Hi Ben,

Nice to see you here!!

>>But my gut feeling tells
me that many holistic practitioners are following in the footsteps of the
pill-pushing western medicine.
<<

I really see where you are coming from on this subject. I had been at this 'natmed / medical' stuff quite a long time (about 3 years), and found, over the long term anyway, the results have been way out of proportion (not to the better) to the time, energy and money spent on practicioners, lab work, and supplements. The exception, despite the expense and temporary misery, was the medical removal of my mercury fillings.

At one point I was an ardent supporter - and for over a year - a patient - of an on-line MD, active in the Compuserve health forums, who reported he could cure almost all of his CFS patients within a year through biomedical manipulation (based on correcting out-of-balance vitamin, mineral, hormone levels). It made sense to me, and he did have one very impressive case history of a 'cure' and some other patients who slowly got well in his newsletter, but I found after some initial improvement then slippage (mostly due to a protein deficiency during a certain period) then improvement again I was basically at a standstill, no matter what nutrients or hormones he measured or prescribed.

Since then it appears to me that the improvement I really did make had much more to do with diet and exercise over a pretty long period, and the organism's innate healing ability, than any of the 'medicine'.

On the other hand, I do feel that his accurate diagnosis of the hypothyroid condition and rx did keep me from dropping into a very bad state of depression and I was grateful for that. But I feel the condition was largely diet-induced - he never considered that possibility - and just several days ago stopped taking the pills. (Another MD I saw after him found I had been taking too much hormone and already had reduced the dosage).

(I think there is a small percentage of folks who find permanant thyroid hormone treatment very beneficial. They may benefit greatly from an alternative practicioner who recognizes the importance of T3, as well as T4, in treating this condition. There may be a much larger group who have some degree of hypothyroidism but can improve it satisfactorily with diet change and exercise).

As far as supplements, I mentioned in my introduction how I benefitted from high-dose magnesium supplementation (which I started on my own). I'm now leaning toward the view that concentrated supplemental nutrients can be very valuable on a temporary basis, to correct a deficiency and re-activate biochemical/enzymatic pathways that can lead to healing. But, over the long term, trying to create a foundation of health by balancing out all these substances, take in much larger quantities and in different form, than the body expects through any diet, may be a fruitless endeavor that can actually cause harm (sometimes very subtly) through excess acummulations of unneeded materials, and even through the processing of large amounts of non-toxic nutrients, drain energy from the healing process.

My thinking on supplements was influenced by a book I rented from the library, 'Food and Healing', by Annemarie Colbin (not a book on raw foods or bent towards any particular diet, but excellent, insightful reading!).

Ben, that is my 2 cents on this subject...

Take Care, Paul