proper nutrition. It will become common sense to the reader that paying careful attention to nutritional needs during times of increased stress, like that of Hepatitis C infection, will go a long way towards alleviating or even reversing the manifestations of disease.

The natural point of view
By strict definition doctor means teacher and educator. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of doctoring is conveying complex information to those in need of a practical and understandable framework. After all, what’s the use of new or interesting information if it cannot be applied by those in need? There’s a famous saying, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime.”

Unfortunately, most doctors today are solely focused on “fixing” their patients’ symptoms instead of working in partnership with them to develop the skills necessary to prevent illness, to tailor treatments to their unique needs and to encourage health-promoting lifestyle practices. A primary intention of this book is to help HCV infected individuals and health care providers develop the distinctions necessary to work together to discover healing strategies that can easily be implemented into daily living and practiced for a lifetime.

How can people learn to be proactive regarding their health choices if they are not actively involved in creating and discovering them? The answer is — they cannot.

If you find yourself sitting before a health care provider who claims that he or she has the only acceptable answers, that is your signal to find another practitioner. No single branch of the healing arts, including allopathic medicine and natural medicine, has all of the answers.

The Complementary Approach: And the problems with the strict medical paradigm The best health care should involve the integration of all reasonable options that empower the individual, whether proven in double-blind placebo-controlled scientific studies or not. It is simply a fact of life that human beings require optimal nutrition to thrive, and adequate nutrition to simply survive. Creative nutritional solutions have developed as a result of the determination of individuals infected with HCV and health care providers committed to improving quality of life. Drug solutions that are merely viral focused likely arise from a narrow-minded concept that killing the virus is equivalent to an improvement in health. The present medical evidence does not convincingly support the notion that clearing the HCV virus in-and-of-itself improves health, or is the appropriate long-term medical intervention – except in a few circumstances.

Allopathic medicine does not fully appreciate the eventual physiologic toll that virally based medications have upon the body. Evidence exists that HCV drug interventions may increase cancer rates as well as one’s risk of developing other disease conditions. As with all medical treatments, decisions as to the appropriateness of each must be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Medications are not panaceas, and neither are nutrients. There is a proper time and place for the use of each, and for the intelligent use of medicine as a compliment to natural therapies, and vice-versa. The natural approach is really a common sense approach. The first step in addressing a symptom or chronic complaint is to look at lifestyle and factors that may be at cause or influence. The second step would be to implement non-toxic, non-drug approaches to enhancing wellness, such as diet, nutritional and herbal substances and other non-drug approaches which support the healing process while producing the least troublesome side effects. Pharmacological drugs and surgical options would be the last resort because of their relatively high toxic side effects. The time has come for our disease-focused medical system to transform into a true health-care system; one that considers the individual’s unique interaction with his or her internal and external environments. This system will develop healing options for each person in need, as opposed to artificially pigeon-holing patients into disease names (diagnoses).

A Diagnoses by any other name…
The present medical system in the United States is based on taxonomy, what is commonly referred to as the diagnosis. A patient visits the doctor, who listens to the patient (from the limited perspective of his or her medical specialty) and chooses the most appropriate ICD-9 or diagnostic code that best fits the patient’s presentation. At this point, most allopathic physicians are satisfied that they have done their jobs. The fallacy, and often fatal error with the taxonomy approach, is that the diagnoses are treated with the available medications that are popular at the time, and the individual person is pushed aside.

HCV is a descriptive term that tells nothing of the unique way in which the person experiences the infection physically, physiologically, and emotionally. Nutritional and natural options pay strong attention to how HCV presents itself in the individual, with the intent of enhancing the patient’s short and long-term wellness.

Moving beyond the medical bias
Health care providers should be aware that they are as much the student as are their patients. Practitioners of all healing arts and sciences should be focused on the needs of their patients and should not simply be devoted to sticking to the limits of their knowledge, branch of health care or therapeutic options. Patients are often confused when their doctor disagrees or belittles their decision to seek out natural healing options. The denial on the part of the traditional allopath to consider healing options outside of those deemed medically necessary or standard is far too common, and almost always based in ignorance and bias, rather than experience and evidence.

Freethinking in Medicine: A rarity Physicians are trained for several years to treat disease and not to create health. They are not taught to think in terms of prevention and non-drug alternatives as a first resort or complement to medical therapies. It should not seem too strange to a patient when their allopathic doctor is averse or outright hostile towards “alternative” therapies. The very word “alternative” presupposes something other than what is normally known and practiced by the doctor, and what he or she was taught during formal training. Complementary medicine may be a better term than alternative as it suggests a blending of different ideas and concepts – natural and allopathic, not an exclusion of medical options.

The greatest scientific and political shifts in paradigm occur only when old, out-dated ways are challenged. This is true of virtually all new theories. The abandonment of the old methods of thinking is what is necessary as new ways of doing things develop, and paves the way for scientific progress. Simply put, science cannot advance if it is committed to the status quo. This does not mean that certain practices and knowledge of the past cannot be appreciated and preserved, but old concepts and practices need to be re-evaluated in light of scientific advances. Paradigm shifts can be as sudden as universal acceptance of a single ground-breaking discovery, or as slow as decades of “fringe” concepts infusing themselves into the mainstream, as has been the case with nutritional and herbal therapies over the past fifty years.

