When I write about naturopaths, I frequently point out that their “ND” suffix, which they claim as “naturopathic doctor,” in reality should mean “not-a-doctor.” The reason, as I’ve documented over the years, is the pure pseudoscience and quackery at the heart of naturopathy, not to mention the antivaccine pseudoscience. Basically, naturopathy embraces a cornucopia of quackery, including antivaccine beliefs and homeopathy. It seems that naturopaths will embrace almost any treatment, no matter how ridiculous in concept, unsupported in science, and without evidence of clinical efficacy. (If you don’t believe me, just ask Britt Hermes, a former naturopath who realized that she had become a quack and turned her back on her former medical specialty and has become a target for her previous colleagues.) I also find it deceptive how naturopaths try to brand themselves as the true “doctors of prevention.” That’s why I was annoyed yesterday when I saw this:
Addressing the underlying causes of heart disease takes time and whole-person care. Naturopathic doctors excel at preventing and treating heart disease. Find out how in this new FAQ: https://t.co/ZFB0sEqRvf #heartmonth #naturopathicmedicine #naturopathic pic.twitter.com/DGPZOhAplr
— AANP (@AANP) February 1, 2018
Note the image. Note the fake doctor cosplaying a real doctor, complete with a naturopath wearing a stethoscope holding an exotic fruit as though it were medicine. I can’t help but note that, back when I was a surgeon, we used to make fun of docs who wore their stethoscopes like a fashion accessory, as this naturopath is. But let’s look at the claims contained in this Naturopathic Medicine FAQ published by the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP). The question: How do naturopathic doctors prevent and treat heart disease? The answer? They don’t, really, at least not nearly as much as they claim. Sure, anyone can recommend more exercise and a diet rich in plants and lower in foods that contribute to atherosclerotic heart disease, but there’s so much other nonsense.
So here we go:
Heart disease, the leading killer for both men and women in the U.S., is largely preventable if caught and treated early. Naturopathic doctors (NDs) excel at preventing and treating cardiovascular disease because they focus on identifying the underlying causes of disease and empowering patients to make enduring lifestyle changes to restore and maintain their health. A study investigating the effects of lifestyle changes in patients with atherosclerosis (the buildup of fatty, cholesterol-rich plaque in the arteries) found that after only one year of following lifestyle recommendations, about 80 percent of participants were able to bring about plaque regression and avoid surgery without the use of lipid lowering agents.
First of all, what is it with this antipathy towards statins? It’s also a fallacy that doctors go straight to statins. They already use the recommendations of the trial cited in this paragraph, which showed that lifestyle changes can potentially reverse atherosclerotic plaques in blood vessels. Naturopaths like to claim the use of diet, exercise, and other lifestyle changes to treat and prevent disease as though it’s their bailiwick, their purview alone. They also like to claim that they alone are the only ones who look for the “root causes” of disease:
Root causes of heart disease often show up as warning signs in other bodily systems, and many times they are the result of chronic inflammation in the body.2 Chronic inflammation can arise from poor diet, a sedentary lifestyle, stress, autoimmune disease, food allergies, and many other sources. Inside arteries, inflammation helps kick off atherosclerosis, which narrows the arteries and increases the risk they’ll become blocked. This can lead to heart attacks and certain types of strokes.3
Naturopathic doctors spend between one and two hours with patients in an initial appointment, and a good portion of this time is dedicated to identifying sources of inflammation. Trained to be “inflammation hunters,” NDs perform a methodical review of your major bodily systems (skin, digestion, joints, respiratory, etc.). They will also ask detailed questions about your diet and physical activity, and discuss your main stressors and coping strategies.
