Why "Expensive" Often Doesn't Equal "Quality" in Health Care

I sometimes marvel at hugely beneficial, and often inexpensive, health ideas I’ve picked up over the years, and even wonder how my life might have changed had I known about them sooner. Chinese herb detox treatments. The green vegetable juice drink that increases my energy level. Colostrum to build up immunity.

I was reminded about such techniques as I read Linda Diane Feldt’s wonderful primer on relieving menopause symptoms (commenting on my most recent post). Now, maybe because I’m a man, I haven’t heard of Motherwort and Black Cohosh, but I suspect many women haven’t, either.

She argues that bioidentical hormones should be seen as a last resort among herbal-food remedies. The reason they are pushed right up ahead of the less powerful herbs is that the less powerful herbs have less powerful proponents. It’s the problem she identifies as “the promotion of drugs and herbs and supplements by the people who directly profit from them.”

I don’t know how you get around that problem in a capitalist society such as ours. It would be nice if the government at least helped in the education effort, but it can’t/won’t because its key officials have been bought off or are graduates of the corporate establishment themselves. In other words, the small pharmacies that push bioidentical hormones because that’s what they have to sell are working from the same incentives as Big Pharma.

This phenomenon helps explain why many of the powerful inexpensive remedies never get tested to the satisfaction of the science establishment’s control-group criteria. There’s not enough money to be made from such remedies, so there’s no financial backing of studies that would document their efficacy. The old chicken-egg routine.

Comments

[Mac]

Reading this posting today I'm reminded that not only are there inexpensive yet effective nutritonal remedies that aren't well known, for the reasons you stated, but there are also simple, seldom discussed changes we can make in our eating habits(HOW we eat, not just WHAT we eat) which also have very benefical results, often on the efficeny of digestion, which some health traditions(Ayurveda, for instance)consider to be the foundation of good health. But like the inexpensive herbs, etc., I guess there isn't enough money to be made teaching these things, and so they aren't widely talked about. Once you've learned good habits, that's it, no repeat business. I've noticed that almost all of the nutritional healing advice I've seen recently seems to focus on the "what" we eat and says little about the health effects of "how" we eat. There's some talk about portion sizes, but I haven't noticed a strong emphasis on many other "hows" about eating. When I studied ayurveda some years ago, there was great emphasis put on changing habits to optimize digestion. It's easy to forget that we can eat the best food but if it isn't properly digested and assimilated it will be of limited benefit.

[David Gumpert]

Mac, I'd be curious to know some more about what you are referring to. Things like chewing carefully, eating slowly, avoiding distractions like TV? In other words, being focused on the eating experience? (I think what meditators sometimes refer to as "eating mindfully.")
If this is what you are getting at, I think you are onto something. I know people who are careful about what they eat, and then take pride in being able to consume as much of their food as possible while driving or working at the computer, in a show of "efficiency." Some of that is unavoidable in our culture, but there is a fine line where the unavoidable becomes the routine. We're also talking about breaking lifelong habits. I suspect that when we consume good fresh food, it becomes easier to eat mindfully, simply because good food seems to draw attention to itself.

[Linda Diane Feldt]

Good points. I think it is ironic that I've spent more time talking to nursing mothers about this issue than adults. I get called in a lot for breast feeding problems, so in addition to doing cranialsacral therapy with the babies we talk about the mom being relaxed, in a comfortable position, having access to water herself, ways of not being stressed while the baby is nursing, holding the baby in a stress free position, and creating a warm and cozy atmosphere for nursing. It helps! We're mammals, let down and digestion and assimilation can't happen when the sympathetic nervous system is activated.
The news this week had a report on "virtual dinners" where elderly people who live alone can have a reltaive "eat" with them long distance through a web cam hook up. How terribly sad.
My experience -- eating a meal begins with the story of the food, to stimulate the brain and heart connections, and then looking at the food and smelling it starts the body's production of enzymes and the right saliva to break it down. Only then does the rest come into play.
It really is simple, even the Ayuvedic ideas are very easy to grasp at the same time being wonderfully complex and full of larger wisdom.
I have had some wonderful teachers who emphasized this issue.