Now is a very exciting time in the healthcare arena. Today, there is a definite shift taking place. Conflicts, disagreements, inconsistencies and arguments between those who favor allopathic medicine and those who favor natural health care are in themselves evidence that a paradigm-shift is occurring. The fact that the natural products industry is billions of dollars annually, and that surveys demonstrate that more people visit non-conventional health care providers than traditional medical doctors each year, is further evidence that the shift has occurred in the minds of the majority of health-care seekers. This ongoing transformation in thinking has fueled an increased demand for greater health care choices.

Health care providers of any discipline must maintain an open mind that allows them to consider and research the merits of new and creative approaches to healing. This holistic-mindedness is a necessary step towards considering what is best for the patient, however uncomfortable it may be to challenge one’s own belief system. The natural options in this book are broad enough in their design, and varied enough in their origins, to appeal to all types of health care providers and HCV infected individuals.

The proof is in the doing
Natural practitioners do not feel that the only useful information regarding healing can be found in double-blind, placebo controlled, multi-million dollar, decade long scientific studies. It is doubtful that Hippocrates, the highly regarded great grandfather of Western medicine, relied on the double-blind, placebo controlled study as the gold standard for deciding which treatments he would make available to his patients. It is more likely that his keen observation, knowledge of nature, the human spirit, the human healing potential and good old “trial and error” were his major criteria for recommending healing methods. Accepting blindly the inherent value of the double-blind, placebo controlled scientific study is a precarious endeavor for several reasons. The double-blind approach, the sacred cow of medicine has inherent flaws.

First of all, it is an ignorant assumption that all scientific studies are properly performed, interpreted, and free of the personal biases and financial interests of those who conduct them. One must not ignore the fact that the majority of therapies utilized in medicine today are largely fueled by the financial interests of technology manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies and are not solidly scientifically based.

Secondly, scientific studies generally use animal models. It is a fallacy to assume that the results of such studies can be directly extrapolated to human beings. And while studies performed on humans may offer more promising possibilities in the understanding of what therapies may be helpful, it is incorrect to assume that the results of a study on a certain group of people are relevant to an individual with his or her own unique presentation of health issues.

Scientific studies by their inherent design utilize a placebo (the sugar pill) for half of the test subjects and an “active drug” or nutrient for the other half. A statistical analysis is performed, which attempts to recommend the “average” dose of the drug or nutrient that would benefit the “average” individual. In my 10 years of clinical practice I have yet to meet the “average” individual. Every day I come across unique individuals whose needs change over time. Scientific studies should be used to inform the patient and health care provider of the potential value of therapies and not to dictate or limit treatment options.

Even within traditional medicine itself, there is serious attention directed towards the very nature of scientific method and conclusions as far as applicability to individuals. It has somehow escaped the consideration of the average medically trained physician that conclusions based on studies of averages do not necessarily apply to individuals. Natural medicine practitioners are more likely to view individuals as unique and not lump them into groups of averages.

Relying only on the “proof” of scientific studies also excludes the clinical experience of practitioners who work with real patients every day using the methods and philosophy of natural medicine, and accumulate their own evidence for what does and does not work for large numbers of patients.

Furthermore, millions of people report the benefits of naturally oriented therapies when allopathic treatments had previously failed them. Evidence of this type is regarded as anecdotal – meaning that it is based solely upon the reported benefits of the patients. Standard medicine does not consider anecdotal reports as reliable markers to judge whether or not a particular therapy is of benefit. Holistically minded practitioners value greatly whether or not the patient feels better in response to the therapy. Whether or not the therapy, which showed benefit, can be proven by double-blind studies is of only minor significance. To paraphrase a prominent medical author, researcher and teacher, Dr. Alan Gaby, patients’ responses to therapies are often best judged by anecdotal evidence simply because a patient’s personal judgment of what works for them matters – in effect, our lives are anecdotal! Dr. Gaby’s observation should be considered, however, along with the thousands upon thousands of scientific studies that demonstrate the efficacy and safety of natural therapies.

The unique needs of those suffering from Hepatitis C cannot be fully determined by double-blind studies, anecdotal reports, or clinical studies alone — some synthesis of these methods of evaluation should be employed so that safe and preferably natural therapies with the greatest possibility of benefit can be recommended. The infected individual is in need of treatment options that are health building and not merely virus-focused, using high-risk medications. The virus exerts its ill effects uniquely in each person. The nutritional needs of each HCV infected person change over time. I fear that toxi-molecular (drug-based) approaches will eventually be met with disappointing results in terms of improving the quality of life of those infected with HCV. Non-toxic, natural approaches focused on one’s overall nutritional status, stress-tolerance and immune resiliency will enhance both the quality and length of life.

Copyright 2000-2008, Dr. Michael Wald