All of which sounds good on the surface. but what does this actually mean? According to the AANP, it equals this:
Naturopathic doctors will match diagnostic lab tests to findings from your intake in order to determine what is causing your symptoms. Just as the intake is a detailed interview process, so are labs an in- depth series of questions to your body. They will be individualized, and may include the following:
- Lipid panel that includes oxidized LDL (the primary type of cholesterol found in plaques), inflammatory markers, autoimmune markers, and lipoprotein particle analysis
- Full glucose panel
- Comprehensive neurotransmitter profile
OK, real doctors order lipid panels for patients at risk for atherosclerotic heart disease, as well they should. The same is true for a glucose panel, given that many patients at risk for atherosclerosis are also at risk for type II diabetes. But what the heck is a comprehensive neurotransmitter panel? I did a bit of searching and found one such panel, which includes Epinephrine, Norepinephrine, Dopamine, Serotonin, Glycine, GABA, Glutamate, PEA, Histamine. Another panel only includes six of these. Often these “neurotransmitter panels” include claims like:
Correction of imbalanced hormones is important but not always sufficient. Correction of imbalanced neurotransmitters, on the other hand, is imperative if clinical progress is to be made. Determining which neurotransmitters are low and which are high should precede clinical intervention.
No, there is no good evidence that this is the case. As usual, this is an instance of naturopaths thinking that they understand how the body works and falling into the first year medical school trap of thinking that if there is a lab abnormality they have to chase it and try to correct it.
Now here’s one of the scariest parts:
Naturopathic doctors follow the Therapeutic Order, a set of guidelines for clinical decision making that prioritizes minimally invasive therapies to support the body to repair itself. Because of this, NDs lead with natural treatments. However, they are also trained to use pharmacological drugs when necessary.
If their state license permits, NDs can prescribe medications such as diuretics, beta-blockers, and ACE inhibitors as a bridge to manage symptoms of chronic inflammation or cardiovascular disease (e.g. hypertension), until the body repairs itself. If not, they will refer patients to and collaborate with a conventional medical colleague.
The thought of naturopaths prescribing real pharmaceutical drugs always sends a chill up and down my spine—and not in a good way. It’s more like this: The thought of unqualified quacks actually prescribing drugs with significant side effects makes me cringe with fear over what they are doing to patients. Fortunately, the vast majority of naturopaths are not permitted to use real drugs. Unfortunately, the line about how naturopaths will refer to real doctors if their “natural” remedies fail is a bit of—shall we say?—exaggeration. After all, naturopathy is a self-contained system of quackery. Things have to be really bad to make a naturopath admit defeat and refer a patient to a real doctor.
Next up:
The gastrointestinal (GI) tract is a common source of inflammation in the body. Gut flora are living microorganisms that provide a wall of protection between your digestive tract and your blood stream. When the flora in your digestive tract are not in balance, you risk developing localized inflammation. This can lead to alterations in intestinal permeability (leaky gut) which can contribute to heart disease.
Naturopathic doctors help repair the GI tract using their extensive training in diet and clinical nutrition. Restoring proper PH, balancing flora, correcting leaky gut and constipation – linked with a higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease8 – are focal points of naturopathic.
I can’t help but be amused that one of the references is to a video by the Cleveland Clinic (these days, not known for its adherence to science any more). It’s highly preliminary evidence, at best. Of course, naturopaths are all about glomming on to research findings that (they think) support their naturopathic world view and starting to incorporate them into what they do to for patients, long before they are validated in later research and clinical trials. The problem? Most such early provocative findings, far more often than not, fail to be validated in later studies.
Then there’s the rebranding:
Addressing endothelial dysfunction. The endothelium is the inner lining of your blood vessels. It is considered one of the largest organs in your body, and plays an important role in maintaining good heart health. If the endothelium is not functioning optimally, you have an increased risk of arterial inflammation and plaque build-up, which can lead to heart attack or stroke. Endothelial dysfunction is caused by lifestyle factors including tobacco use, obesity, age, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, physical inactivity, and poor diet.
