The Latest in Natural Medicine
Medicine > The Latest in Natural Medicine
In this high-tech postmodern culture of ours, we have the best opportunities, the finest options, and the greatest access to communications technologies, world wide information and personalized services. And we have the luxury of something our ancestors didn’t have: modern natural medicine.
Granted, natural medicine, also sometimes known as biomedicine or alternative medicine, is nothing new. The ancient Chinese, ancient Babylonians, and early Egyptians, as well as the Greeks, Romans, Japanese, Native Americans, Africans, and Muslims have long been practicing what we call natural medicine, using everything from honey to ginger to St. John’s Wart…to ease, relieve, alleviate, and even cure everything from bee sting to headache to ulcers. And in the more recent 19th and 20th century wisdom—in the form of folk remedies and problem-solving housewifery—alternative practices were done a good part of the time. In 1924, for example, Dr. Joseph Mercola reports that a study was done in Chicago that revealed one-third of all private-practice patients had also taken on natural medicine treatment(s).
At the same time, the opening advancements continue to evolve along with the needs of people worldwide. More recent natural medicine advancements have been made, for example, in acceptable and effective uses of medical marijuana (beyond just glaucoma complications and the nausea that comes with treatments of cancer and AIDS). According to one Science Daily writer, “marijuana-like compounds”, which have cannabinoid binding properties, have been found by scientists and researchers to alleviate and/or ease symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson's disease patients, to quell many kinds of illness and disease-related pain, and even to combat obesity.
And as well as advancements in natural medicine, health efforts are studied and debated. One of the more sci-fi issues on the table of late concerns oxygen bars. First Michael Jackson was the only one to afford the luxury of breathing pure air (no longer found in cities and other urbanized areas). Now, research science is working toward opening up the alter ego to Starbucks by offering cranberry, bayberry, wintergreen, and peppermint flavored huffs of air. While proponents swear by the pure oxygen shots, claiming they do everything from increasing energy levels to minimizing the effects of hangovers and sinus infections to reducing stress, those discounting as absurd the claim that our existing in roughly 21 percent oxygenated air (as we have done for eons implies Mary Purucker, Ph.D.) means we do not need additional air…if we are already healthy of heart, blood, and lung.
But whatever the reigning controversy, the leaps we have made in modern natural medicine have us seeing better, breathing better, and feeling better than ever before.