symptoms management vs restoration of health

[jts]

From moralist in another thread:

Drugs are great for treating symptoms without addressing causes. To that end, the pharmaceutical industry has been honed down to a fine art, and millions of people in the US couldn't live without them. By default your liberal healthcare bureaucracy is all you have, William, so it's perfectly natural for you to make use of what you need, because it is a product of your values.

Greg

To elaborate on that I quote hms from his book The Science and Fine Art of Fasting.

Does nature cure vomiting, or does she use vomiting as a means of ejecting unwanted materials from the stomach? Does the body cure coughing, or is coughing a vital act by which irritants and obstructions are expelled from the respiratory tract? Does diarrhea need to be cured, or is diarrhea a process by which obnoxious materials are rushed out of the digestive tract? Does nature cure inflammation, or is inflammation a repairative and defensive process by which broken bones are knit, lacerated flesh is healed and foreign bodies are removed from the flesh? Is there a need to cure fever, or is fever part of the body's own healing activities? Does not coughing automatically and spontaneously cease when there is no longer any need for it? Does not diarrhea cease when it has freed the digestive tract of all offensive materials? Does not inflammation subside when the bone has knit or the wound healed? What is there to cure about the various processes of the body that are collectively labeled disease?

The reason why I quote him is not to prove anything as in he said it therefore it must be true but merely because he said it well. He is not the latest and greatest but he wrote some good books.

Medicine is a profession, not a science. It might use science or not. The goal of a science is knowledge. The goal of a profession is money. Engineering is a profession, not a science, and it uses sciences such as physics and chemistry.

As a rule there is more money to be made in symptoms management than in restoration of health. Take diabetes as an example. There is more money to be made giving diabetics insulin and metformin for 30 years than in complete reversal of type 2 diabetes in 30 days as Dr. Fuhrman does. If your main purpose is to make money, which way do you go? 30 days? Or 30 years?

In addition to the doctor's point of view that symptoms management is usually more lucrative than restoration of health, there is the patient's point of view. Many patients don't want to quit their bad habits or change their diet or their way of life. I admire Dr. Robert Gross who said to a patient who refused to quit smoking, "Walk right the hell out that door right now!" Why should he spend his valuable time trying to help someone who won't do their part when many people want his help who will do their part?

Most people think hygiene means cleanliness and washing hands. Cleanliness is not to be totally despised. There was a time when surgeons did not practise cleanliness and the result was bad. But hygiene means more than cleanliness; it can be defined as the science of health and it includes nutrition and exercise and fasting and all that. Hygiea was the goddess of health.

They talk about 'science based medicine'. If medicine is a science, then that means 'science based science', which is a strange way of talking.

But what is meant by 'science based medicine'? It means a scientific study was done that proves that a drug (a poison) stops vomiting or coughing or whatever symptom. The drug works (suppresses symptoms) but do not confuse suppression of symptoms with restoration of health. Science based medicine merely means we have scientific evidence that this drug stops this symptom (often a healing process); it's not about restoration of health. I am not impressed no matter how scientific it is. I am not impressed even if it actually works (actually stops the symptom without restoring health).

I am not knocking money. In a free market (one not controlled by government), doctors would make more money by restoration of health than by symptoms management, which means they would be in the business of putting themselves out of business. And the doctor who was most effective in putting himself out of business (getting people well and teaching them how to stay well) would get the most business (because he would be the best doctor).

HMS was not a medical doctor and he didn't insult himself by calling himself one. He was a hygienic doctor. His patients were mostly failures from medical doctors.

[william.scherk]

Some interesting quotes from a book by HMS (Herbert M Shelton), and some interesting analysis by Jerry. The analysis leaves conventional medicine neither craft nor art nor science, but a complex plot to increase harm by unnecessary interference with natural bodily processes, notably fever and inflammation.


As I understand things, a fever is generally self-limiting, as Jerry suggests, an immune-system or glandular response to a pyretic trigger, whether internal or external. So, a fever might accompany an infection like the common cold, or it might be merely a mysterious internal process in which the temperature of the body goes up and then (hopefully) goes down. I have been around child-raising enough to know, however, that parents can be fearful of fevers, often imagining a deathly cause and progression to injury or death (like brain damage).

As Jerry suggests, fevers are generally not in themselves dangerous and are often treated with nothing more than rest, plenty of fluids, and observation. Thus a cold will infect and the body will respond, the cold passes, blah. Maybe a sponge-bath or a fan.