Yes, it is true that vascular endothelium is a critical component in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. It’s even true that chronic inflammation, particularly of the endothelium, is a factor in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. This is something that has been known for a long time, even if the exact inciting factors and causes are not always well understood. Naturopaths, of course, like to sound science-y even as they abuse science. So, instead of just saying that stopping tobacco use, reversing obesity, correcting diet, and the like can reverse atherosclerosis, they have to label these interventions as “normalizing” endothelial function.
Is it all bad? Even I can’t say that it is. For instance, the last bullet point in the FAQ is that naturopaths “believe it is their duty to inspire patients to exercise, rather than just give them guidelines” That’s a good thing. If only that were just the only thing that naturopaths devoted themselves to, in addition to promoting more healthy diets, I might not take such a dim view of them. That’s the problem, though. I like to echo Dirty Harry Callahan in pointing out that “A man’s got to know his limitations.” The problem is that naturopaths never do. They’d do more good as personal trainers, but that’s not what they want. They think they’re real doctors. As a result they don’t just limit themselves to scientifically defensible lifestyle interventions. They want to be doctors. They think they are doctors. They are not. So they add quackery that both fits within their worship of the “natural” as the best way to treat everything and makes them feel like real doctors.
41 replies on “More naturopathic propaganda claiming lifestyle interventions as their own and adding quackery”
Statins = bad but ACE inhibitors = good?
You’d think NDs would be all over statins, since they are anti-inflammatory agents. There are drugs out there that are better at lowering cholesterol, but we don’t use them because they lack the anti-inflammatory action of statins.
I am 75 years old. When I was in my twenties, I was sick all the time. After adopting a naturopathic program, based on good nutrition and elimination of toxins, I became completely well, and have been completely illness-free for the last 50 years. My last checkup showed perfect scores in everything. My Doc was flabbergasted, said I have the body of a fit 30 year old. Naturopathy, homeopathy, natural medicine works. Allopathic medicine hasn’t worked for me or my family.
It seems your lifestyle changes has resulted in beneficial long-term effects to your well-being no doubt encouraged by some of the lessons of naturopathy. Nevertheless if you have been completely well for 50 years how do you judge that the other treatments on offer from naturopaths have any validity? You haven’t been using them! Allopathic medicine should have been able to offer the same lifestyle changes advise since the science was in place to some extent. This advise is now mainstream and commonplace but 50 years ago preventive life style advise was just becoming ‘fashionable’ due to further knowledge about exercise , diet, smoking and alcohol. This is why naturopathy has evolved from a mainly life style advise system ( not withstanding the homeopathic nonsense and ridiculous claims of manipulative therapy to be able to cure all sorts of pathologies) to something so bizarre as well explained by Orac
That’s what we call “anecdotal evidence” my friend. Everyone knows someone whos mothers cousins aunts grannys babysitter smoked until she was 999 and never got cancer, that does not mean smoking does not increase your odds of cancer. If I go out and have unprotected sex with 100 people and manage to avoid HIV that does not prove HIV can’t be contracted through unsafe sex.
Most people, apart form the odd cold, are illness free until they get quite old. If they eat well and stay fit they are even more likley to be healthy.
If you read Oracs other posts (and this one) you’ll see one of his biggest problems with quackery is that it pretends food and fitness changes are owned by alternative medicine and normal doctors don’t talk about them, when in fact they nearly all do. When I had cancer they were always asking about my diet, checking b-vitamins, iron levels etc, even sent me to a nutritionist because I was down to eating half a bagel a day due to sickness and appetite loss. Food might change your odds of getting something but it won’t TREAT you on it’s own 9 times out of 10.
Ryan is your reply in response to my comments? Assuming it is: El’s comment is of course anecdotal evidence but you seem to be downplaying the role of diet and exercise in our well being. I would think , without presenting masses of data, that diseases and their incidences have changed over periods of time but it is unlikely you are correct that most people are free from disease (apart from colds) until old age. It is considered that a good diet and regular exercise will reduce the probability of early onset CHD. That was a primary reason why president Nixon, through his authorities ( about 1968) instigated a program(s) to educate the citizens of the USA to alter their diets and get some exercise. He was convinced this was a correct path to take because of the results of autopsies on young American lives lost in the Korean and Vietnam wars, where to simplify, these young dead soldiers showed early onset signs of CHD in significant numbers.
