Is Nutrition an Alternative Healthcare?…
by Arthur A. Fierro, DC, DACBN, CCN, LN, NMD
As the secretary for the ACA Council on Nutrition and the ACBN, I am frequently asked questions from the media about nutrition, its trends, its effectiveness, etc. While being interviewed by a newspaper recently, I was asked the question, “Why do you think nutrition has become so popular as an alternative medicine?”
On first response, you might think that I would immediately address the question of “Why do you think nutrition has become so popular as an alternative medicine?” But I did not, because in my opinion, the wording of the question was wrong. You see, I heard the wording of the question as: “Why do you think nutrition has become so popular as an alternative medicine?” This implies that medicine is the foundation and everything else is “alternative.” The question suggests that medicine is the status quo, the “accepted,” and everything else gets a sneer, a snicker, with suggestions of quackery and fads. I frequently get the statement: “Alternative prevents a patient from seeking ‘appropriate’ care.” The word alternative suggests “in place of,” which immediately creates an adversarial position. You are either to be treated our way or their way; you are either on our side or their side. This is the polarization of thought today.
The fact is that nutrition is not an alternative to anything. Nutrition has been around since our creation. Throughout history, sound nutrition along with lifestyle management governed our health. Granted, we did a poor job of this throughout history for one reason or another, but that does not change the fact that nutrition is truly the foundation of existence.
It is medicine as we perceive it today that is alternative. “Modern medicine” has only been around for approximately 200 years or so. In the beginning of “modern medicine,” in the early 19th century, the treatment of choice for whatever ailment a person had was a tincture of opium or a tincture of cocaine. Dr. Erasmus Darwin, a very prominent medical doctor and authority on disease, published a two volume book titled Zoonomia in 1809. In this publication, Dr. Darwin laid out the treatment for all ailments that a person might come down with. Throughout this book, the basic treatment is clear: tincture of opium or tincture of cocaine. This, in my opinion, was the beginning of drugs as alternative healthcare — not the other way around. I believe that this early practice has evolved into the healthcare problems we have today.
When people started taking opium and cocaine for every ailment, they really felt great (no wonder). To a population that had to work hard at proper nutrition (meaning the time spent in food gathering, storage and preparation), this was a miracle. If all it took to make you feel better was to take a little tincture of opium or cocaine, then why should the people continue to maintain sound nutrition, a lifestyle that took time, effort, thought and patience? After all, now there was a magic bullet to “cure what ailed you.” Better yet, it made you feel great. Even better, was that people no longer needed to be responsible for their actions, for their bad habits or for their lifestyles. You could do whatever you wanted and be totally irresponsible because now there were drugs that would get you better in spite of your dietary misbehavior.
This is where we started to abdicate our responsibility to ourselves and allow drugs to do the work. What made this even more tempting was that if the drug did not work, then it was not your fault. It must have been the doctor’s fault, or it was the wrong drug. You see, it allowed a person the freedom to blame his or her ills on something or someone else.
Modern medicine became the alternative to sound nutrition. Because of power, money and persuasion, this fundamental concept got twisted around as suggesting that nutrition is the popular alternative medicine. With the phenomenal amount of money spent on medications, it’s no wonder that the status quo seeks to maintain its position in the healthcare market.
Over the years, the slowly emerging realization is that we have become a drug society. Ever so slowly, however, people are beginning to become self-empowered; to retake control of their own healthcare and once again accept responsibility. People are starting to turn back to the basics — that of proper nutrition. That is not easy. Our society has been raised with a medical mentality where we have lost the ability to understand our own bodies’ needs. We have become so conditioned as to not trust our own instincts. We have to see the doctor for every little thing; we must get approval, the confirmation from an expert, to something we already knew was either the problem or the treatment.
Nutritional therapeutics is making a dramatic re-emergence. In doing so, people are becoming more responsible and nutritionally educated. This means becoming less dependent on drugs. The more responsible a person becomes, the greater the likelihood that he or she will be healthy. A healthy person does not need medicine. Can you see the problem being created? Modern medicine is a multi-billion dollar industry. Anything that threatens to change that is going to be met with stiff opposition. Nutrition and supplements are, therefore, seen as “the enemy.”
By now you must think that I am against medicine. In fact, I am quite the opposite. Medicine “shines” in crisis intervention, trauma, in conditions where prevention has failed or we have failed ourselves in our responsibility of sound nutrition, diet and lifestyle management.There is no alternative to nutrition. Without it, we die. Those who perceive nutrition as alternative are most likely well-versed in the pronunciation of all their medications.
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