NUTRIENT SUPPLEMENTS MAY PREVENT DISEASE
July 10, 2012 by admin
Filed under Health Blog, Healthy Lifestyle
EATING A BALANCED DIET WILL NOT PREVENT NUTRIENT DEFICIENCIES AND DISEASE – NUTRIENT SUPPLEMENTS PRESCRIBED SPECIFICALLY FOR YOUR BIOLOGICALLY UNIQUE BODY PROBABLY WILL
The Forces Against Health inAustralia
Nutritional medicine could save hundreds of millions of lives, but vested interests actively pursue the opposite.
Commentary by Ian Brighthope, M.D. Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, June 25, 2012According to Dr Ian Brighthope:
“Health practice in Australia is still focused on treatment of disease as opposed to its prevention and the optimization of health. Although the scientific literature has recently shown an increasing awareness of the importance of lifestyle factors in preventing disease, mainstream medical professionals continue to be trained to react to disease and pursue drug treatment. This “drug and disease” paradigm is costly, not only in monetary terms but also the human toll of pain and suffering and its impact on productivity and quality of life, and widespread illness and death caused by medical treatment.
Iain Chalmers, director of the UK Cochrane Centre, has said that “Critics of complementary medicine often seem to operate a double standard, being far more assiduous in their attempts to outlaw unevaluated complementary medical practices than unevaluated orthodox practices . . . These double standards might be acceptable if orthodox medicine was based solely on practices which had been shown to do more good than harm and if the mechanisms through which their beneficial elements acted were understood.” Unfortunately, neither of these conditions hold true. [1]
The Australian government has made investment in the prevention of disease a priority in its $7.4 billion comprehensive reform package to the nation’s health system. Yet prevention has been a secondary consideration in most medical schools and practices. A huge amount of disease and death could be prevented by addressing the use of tobacco and alcohol [2]. There remains an enormous void in the government’s health policy because it does not encourage and support the medical profession to practice nutritional medicine.
CHANGING ATTITUDES
“Individuals are ceasing to be mindless consumers of drugs and services, becoming more discriminating and aware in their choices. They are also bringing their new options back home to their family physicians, and contributing to an awareness among doctors of the existence and potential of natural therapies.” [3]
Research in the field of nutritional medicine is growing at a phenomenal rate, and now that the human genome has been sequenced, the science supporting nutrition in preventing disease is more impressive than ever. Many general practitioners and academics are open to the use of diet and nutritional supplements as viable alternatives to drugs. However, there are still too few to make a significant impact on public health. There will always be resistance, even hostility from the nutritional “flat-Earthers” – those who believe that “if you eat a balanced diet then you cannot be deficient in essential nutrients” (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary) [4] – and the academic medical power brokers. But I believe the system will eventually change in line with the accumulating evidence.
Recently, leading economic forecasters Access Economics announced that expanding the use of complementary/nutritional medicines could maintain excellent patient outcomes while saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year in healthcare costs. They studied the cost-effectiveness of common nutritional treatments for common chronic and serious conditions. They evaluated acupuncture for chronic lower back pain,St John’s Wort for mild to moderate depression, fish oils in the prevention of heart disease and for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.
The director of Access Economics, Lynne Pezzullo, said that analysing each treatment on a case-by-case basis showed patients could save a considerable amount of money by using nutritional medicines. In the case of St John’s Wort, for the 340,000 Australians who are being treated for mild to moderate depression with drugs that don’t work well, she estimated a saving of $50 million per annum. The potential savings from the use of vitamins C, D, and E and fish oils in heart disease is in excess of $2 billion.
The executive director of the National Institute of Complementary Medicine who initiated the study, Professor Alan Bensoussan, commented “I think governments should … look more closely at what implications this might have in the context of national health reform.” [5] I agree wholeheartedly, and have been pushing for similar reforms for many years. I hope this will mark the beginning of a new endeavor to change our overburdened health care system.
Politicians and regulators are very cautious about such change for fear of reactions from the medical and pharmaceutical establishment, who may perceive competition for the health dollar as a threat. But there is enough work to do in the goal of optimal health to keep every doctor, hospital, naturopath, and nutritionist busy for decades. That is, unless a miracle occurs and megadose vitamin C and a few vitamins and minerals become widely used. For these supplements can prevent widespread deficiencies that are responsible for many age-related diseases.
The “Wellness Model” of health attempts to prevent disease and optimise health by encouraging people with the proper nutrition and lifestyle tools. This can achieve the maximum level of health, physical and mental, for each individual. It creates an optimal environment for the expression of that individual’s genetic potential. The keys to achieving optimal health include the judicious use of nutrition and nutritional supplements, regular physical exercise, the avoidance of environmental pollutants, and the practice of positive outlook through simple techniques such as meditation. This concept of optimising health for everyone is foreign to most traditional doctors and is glaringly absent from medical school curricula and training.
LOBBYING FOR DISEASE
In this debate there are insidious influences. A powerful lobby group called the Friends of Science in Medicine (FOSM) is actively discouraging the federal government from supporting universities with funding if they conduct courses in what they personally regard as unscientific. Shamefully, the FOSM don’t have members trained in NM and the nutritional sciences. FOSM is predictably against nutritional supplements, regarding them as expensive and wasteful. Could the money spent on nutritional supplements be better spent in more hospitals by treating the sick with drugs? In effect FOSM insists that universities should only teach what it defines as “correct” knowledge – emphasizing the treatment of disease, not the promotion of health.
FOSM and the medical establishment would do well to become aware of the vast literature on nutritional medicine and the clinical experience of scientifically trained nutrition-aware doctors and nutritionists.
NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS IN MEDICAL AND PHARMACY PRACTICE
Most drug prescriptions are unnecessary, an estimated 80% in Australia. [6] The list is long and includes antibiotics, statins, antidepressants, and many more. Yet through the best education, lifestyle, fitness, dietary change and the proper use of nutritional supplements and herbal medicines, patient health outcomes can be optimised and hospital admissions and adverse drug events significantly reduced.
In 2009, government expenditure on the pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS) amounted to $6.9 billion [7] and it is estimated that in 2009-10 it grew a further 9.3%. [8] I believe that at least $3 billion could be wiped off the total PBS expenditure and that these savings could be used to promote better nutrition, physical fitness and safe, effective natural therapies. For example, use of more cost-effective niacin or St. John’s Wort as antidepressants could free up more money to psychiatrists for proper counseling and to orthomolecular nutritionists for feeding the mind. Overall this would lead to greater knowledge, more support for the most appropriate research, and an economic benefit to the world’s population”.
For professional advice on your individual needs and to access high-quality nutrient supplements and herbal medicines that are superior to those available over the internet or ‘off the shelf’, consult a qualified naturopathic practitioner.
Yours In Great Health,Sar Rooney BHSc., ND., DC., DASc., GDSc. (Hons), MATMS, MHATO
Naturopathic Medicine Practitioner, Lecturer, Researcher
Earth Medicine TM
Email: [email protected]
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Helping you achieve optimal wellness, hormonal balance and disease prevention with personalised, professional naturopathic health care, clinical pathology testing and high-quality herbal medicines and supplements
Sar Rooney is a Naturopathic Medicine Practitioner specialising in Anxiety and Depression |Women’s Health| Hormonal Imbalances | Thyroid Disorders | Digestive Health | Genetic Polymorphisms (MTHFR/Pyroluria) | Nutritional Medicine | Optimal Wellness & Disease Prevention
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Disclaimer: The information provided is not intended to replace medical advice or treatment. Please note: I am not a medical practitioner.