( CHD-coronary heart disease). I do not defend modern day naturopaths in any way . They have nothing valid to offer that is not obtainable in conventional medical practice and elsewhere except perhaps, sometimes, more time.
Food certainly can be used as a solitary treatment . I am thinking of nutritional deficiencies, abnormalities and starvation in many parts of the world.
Check your reading comprehension, Leonard. Ryan did in fact say that diet and exercise are an important part of medicine; he didn’t downplay a thing about that. What he’s pointing out, is that it has ALWAYS been a big part of real medicine, and that nauturoquacks have been trying to co-op that aspect of real medicine for years, and claim it as their own.
Thus, if in fact the story you tell is true, it’s not because your naturoquack is so awesome but because you’ve been doing what a real doctor would have recommended at the time. Lifestyle modification IS the first step in treating cardiovascular disease.
But while still important, it won’t fix your brain if you have a stroke, or your heart if you have an MI.
Food can be used as a primary treatment for nutritional deficiencies only if a deficiency exists, which is not common in developed nations. All too often, naturoquacks attribute a disease to an imaginary vitamin deficiency, which can be cured by the expensive supplements they sell, most of which will be peed into the toilet as your body only keeps what it needs for most of the vitamins we need (ie the water soluble ones).
Exactly which toxins did you eliminate 50 years ago?
Given that fifty years ago was 1968, there are many options ranging from lead to LSD.
People who instinctively go into a fight/flight reaction against Homeopathy need to be reminded there are more than 200 Homeopathy Colleges in the world (about 100 in India alone). How could these Colleges have survived for decades if Homeopathy doesn’t work? Homeopathy is a wonderful therapy that has helped people with chronic diseases recover. One of the jabs against homeopathy is that it has helped patients because of the Placebo Effect….I’m reminded of a Double-blind study that was reported in the New England Journal of Medicine about Oscillococcinum (a Homeopathic Flu Remedy) and a definite benefit was found, far beyond any Placebo Effect…
Blood letting survived for thousands of years because people thought it worked.
If homeopathy is so successfull how come there are no rigorous studies showing this?
Om Raj
Really? Are you sure you go the journal right? When I search Oscillococcinum in PubMed, I find 19 hits . . . none of which are NEJM
How could these Colleges have survived for decades if Homeopathy doesn’t work?
How could those Nigerian Prince scam e-mails have survived for so long if Nigerian Princes didn’t send $4 million to everyone who helped them get their fortune out of the hands of the government?
Dear ND’s: Please show me any published (in a reputable journal) EVIDENCE that you have “inspired” anyone to initiate and MAINTAIN an active lifestlyle for a substantive (let’s say even two years) period of time. The reason people love quacks is that the quack feeds their desire for easy alternatives to the hard work of behavior change and the discipline required to maintain it. It’s so much easier to swallow supplements and make smoothies than to actually eat less, move more, and stay with it. Even then, many (most?) with significant heart disease (genetics anyone?) will need meds.
I know this is true and I (unlike most who present anecdotes) am willing to prove it with my medical records.
This is along the lines of what I say about “integrative medicine” after I point out that a separate specialty probably isn’t needed to encourage people to exercise and change their diet. I just had a conversation with a reporter, and I basically said that maybe—maybe—a separate specialty of integrative medicine could be justified if integrative medicine docs could demonstrate that they are significantly more effective and have much better results using lifestyle interventions than conventional doctors. As far as I know there is no such evidence. Oh, and they have to lose the quackery that goes along with it. Of course, in the case of the naturopaths, the quackery can’t be separated from naturopathy; so even as “lifestyle medicine” naturopathy would never be justifiable.
