Monday, September 19, 2011
"At least it can't hurt"
One of the things that constantly amuses me is how frequently I hear from patients that their other doctor told them there was nothing wrong with them using this or that home remedy or so-called natural treatment or some other form of complementary or alternative therapy, saying "Well, at least it can't hurt."
Coming from a medical professional, ostensibly having been educated in the scientific method and the value of randomized controlled studies, such remarks to me bespeaks a surprising degree of either naivete, lackadaisical attitude, denial, or an understandable wish to gain the patient's trust and not to take away the placebo value of the treatment that the patients feel to be helping them. In my more cynical moments I sometimes suspect that the other doctor is really trying to dismiss the patient's enthusiastic recitation of the vitamin or natural remedy that they are taking so they can get on with the office visit without undue delay.
The first thing that I find so surprising about this is that so few people imagine that something they believe capable of causing significant good would be capable of causing some harm or side effect. Patients are very quick to ask if me there are any possible side effects or risks to taking medications that I recommend, but they rarely ask if there could be any side effects to this or that vitamin or "colon cleanse" or "detoxifier." Frequently, they are under the misimpression that as long as something is "natural" that it must be safe. My late father-in-law, who was a family practitioner in Brooklyn, used to become incensed at that suggestion. "Why, cholera is natural!" he would exclaim. He knew whereof he spoke, as he had seen cholera epidemics firsthand in the ghettos of Poland. My family recalls fondly the shocked stares he drew when he expressed his outrage about this notion at the top of his lungs while shopping in the natural foods market in Berkeley California with my wife.
But the thing that I find most surprising is that so many of my colleagues do take it for granted that all of these complementary and alternative medications are probably safe simply because they regard them as placebos. It seems to me a matter of logical necessity that anything capable of having an effect may cause either good or bad effects or both. Yet when I point this out to my patients they usually respond with quizzical looks. Then some of the more thoughtful ones see the point. If I have the time I relate the story of my father-in-law and how "Cholera's natural!"
I'm not saying that complementary and alternative therapies don't work. I am seeing they usually do, but not necessarily in a positive fashion.
David M. Sack, MD, is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He attended Harvard and Johns Hopkins Medical School. He completed his residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and a gastroenterology fellowship at Beth Israel-Deaconess, which he completed in 1983. Since then he has practiced general gastroenterology at a small community hospital in Connecticut. This post originally appeared at his blog, Prescriptions, a series of musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and medical ethics, in no particular order.
Labels: alternative medicine, David Sack, evidence-based medicine, guest post, patient communication, Prescriptions, vitamins
posted by David Sack, MD at
10:00 AM
Contact ACP Internist
Send comments to ACP Internist staff at acpinternist@acponline.org.
Previous Posts
- QD: News Every Day--Apples, pears protect Dutch ad...
- Rethinking old truisms about menopause and heart d...
- QD: News Every Day--Judge blocks Florida's 'gun ga...
- Are physicians losing their clinical heritage?
- To compete with the sea of MacBooks, offer edu-tai...
- QD: News Every Day--Phase II trial supports insuli...
- Patients and doctors need skin in the game for app...
- QD: News Every Day--Patients need prompting to bri...
- Emergency physician reflects on the meaning of a h...
- The hCG diet is a fraud literally without substanc...
Blog log
Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internistand ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs,
MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he
also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American
Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a
full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening
his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.
And Thus, It Begins
Amanda Xi, ACP Medical
Student Member, is a first-year medical student at the OUWB School
of Medicine, charter class of 2015, in Rochester, Mich., from which
she which chronicles her journey through medical training from day
1 of medical school.
Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and
general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at
Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient
communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.
Controversies in Hospital
Infection Prevention
Run by three ACP
Fellows, this blog ponders vexing issues in infection prevention
and control, inside and outside the hospital. Daniel J Diekema, MD,
FACP, practices infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, and
hospital epidemiology in Iowa City, Iowa, splitting time between
seeing patients with infectious diseases, diagnosing infections in
the microbiology laboratory, and trying to prevent infections in
the hospital. Michael B. Edmond, MD, FACP, is a hospital
epidemiologist in Richmond, Va., with a focus on understanding why
infections occur in the hospital and ways to prevent these
infections, and sees patients in the inpatient and outpatient
settings. Eli N. Perencevich, MD, ACP Member, is an infectious
disease physician and epidemiologist in Iowa City, Iowa, who
studies methods to halt the spread of resistant bacteria in our
hospitals (including novel ways to get everyone to wash their
hands).
db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
medicine and the health care system.
DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
health topics for patients and health professionals.
Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and
decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care
physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
sanctums and the people who inhabit them.
Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have
difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD,
heartburn, and chest pain.
I'm dok
Mike Aref, MD, PhD, FACP, is an academic hospitalist with an
interest in basic and clinical science and education, with
interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using
novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical
informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code
management, palliative care, patient-physician communication,
quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.
Informatics
Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical
Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health &
Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to
biomedical and health informatics.
David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of
chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in
integrative medicine and patient-centered care.
Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of
hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication
with Gregg Masters, MPH.
KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
for influential health commentary.
MD
Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient
relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When
he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, FACP, shares her ideas on education, ethics
in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine
are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a
researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast
cancer.
Mired in MedEd
Alexander M.
Djuricich, MD, FACP, is the Associate Dean for Continuing Medical
Education (CME), and a Program Director in Medicine-Pediatrics at
the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where he
blogs about medical education.
More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice
internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about
medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a
Distractible Kind).
Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections of a Grady
Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
The Blog of Paul Sufka
Paul Sufka,
MD, ACP Member, is a board certified rheumatologist in St. Paul,
Minn. He was a chief resident in internal medicine with the
University of Minnesota and then completed his fellowship training
in rheumatology in June 2011 at the University of Minnesota
Department of Rheumatology. His interests include the use of
technology in medicine.
Technology in (Medical)
Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
education, social media and networking, practice management and
evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge
management.
Peter A. Lipson,
MD
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
Why is American Health Care So Expensive?
Janice
Boughton, MD, FACP, practiced internal medicine for 20 years before
adopting a career in hospital and primary care medicine as a locum
tenens physician. She lives in Idaho when not traveling.
World's Best Site
Daniel Ginsberg, MD,
FACP, is an internal medicine physician who has avidly applied
computers to medicine since 1986, when he first wrote medically
oriented computer programs. He is in practice in Tacoma,
Washington.
Other blogs of note:
American Journal of
Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat
Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
1 Comments:
Sure, you are absolutely 100% correct. Aspirin (willow bark) is natural, opium (morphine) is natural and this list can go on and on. But the average consumer can not be held liable for not knowing this information if there is no one anywhere willing to train/educate them.
Conventional medicine, the pharmaceutical industry and the government itself spend so much time and energy trying to prevent any education about alternative treatments in this country that the average consumer gets only bits and pieces of information, usually from another family member or a friend.
Just think of the possibilities if we were actually allowed access to this information for both our own health and our own safety instead of the "powers that currently be" trying so long and so hard to keep the secret.
Keeping it a secret does no more than make it that much more intriguing to the human mind. It also builds up an entire wall of mistrust between the doctor/patient relationship.
Every specialty practice out there now has multiple physicians, PA's, nutritionists, internists and whatever other names they all call themselves. What's the problem with having an individual on the payroll also familiar with the aspects common to alternative medicine.
Let go of the "secret motif" and maybe we as a country could actually get down to some serious medicine.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home