So Shelton and modern health care are pretty much in agreement on that basic reality. The urge to 'treat' a fever is not always rational.

Sometimes, of course, the cause of a fever is not a self-limiting infection or bodily housecleaning. This is obvious. It is not clear what Jerry's authority would do, for example, with a fever from a more dangerous infection like pneumonia, It is not clear how Shelton or Jerry himself could diagnosis the infection or disease that might be causative. Is it Scarlet fever, is it Yellow fever, is it Malaria or is it something non-infectious but possibly grave (a tumour)?

The Mayo Clinic lists some possible causes of fever:

• A virus
• A bacterial infection
• Heat exhaustion
• Extreme sunburn
• Certain inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis — inflammation of the lining of your joints (synovium)
• A malignant tumor
• Some medications, such as antibiotics and drugs used to treat high blood pressure or seizures
• Some immunizations, such as the diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP) or pneumococcal vaccine

What does WebMD, that conventional collection of medical nostrums and possible foolishness say?

A fever -- also known as a high fever or a high temperature -- is not by itself an illness. It's usually a symptom of an underlying condition, most often an infection.

Of course, agreement between the conventional medical opinion and Shelton does not mean too much. An interesting post could be made that listed all the fevers Shelton mentioned, and showed his considered opinion of what to do in this case or that. What if it appears to be a meningitis, or something dire? What would this pioneer of alternative health regimes promote or advise?

But what is meant by 'science based medicine'?

I am a longtime reader at the Science Based Medicine blog, Jerry. I'd say it is an attitude of 'show me' that something 'works' ... a stance for investigators and critics and doubters of alternative or so-called complementary medicine.

It isn't a great scheme of knowledge taught at university medical schools or part of any particular medical curriculum. The 'field' is one of collaborative investigation that sprang from skeptical medical practitioners, rather than a corpus of 'approved' this or that pill, this or that drug therapy, this or that intervention or protocol. Faced with what they suspect are untried and untrue products/drugs/therapies/modalities, the folks who talk about science-based medicine are 'foes' of irrationality in medicine, summed up perhaps too simply.

One definition, offered at The Skeptic's Dictionary, is this:

Science-based medicine (SBM) evaluates health claims, practices, and products by the best scientific evidence available.*Central to the idea of science-based and contrasting with evidence-based medicine is the notion that science exists as an interdependent network of theories, knowledge, and laws. Evidence-based medicine (EBM) considers as scientific evidence any results from a clinical trial (and subsequent meta-analysesand systematic reviews of clinical trials), regardless of whether that clinical trial was grounded in scientific plausibility. The authors of the SBM blog put it this way:

EBM is a vital and positive influence on the practice of medicine, but it has its limitations. Most relevant to this blog is the focus on clinical trial results to the exclusion of scientific plausibility. The focus on trial results (which, in the EBM lexicon, is what is meant by “evidence”) has its utility, but fails to properly deal with medical modalities that lie outside the scientific paradigm, or for which the scientific plausibility ranges from very little to nonexistent.

It means a scientific study was done that proves that a drug (a poison) stops vomiting or coughing or whatever symptom. The drug works (suppresses symptoms) but do not confuse suppression of symptoms with restoration of health.

Well, let's have a look. How about a search (of PubMed, Google books/scholar, Soil and Health) using the terms 'science based medicine' and fever and vomiting. You check out Shelton, and I will check out the SBMers and the larger 'field' that some people are working in.

Or, check your assumptions about what SBMers do against a typical column and discussion at SBM. From their blog-index: Separating Fact from Fiction in Pediatric Medicine: Infant Teething, which discusses "ineffective and even risky treatments."

Or, Fever Phobia, which discusses the same issue identified at the first fever link above. The author makes some statements that would probably pass muster with you and Shelton, Jerry: "medical professionals, including many pediatricians, have a poor understanding of the pathophysiology of fever, and their panicked approach to its management in many children involves unnecessary laboratory tests, imaging studies, and doses of broad spectrum antibiotics."

Then, from the same search, Bleaching away what ails you. The author thoroughly discusses an unsound treatement: "Yes, you read it right. Jim Humble likes to go down to Haiti and the Dominican Republic and subject the poor there to his industrial bleach miracle cure."