@ kissmetoad:
Sure. MAINTAIN is the operative word.
Woo-meisters cite “studies” of dietary change that USUALLY involve a religious conversion-like factor and don’t last very long.
Does anyone follow up? ( Or for that matter do actual research?) Unfortunately, this crap attracts followers.
No. Anecdata is the way they roll.
Panacea, you may interpret Ryan’s words as meaning diet and exercise are an important part of medicine but he didn’t say it. Naturopaths at the turn of the 20thC into about mid-20thC were recommending lifestyle changes relating particularly to diet and exercise for which there was some scientific evidence. This advice was not part of mainstream medicine although enough knowledge was in place that could have enabled this advice. Further medical advances have resulted in widespread changes in our perceptions of diet and exercise.Much of that early naturopathic advice is now commonplace in schools as well as doctors’ offices. It is correct that naturopaths have no right to now claim exclusivity to this knowledge hence their myriad of ‘new’ therapies none of which have been shown to have efficacy.
Just a thought on anecdotes. When I was a teenager there were anecdotes filtering into our consciousness’ that smoking might be harmful to your health, particularly in relation to pulmonary disease. My friends and I tried to quit smoking. Was this rational? There was no scientific evidence of it’s truth, some scientists even proposing a genetic predisposition as the cause , say of lung cancer.When the first epidemiological studies were published ( Medical Research Council1959) nailing the primary cause of lung cancer ( in the UK) to be smoking of cigarettes this consolidated the truth of the anecdotal stories being leaked into society prior to these studies . Not all anecdotes are rubbish but they need prior knowledge or new research to validate them or otherwise. The anecdotes are a basis for developing a hypothesis which can be tested:the conjecture can possibly be refuted or show evidence for it’s reality.
I am working on that reading comprehension. Thanks for the advice.
For an anecdote to be in any way useful, it must satisfy two things: 1. it must be true (obviously), and 2. it must be representative, it has to represent something which happens as a rule, not as an exception. Most anecdotes are either outright false or cannot be verified, and even those which are true are frequently those of highly exceptional cases that are extreme outliers. There’s all those anecdotes about someone who survived a car crash without a seatbelt, because they were hurled out of their car which then exploded. Had they been wearing their seatbelts they would have perished. Even if such a story is true and verifiable, it’s still not a good idea to use it as basis for deciding whether or not to wear a seatbelt since it is far from being representative. Much more representative are stories of survivors wearing their seatbelts, and of the people who don’t wear their seatbelts winding up dead or badly injured because they weren’t restrained. There’s also tons of anecdotes about grandmothers living to be 90+ while smoking all their lives. I know some of those anecdotes are true because I personally knew a few such people myself. But I also know of even more people who smoked heavily and developed lung cancer, so I know those people aren’t representative. There’s tons of anecdotes of people who survived cancer thanks to homeopathic remedies. How about the all of those other people who kept faith in homeopathy and died anyway? Are there really less of those than those who got well? That’s the really important thing.
Jack LaLanne was a naturopath? This seems to have Lebensreform written all over it.
There was a great deal of weird nutrition and exercise advice around in the 19th century. People were seeing the differences in lifestyles across culture and class, and seeing the different outcomes. But when was the last time you took a needle shower, applied electric shocks to your genitalia, chewed your food 100 times, twisted yourself into a “health corset,” or lived exclusively on Salisbury steak (per the theories of one Dr. Salisbury)? I assume you don’t menstruate, but if you did, would you only do exercises you could do lying on your back?
It is true that conventional medicine took too long to work out the evidence, but it’s not fair to claim that naturopaths had it first. We’ve just forgotten all the wrong stuff.
The Swedes had been promoting medical gymnastics for general health since the early 19th century. And the Kelloggs were supporting abstinence from smoking, weight loss, clean living and enemas at about the time naturopathy was originally proposed. But at least they accepted the germ theory of disease.
