Perhaps the new openness in medicine is best expressed by Eric Leskowitz, M.D., a psychiatrist at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Leskowitz's unit treats patients with chronic pain, and the psychiatrist helped bring many alternative treatments to the program. "We use biofeedback, imagery, acupuncture, self-hypnosis, meditation, therapeutic touch, and some practitioners are now experimenting with energy healing," he says. "In fact, the former head of our department, Richard Weintraub, M.D., who's still at the hospital, recently trained as a homeopath. And we're just finishing up a study on the impact of homeopathy on patients with head injuries, funded by the OAM."
Homeopathy and psychiatry? The frontiers of medicine are truly being redefined. How did we come so far—and why have physicians been willing to risk so much? The answer seems to be that the marriage of both disciplines heals more patients—and heals doctors in the process. Dr. Dossey, one of the original visionaries, says, "It's not fulfilling to practice medicine as if human beings are machines. Doctors are spiritually hungry; they are becoming seekers, and this is far more than an intellectual adventure. It has become a personal search."
Natural Pharmacists
Since generic drugs and managed care have cut into many pharmacies' profit, it's no wonder many pharmacists are now looking to natural pharmaceutical products to boost their businesses. Though natural pharmacies may seem new, according to pharmaceutical chemist James Jamieson, Ph.D., of St. Louis, Missouri, both of whose parents were pharmacists, they harken back to the 1940s and 1950s tradition of compounding remedies and filling capsules by hand for doctors. Of course that all changed when drug companies began patenting medications and the age of "molecule manipulation" began. For instance, cortisone was originally manufactured from wild yams. Then the cortisone molecule was manipulated into the far more potent hydrocortisone, and manipulated once again into the even more potent prednisone.
"Now people are going back to nature," says Jamieson, "and pharmacists can give them the information they want. Let's say someone runs to the health food store and buys ginseng and ma huang, two powerful herbs that combat fatigue. If that person is also on an antidepressant that's an MAO inhibitor, they could die from ingesting that combination of herbs and drugs. Pharmacists are qualified to help customers make decisions about what to take."
At present, doctors practicing alternative medicine rely on a handful of natural pharmacies, many of which specially compound preparations. Natural pharmacies carry medicines and drugs, as well as vitamin supplements, botanicals, herbal remedies, homeopathic preparations, and natural beauty products, says Mary Ann Liebert, the publisher of over 50 medical journals. Last October, Liebert's company launched Natural Pharmacy, a new trade magazine. Pioneering natural pharmacies include Hickey Chemists in New York City (212-223-6333), College Pharmacy in Boulder, Colorado (800-888-9358), Women's International Pharmacy in Madison, Wisconsin (800-279-5708), and Apothecure in Dallas, Texas (800-203-2158).
Some of these pharmacies, however, are now being inspected and their selling curtailed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In April 1996, when the FDA received reports of skin infections from a contaminated batch of injectable adrenal cortex extract (ACE), a drug the agency has not approved, it recalled all such products on the market. In addition, the FDA recently investigated the Apothecure pharmacy, which had distributed ACE. After its owner and pharmacist Gary Osborn agreed to voluntarily recall all of his injectable products, he says he lost $50,000 in income and had to fire 20 percent of his staff. The agency also required the pharmacy to put prescription labels on every compounded medication (specially made at the pharmacy) going to doctors. This means doctors can't stock up on compounded medications and must wait until they arrive to administer them to patients.
The good news is that in September of 1997, the first Congress on Natural Pharmacy was presented in Arlington, Virginia.
Beam Me Up, Doc
When some doctors cross over to alternative realms of medicine, they go far beyond herbs and acupuncture to a universe of invisible energy. They believe doctors of the next millennium may make diagnoses merely by passing their hands over a patient's "energy" field, or seeing into the body and organs to sense the nature and location of an illness.
One physician experimenting with energy medicine is Mehmet Oz, M.D., a prominent cardiothoracic surgeon at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, who works with an energy healer named Julie Motz when he's performing open-heart surgery. In 1994, Dr. Oz invited Motz, a healer for eight years, into the operating room. The next year, he set up the Cardiac Complementary Care Center, proposing therapies in diet, meditation, hypnosis, bodywork, and energy medicine. Motz believes that energy is gathered into the body through seven centers along the spine, called chakras, and distributed from these centers to organs and tissue. Motz says she guides energy up the chakras and removes blocks. When energy healing is added to the treatment of patients recovering from heart disease, they seem to recover more quickly, with less infection and pain, according to Dr. Oz.
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