Yes, bleach. Sold to cure a whole lot of disease, See the wide-ranging roundup at a PLoSblog (Public Library of Science), Bleachgate: More Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS) Madness.

By these examples, Jerry, I mean to show some activity of the SBMers, what it is that they oppose and decry: unnecessary and dangerous 'medicine.'

Science based medicine merely means we have scientific evidence that this drug stops this symptom (often a healing process); it's not about restoration of health.

In the cases immediately above, absolutely the opposite: SBMers identified a treatment (Miracle Mineral Solution) that was dangerous and unethical to prescribe and promote. The claim was for the 'restoration of health,' and the evidence was in the opposite direction. Not only were there no rigorous trials of the agent, there were no trials at all. No evidence that would get past a moderately informed person like you and me.

I am not impressed no matter how scientific it is. I am not impressed even if it actually works (actually stops the symptom without restoring health).

These are tricky terms. If you are not impressed with careful, objective investigations, accurate claims and predictions, and a valid and reliable internal logic, then you are not impressed with reason. And I am sure you are a huge fan of reason, investigation, accuracy, conceptual rigor and so on. You are skeptical of 'claims' and you properly doubt the 'evidence base' for this or that common but irrational treatment or drug or modality or whatever.

As with your fascination with Shelton, you don't take claims at face value. You expect every claim to have been backed up by facts. When Shelton claims a positive health outcome, you expect that he kept careful records of his treatment effectiveness, and that he was not asserting mere intuition or bias.

I am not knocking money. In a free market (one not controlled by government), doctors would make more money by restoration of health than by symptoms management, which means they would be in the business of putting themselves out of business.

Try contrasting a doctor of medicine from one of the alternative non-allopathic disciplines, say an osteopath, or naturopath, homeopath, traditional eastern doctor. What is on offer in the alternate practices that is not offered in a mainstream medical office? Is there a financial connection between a drug-prescribing MD and the diagnosis and the pay-off?

-- I mean, go to the MD with pneumonia, get antibiotics and a hospital stay, does that doctor make more money than if he had diagnosed a cold, advised bed rest and fluids? Did he get a kickback, does he profit-share in the pharmacy? Does he get a kick-back for a hospital admission or a referral?

Then, consider a naturopath, an ND, in one of the states that allows them to diagnose and prescribe. What if she prescribes datura and a colon-cleanse, and just haaaapppeeens to have those one sale? And so on. Each practitioner, even Shelton, may have a financial interest in a product or service provided, including so-called supplements and hundreds of 'therapies' not medically supervised (alternative oncology, EMDR, Bach flower remedies, bleach).

And the doctor who was most effective in putting himself out of business (getting people well and teaching them how to stay well) would get the most business (because he would be the best doctor).

That would be a bizarre situation. If the alternative practitioners were actually teaching people to stay well without making them pay for additional products or services that were unnecessary, then why are those practitioners still in business? They should be shuffling each new patient onto the sidewalk of health, without need for an ND's further assistance.

But back to fever, vomiting, coughing. If you found yourself with a fever, nausea and coughing, when would you consider that it might be more serious than a cold or flu? Which path would you take if it became clear to you that something was quite wrong (jaundice, dizziness, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, neck stiffness ... )?

Would you want someone trained to offer something validated by research, or someone and something that cannot stand up against rational inquiry?

I would suggest that all things considered, you would appreciate the effort made by Science-Based Medicine to separate the wheat from the chaff. You would trust someone, and that someone wouldn't be published at Soil and Health.

Edited August 4, 2015 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

A high fever can cause brain damage. After it hits 104 start taking ameliorative action. You don't want 105 or 106. I think that before antibiotics they used high body temps to fight (tertiary?) syphilis. If I recall right the first two stages are suppressed naturally by the body and if the third stage doesn't appear 25 years later you've rest of your life immunity. Nowadays the patient is just given antibiotics. (The idea that if it wasn't symptomatic it wasn't infectious might have been wishful thinking.)

--Brant

[jts]

William, I doubt you understood anything in my first post. I doubt you understand the distinction between stopping symptoms and restoration of health. There is a saying, check your premises.

Fever is a goal oriented action done by the body. It is a very powerful healing process. Your list of causes is merely a list of things that might make this healing process necessary.

You don't need to speculate what a hygienic doctor would do with pneumonia. Complete recovery in 3 to 5 days with no antibiotic or medicine or product. And you can do it yourself at home without a doctor. Bad cases are caused by bad care.