Kenneth H Cooper was an M.D. and published his first Aerobics book in 1968. I still have my copy from college somewhere and continue to do walking, running, biking and swimming for general fitness. And I didn’t even hear of naturopathy until about the late 80’s.
When the Air Force put me on a diet to lose weight, the briefing was by a hospital dietician and the system recommended was that of the American Diabetes Association. I dug up my materials about 7 years ago, lost quite a bit of weight and have kept most of it off since then.
It has also greatly helped my wife since her bypass surgery about that time.Those are just anecdotes, but our medical test results are good (I don’t know where in the range for each test would be perfect) and the published literature supports the benefits.
Hence modern “yoga.”
What I find amusing is when one of these not a doctors wants me to order a bunch of labs for them on a patient. Unless I find a clinical reason, those labs are not ordered. Funny those NDs never want to call and discuss their rationale. Hmmm….
I make no claims for any particular anecdote but if it is say related to health matters I stand by my assertion that it will be judged either by applying previous knowledge ( or prejudices) related to it or new research. When neither of these procedures can be applied then the generator(s) of the anecdote or claim may have a field day as is the case with many ‘claims’ that hold sway with the public mind because so far they may be untestable or have yet to be tested. And even then ,as we know’ many peoples prejudices hold sway over irrefutable knowledge. Anecdotes can be the beginning of a scientific study because they may enable a testable hypothesis to be formed.It does not have to be true or representative to initiate it’s study. It may turn out to be very useful to refute the belief in the anecdote if it is found wanting. If the anecdote is not representative it may not result in a scientific experiment or study to test it but that does not determine it’s truth or otherwise. We just don’t know.
I like my example of scurvy which initially generated some anecdotes from voyagers that the juice of lime or pine needles prevented or cured it. It wasn’t representative of most sailors ( with many other ideas or hypotheses being prevalent to explain the disease) and it was some time before the idea was reasonably tested sufficiently to convince the admiralty to take limes on board all British Navy ships saving thousands of lives and increasing the fighting force of the Navy.The merchant navy for whatever reasons didn’t agree, for another 40 years, and thousands of merchant seamen died of scurvy. Anecdotes in whatever form or subject are part of our human condition and it’s a constant endeavor ( or should be) to sort the wheat from the chaff.
James Lind was not a naturopath. He was an 18-century surgeon and surgeon.
http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/articles/who-was-james-lind-and-what-exactly-did-he-achieve/
Slighty OT but not totally unrelated to lifestyle woo: Good article at the Daily Beast on “Tom Brady’s Dangerous Alt-Science Blitz,” Best quote “It’s impossible to ignore Brady’s attempt to be the male Goop, a sort of Gwyneth Paltrow for men.” www(dot)thedailybeast(dot)com/tom-bradys-dangerous-alt-science-blitz
Thanks for bringing that one up, that is disturbing, but not surprising, sports celebrities are easy targets for woo peddlers and once hooked they make powerful selling points, just look at Cupping.
This paper just came up at PubPeer… a paper by Dean Ornish, claiming that “Intensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of prostate cancer” (from 2005, a time when Ornish still approved of RCTs, as long as the numbers were small enough).
https://pubpeer.com/publications/0193F1F756CD5413FBD6936D4C80D9
Christine I make no case that naturopaths had the evidence their nutrition and exercise advice was working on their patients, even that the patients maintained their changing regime for any length of time; simply that the , now common sense, advice was being widely broadcast to improve the health of those who would partake.. The bizarre practices you list I presume are some of the baggage that some naturopaths also advised . An equally long list can be provided for ‘orthodox’ medical advice of those times that is now considered mumbo- jumbo. As a simple example part of the naturopathic advice was to eliminate/reduce refined food and eat more wholesome fresh food- you know , those fruits and vegetables, unprocessed meat and fish, nuts and seeds, wholegrains and so on. Refined sucrose has only recently, say from the 1960s, been recognized as a harmful component of our diets in the quantities that it is consumed. Prof.John Yudkin’s work ( Queen Elizabeth College, London), summarized in ‘Sweet, White and Deadly’ is a good start on this subject. Burkett’s ‘The Saccharine Disease’ is another early book with revisionist ideas on diet,based on evolutionary principles, now widely accepted.No one has a ‘patent’ on nutritional and other health benefiting practices, certainly not naturopaths, but their instincts on these particular matters have been validated by science, not withstanding the utter rubbish that they also spouted and still do right up to present time.
