It's all horse for courses.
One of my little girls I think would have died from pneumonia 4 years ago - she was in a real bad way but fully recovered thankfully, due to the local hospital, antibiotics and a tube down her throat giving her fluids.
However, conventional medicine whilst great with these life threatening short term illnesses is not so good with the long term chronic ones.
I really get a bit annoyed when people talk about drug trails and how alternative medicine has not been tested etc...
There is over 5 thousand years of testing that has been going on with some Chinese or Indian type remedies. Over here in the UK, big pharma is so scared that it is trying to bring in legislation that removes some of these well tried well known alternatives - if they did not work then it would not be doing such ie
eople would just not use them.
Once it has removed the alternatives then big pharma has the whole market to itself.
The other thing that gets my goat is that no one is allowed to mention the 'cure' word. Well I am, I am not in remission, I am cured - there I said it, what are you gonna do about that!!!
I can eat a vindaloo curry, a peperami pizza, anything I want, I seem to have the cast iron gut that I used to have.
I maybe tempting providence but I just had to say it. If I get ill again then I consider it the same as contracting the flu - just god damn bad luck.
My local doctor once told me that medicine is not an exact science and I believed him, he was a great supporter of what I was doing and my results. The hospital however were very different, they struck me off their lists because I stopped taking one of their prescribe drugs - in fact I was told that 'you need to take this, else we cannot see you again'. From an outsiders point of view I could believe that doctors have shares in this big pharma companies - I also noticed that some of the local crohns support groups are funded by these big companies - its like they need you to believe you need them - all very sinister.
For me, I am well out of it, drug free and symptom free for about the last 6 years. In fact am hoping to hit 7 years - is it right that every cell in you body (with the exception of neurons) gets replaced every 7 years - hit that milestone and I will know that there is not a single cell in my body that has been doing unwarranted damage to my colon. Fingers crossed.
I think the problem with talking about a "cure" is when it's proposed to exist for Crohn's in general. It's possible you may be cured, obviously I don't know your situation, but I'm open minded enough to admit it's a possibility. However, even if you are cured, that's one piece of anecdotal evidence. There's no evidence that whatever it was that you believe has cured you would help anyone else with Crohn's. A cure for a disease implies it stands a chance of working for anyone with that disease, and in that sense there is no evidence whatsoever of a cure for Crohn's.
I'm also not sure about your claim that if alternative treatments didn't work no one would be using them. When I first became ill, I was a naïve teenager. I was very gullible - when I saw various alternative practitioners and read web pages on alternative medicine, I assumed that the treatments must work - why would someone claim something that isn't true? When I met for one-on-one sessions with alternative nutritionists, homeopaths, hypnotherapists, etc., etc., and described my digestive symptoms to them, they invariably claimed that not only did their practice work, but that they could help
me . I consequently handed them large sums of (my parents') money. Then I'd find that their treatments didn't work at all. The nutritionists actually succeeded in making my symptoms
worse.
Why did I keep trying so many? Because I was desperate. I was losing control of my bowels at school, I couldn't stand the thought of living my life this way forever. So when one alternative treatment didn't work, I'd move on to something different. Deep down I knew that these treatments were a load of rubbish, but I was so desperate, I needed to feel like I was trying something, just to stop me having to face the reality of a lifetime of humiliation and sickness, and alternative practitioners took advantage of this situation.
The reason I turned to alternative medicine in the first place was because I was getting no help from conventional medicine. My doctors put me on long waiting lists to see consultants, have tests, and yes, gave me prescriptions for medications that didn't help me. They didn't seem concerned and I couldn't get across to them how badly I wanted to be cured. I don't claim conventional medicine is perfect, or even always better than alternative medicine. I was abused by a doctor; I was put in psychiatric care because I was losing weight and my doctors assumed I was anorexic before bothering to listen when I told them there was something wrong with my digestive system.
However, the troubles I have found in conventional medicine have been largely the result of individuals (the abusive doctor; doctors who didn't believe I had stomach problems; doctors who were prescribing medications when they lacked the knowledge to accurate assess my illness), rather than a result of the practice itself. When I found the right doctors and the right treatments, conventional medicine has saved my life. If you want to go back far enough, I wouldn't have survived being born if it weren't for contemporary medical care. It has eliminated some of my worst symptoms altogether even though it can't "cure" me completely.
Contemporary medicine is researched and tested with techniques that alternative medicine simply wouldn't pass. Yes there's bias in conventional medicine, and money plays a big role in determining which drugs get developed, etc. However, every alternative practitioner I saw was happy to take my money, and when I informed them that I wasn't getting any better, they never once offered me my money back - they usually became very irritated with me and my failure to get better.
To say that greed at the expense of health is only an issue with big pharmaceuticals and doesn't come into alternative medicine is very inaccurate. One hypnotherapist advised me, in a free consultation, to go to a "real" hospital because I was too sick to be managed by hypnotherapy. I think he was the only decent alternative practitioner I saw. I've read that many people benefit from alternative medicine because they are given attention and understanding not found in the mainstream - alternative practitioners listen to them, relax them and give them hope. I never found this. Alternative practitioners wanted my money, gave me hope that they quickly dispelled by failing to produce the results they promise, and often had a tendency to become very short with me when I began questioning why I wasn't feeling better, often blaming me for my failure to improve.
Overall I think my experiences have led me to be incredibly cynical about both conventional
and alternative medicine.
I think they've just led me to lose my faith in human kind in general. However, it's conventional medicine that has come up with things - medications and surgery - that have helped me hugely, something alternative medicine has never done. If I get run over by a bus, I think I'd like real medications, a mainstream hospital, and definitely real painkillers, not a homeopathic remedy, a gluten-free diet, or a hypnotherapist.