I do not look upon hygiene as alternative medicine. I look upon hygiene as alternative to medicine.

When you say 'show me something that works', I suspect you mean that it stops symptoms and you equate absence of symptoms with health. Certainly it is possible to stop symptoms by means of poison. I have no doubt that you have scientific evidence that poisons work in that sense. You can't understand why I am not impressed.

Hygienic doctors (as opposed to medical doctors) tend to not get a lot of repeat business. This is because their patients tend to get well and then to stay well. They are educated about how their health failed and how to take care of their health. The patients of hygienic doctors usually are failures from medical doctors. Currently there are not enough hygienic doctors to put themselves out of business.

Perhaps you don't understand free market. In a free market, doctors would be judged by performance, not by government approval. In a free market, those doctors who are most effective in getting their patients well and teaching their patients how to stay well and not need doctors would get the most patients. In other words, the more effective they are in putting themselves out of business the more business they would get, quite logical.

Hygienic doctors do not use products. You are confusing between hygiene and alternative medicine. There are 2 kinds of quackery, orthodox and alternative. Definition of quackery: any doctoring not based on science, the science of health, which has a name, hygiene.

Something that works. There are many examples. A heart specialist was surprised that a heart condition was reversed by nutrition. He never saw that before and he is a heart specialist. Yet it's the normal thing with Dr. Fuhrman.

Soil and health is useful but old. Update yourself.

[william.scherk]

William, I doubt you understood anything in my first post. I doubt you understand the distinction between stopping symptoms and restoration of health. There is a saying, check your premises.

Jerry, briefly, I agreed with some of your premises in the first post. I suggested there are some fevers which are dangerous. It is stupid and insulting to suggest I cannot understand the difference between symptom-stoppage and health-restoration.

My basic premise is that rational inquiry can help us decide whether health claims are valid. I don't start with an unshakable premise that Gerson/Fuhrman/Trall/Gerson/Shelton/Gerson are faultless. I don't start with the premise that all medicine (as opposed to Hygiene) is fraudulent. Those are your premises. And those are premises that seem to be as firmly held as any premise can be -- incapable of being revised in light of further information and critical thinking.

Fever is a goal oriented action done by the body. It is a very powerful healing process. Your list of causes is merely a list of things that might make this healing process necessary.

Jerry, I think you entirely missed the import of the 'list' I posted above. Fever can be just one symptom of a disease process. Some fevers are NOT self-limiting. Some fevers do not 'heal.' Please take the time to re-read the post I made above. I tried to be cogent and to respond to the OT.

You don't need to speculate what a hygienic doctor would do with pneumonia. Complete recovery in 3 to 5 days with no antibiotic or medicine or product. And you can do it yourself at home without a doctor. Bad cases are caused by bad care.

I call BS. Bullshit. Crap. Pneumonias are infections of the lungs. A fever is just one part of the disease process. Some untreated pneumonias may resolve without medical interventions. Some may not. It is that distinction that you should keep in mind.

More to the point, you have made a bald claim. You claim a Hygienic practitioner can cure pneumonia. That claim is unsupported so far, except by your say-so. Can you point to some credible, rigorous investigation or case study that demonstrates what you claim? Can you, moreover, understand the logic of antibiotics in the treatment of pneumonias? I mean, can you accurately transcribe the standard 'premise' that underlies the medical treatment of pneumonias?

I do not look upon hygiene as alternative medicine. I look upon hygiene as alternative to medicine.

Exactly. You are prejudiced. All medicine to you is illicit. If that isn't irrational bigotry, I don't know what is.

When you say 'show me something that works', I suspect you mean that it stops symptoms and you equate absence of symptoms with health. Certainly it is possible to stop symptoms by means of poison. I have no doubt that you have scientific evidence that poisons work in that sense. You can't understand why I am not impressed.

Your suspicions are misplaced. Consider 'what works' from the point of view of Hygiene. How does a Hygiene practitioner demonstrate that his or her ministrations dealt with whatever was the cause of the symptoms? Testimonials? Substandard case histories that no one else can verify? Published, verifiable information on all aspects of the disease or disorder that has been cured?

Hygienic doctors (as opposed to medical doctors) tend to not get a lot of repeat business. This is because their patients tend to get well and then to stay well. They are educated about how their health failed and how to take care of their health. The patients of hygienic doctors usually are failures from medical doctors. Currently there are not enough hygienic doctors to put themselves out of business.