Boxofsalt; I never said or implied that Captain Lind was a naturopath. That would be ridiculous since the word and the ‘thing’ didn’t exist at that time. But I have tried , obviously unsuccessfully, to illustrate the possible value of anecdotes and what could result from them. Some anecdotal narratives can be part of the meat and gravy of epidemiological studies resulting in discovery of their truth or otherwise.
It was anecdotal, and subsequently in time even stronger, that air pollution ( in the UK) was the MAJOR factor in the aetiology of lung cancer. This proved to be false and the other anecdote in the mix around the same time regards smoking turned out to be true.
Speaking of woo peddling –
Lupron-prescribing antivax doctor Mark Geier has won $$$ in a circuit court judgment against Maryland health regulators, who the judge agreed had improperly released personal health information pertaining to him and his family:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/regulators-who-targeted-anti-vaccine-doctor-may-pay-millions-for-humiliating-him/2018/02/03/b63ea6dc-faf8-11e7-ad8c-ecbb62019393_story.html?utm_term=.a996e1764c6b
Whether or not this stands up on appeal, expect antivax sources to claim that Geier has been “vindicated”.
Pattimmy Bolen has been doing that for years, anyway.
I guess I’d better have some coffee.
OT, but it has to go somewhere!
In case you aren’t watching America’s Super Bowl coverage:
Dr Oz is shilling for Turkish Airlines!
Yes. I saw that.
Let’s try for the third time to get through, first two were block by security credential issues. Let see if changing to chrome works.
I am back, I am now retired and living in Chiang Mai Thailand, with girl friend and 4 month old stepdaughter ( you’ll see the connection in a moment.
August 10, 2016 i had a widow maker heart attack. Only about 6% of people who suffer this heart attack survive. I not only survived but with no apparent heart muscle damage and my ejection ratio is above average.
If had had a ND for a medical provider, I would be dead now instead of beginning a whole new life.
As a footnote: Just before I left the US one of our doctors were I worked died unexpectedly in her sleep. She was a wonderful doctor and a better person. Hoist one for us all wherever you are at.
Oh wow! I am so glad you made it. I’ll raise a glass to you and yours tonight.
I’m glad you’re alive and well too.
I’ll remember your doctor friend as well.
Bummer, Rich.
The flip side of that one is, for example, that last year I was diagnosed with idiopathic, non-ischaemic cardiomyopathy after going into AF and CCF. No obvious “heart attack” or the like, I spotted that my heart rhythm had gone haywire.
Which makes this – “If their state license permits, NDs can prescribe medications such as diuretics, beta-blockers, and ACE inhibitors as a bridge to manage symptoms of chronic inflammation or cardiovascular disease (e.g. hypertension), until the body repairs itself.” – sort of statement very worrying. I’m taking diuretics (2 varieties), a beta-blocker, an ACE inhibitor, digoxin and an anti-coag, but there is no sodding way that my cardiac muscle is “repairing itself”, and to suggest so is just wilful ignorance. And WTAF any of those meds have to do with “chronic inflammation” is beyond me.
As my condition is idiopathic I would just love to know how the much-vaunted “lifestyle advice” would have made any difference (hint – my exercise levels were good, my diet fine, smoked a little many years ago, but do have some family history of cardiac issues, and if a consultant cardiologist of 30-odd years experience says “idiopathic” I tend to believe it).
Thanks JP