Dr. Shawn’s Blog

Defending Your Choice for Natural Medicine

In addition to providing scientific arguments to back up your desire to choose a more natural form of health care for yourself and your pets, I also want to provide you some moral support. Not a day goes by that someone isn’t saying something negative about natural medicine. While most doctors and healthcare providers are open to natural care and support your choice and the type of medicine you desire, sadly there are still many that will come up with any argument and do anything to prove to you that your choice is wrong.

Here are some of the latest arguments I’ve seen posted on websites that seek to undermine your desire to offer your family members a more natural form of medicine.

1.“Doctors rely on their personal experiences, intuition and, anecdotes as evidence to justify implausible or simply “made up” theories and practices.”

This is partly true, but it’s also true for doctors who practice conventional medicine as well. In the good old days before strictly controlled, well-funded (usually by the drug companies seeking approval for their latest drug) studies, ALL doctors learned and shared knowledge based upon their personal experiences with various medications (both natural and conventional.) There is nothing wrong with learning from experience and sharing these experiences. Yes, we all would love to have well researched studies “proving” what we already know to be factually correct. However, the company funding the study determines which studies are ultimately published. While most companies are ethical, there have been some well-publicized incidents of companies ignoring negative studies and only publishing positive studies showing benefits for their medications.

*Evidence is evidence. Either a treatment works or it doesn’t. While skeptics selectively ignore evidence showing the effectiveness of natural therapies, they never seem to ignore evidence showing natural therapies don’t work.

2.“I would be very interested in how much “objective” measuring of outcomes doctors using natural therapies actually do. They often seem to imagine they can “eliminate” subjective owner assessments in practice, but I find this hard to believe.”

Let me quickly answer this objection by sharing with you two recent cases. One involves a dog with elevated kidney enzymes that did not respond to treatment by his prior conventional veterinarian. The other case involves a cat with elevated liver enzymes and also did not respond to treatment by her conventional veterinarian. After using several natural therapies, follow-up blood tests showed that the kidney and liver enzymes returned to normal.

There is nothing subjective about this. The laboratory, which did not know what kind of therapy I used on these patients, reported the results objectively.

*Either the laboratory tests are accurate or they aren’t.

3.“Vague claims such as “improved quality of life” (compared to what?) are also very popular, but usually don’t hold up to scrutiny.”

Improved quality of life refers to how the patient feels and acts. While this can be somewhat subjective, once again either the pet feels better, is no longer lethargic, and resumes eating. Or it doesn’t. Even when natural therapies fail to “cure” a disease, it’s hardly subjective to notice that the pet who was once not eating and not moving around very much is now acting like a puppy or kitten again.

*Either the pet feels better as a result of our natural medicines or it doesn’t.

Hopefully these points will give you some more ammunition whenever someone tries to talk you out of your choice for a more natural approach to healthcare for yourself, your family, and your pets. Don’t give up despite objections against your choice.