How would we know that a given Hygienic practitioner helped a given patient to wellness? I mean, what are the criteria for this? Can you point to a case-study by Hygienists that convinced you? I tend to think that you have 'pre-approved' all such ministrations without further inquiry.

Perhaps you don't understand free market. In a free market, doctors would be judged by performance, not by government approval. In a free market, those doctors who are most effective in getting their patients well and teaching their patients how to stay well and not need doctors would get the most patients. In other words, the more effective they are in putting themselves out of business the more business they would get, quite logical.

I don't live in magical fairy-land, and neither do you. You have entire health freedom. You have your own body. You have your own nutrition rules. You don't care to consult medical doctors.

Now, I hope you live many long years from now, in good general health, and that your inevitable death is due to old age rather than any painful or protracted condition. I would never take away from you -- nor could I -- your independence and your absolute right to deprive medical doctors from interfering in your own plan of health.

What I object to is cognitive error and poor reasoning -- to me it just corrodes the values of this forum.

Hygienic doctors do not use products. You are confusing between hygiene and alternative medicine. There are 2 kinds of quackery, orthodox and alternative. Definition of quackery: any doctoring not based on science, the science of health, which has a name, hygiene.

Well, there you go. The source of your medical bigotry is plain. You hold that there is but one science of health, Hygiene, as promulgated by Shelton. This is faith, unshakeable, rock-ribbed, impossible to dislodge even by exacting rational means.

Something that works. There are many examples. A heart specialist was surprised that a heart condition was reversed by nutrition. He never saw that before and he is a heart specialist. Yet it's the normal thing with Dr. Fuhrman.

Maybe give us an example that you are intimately aware of in all its aspects: your personal struggle to get rid of a tumor. If I remember correctly, you cured yourself (of what I don't quite remember -- cancer or non-cancer). If that is too much to ask for, point us to some Dr Fuhrman claims and evidence. Show us some actual cases.

[Brant Gaede]

My step-mother's pneumonia--double lobar--was cured by "the miriacle of penicillin" in the late 1940s. Doctor after doctor came by her room to see her. Jerry, your fanaticism has made you stupid. Still, you put up a lot of stuff valuable to at least think about. I can't call it all fanaticism.

--Brant

there have been four major advances in medicine and public health: general anesthesia, the germ theory of disease, sanitation and antibiotics--all else is second or lower rank (prior it was all "alternative" medicine)

[Backlighting]

Were it not for penicillin...thank you Alexander Fleming...I might have been worm food.

It reversed a severe, extremely painful & possibly deadly tooth abscess I had several yrs. ago.

-J

[Jules Troy]

Once ion a time a big mutha fugga jumped me. I promptly knocked his teeth out. In the process the afformentioned teeth also cut my knuckle wide open. Knowing human mouth infections are nasty I promptly drove myself to the hospital. While in emergency within half an hour my hand started turning red. It started to spread up my arm. I was on a drip of pen and clox every 4 hours for a week before they could safely put me on pill form. If not for antibiotics I would have most likely lost my arm if not my life.

[Brant Gaede]

Hand and face wounds need to be treated--sewn up--as soon as possible.

It's interesting how fast this apparent unfection took hold. As a treatment adjunct you should have had ascorbate acid in the IV drip.

The son of President Coolidge got an infection playing tennis and died. The President was so disheartened he did not run for re-election. That's why Hoover was elected in 1928. Hoover was a proto-New Dealer copied by Roosevelt. He signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff into law against the petitioned objections of 1000 economists. These things plus a Federal Reserve that didn't know shit about what it was doing caused the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler and WWII.

The real Roosevelt Administration started in 1928 and has been in wax and wane control of this country ever since.

--Brant

debt is the shit now hitting the fan and in terms of most economic doings is hitting the fan world-wide as debt defaults and companies built on and sustained by debt collapse and the demand for money for debt constitutes a massive deflationary punch leavened by pockets of price inflation for the funny money ironically once consumed is gone and must be continually replaced but consumption is not production so the seed corn of capital is eviscerated (the politicians will ride this all the way down to the ground and never easily give up their power--look at Cuba and Venezuela and Zimbabwe) then comes real price inflation as the gone money comes back with no right place to go so it crowds into the subway train of assets and services but there is little real production