Holistic Health Care
(Page 5 of 8)
Biofeedback helps treat a variety of conditions, including
migraine headaches and constipation (a prevalent medical
condition).
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In a 2000 study at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, 20
children with migraines, average age 11, used biofeedback
to control their headaches. Five months later, their
migraines were significantly less frequent and severe.
Researchers at the University of Iowa use biofeedback to
teach chronic constipation sufferers to relax their anal
sphincters. In a recent study involving 80 patients, the
training helped all of them, and a year later, 90 percent
continued to report benefits.
HOMEOPATHY
Homeopathy is one of the most controversial complementary
therapies because it's Western, yet it defies the known
laws of chemistry, physics and pharmacology. No one knows
how or why it works — neither homeopaths who swear by
it, nor conventional doctors, many of whom often swear at
it.
Homeopathy was the brainchild of a German doctor, Samuel
Hahnemann (1755-1843), who became disenchanted with the
treatments typical of 18th-century medicine: bleeding,
mercury, powerful laxatives (cathartics) and drugs that
induced vomiting (emetics). He correctly believed that
these treatments did more harm than good. Hahnemann did not
reject all of the then-standard treatments. He was
impressed with several, including cinchona bark, the first
effective treatment for malaria (and source of the
antimalarial drug quinine). In 1790, Hahnemann ingested
some cinchona bark, and quickly felt cold, achy, anxious,
thirsty and ill — the symptoms of malaria. That
experience led him to postulate his Law of Similars, the
idea that illnesses can be treated with the substances that
cause the same symptoms in healthy people.
Hahnemann tested hundreds of substances on himself —
herbs, minerals, animal parts — and catalogued their
effects. Eventually, he began treating people
homeopathically, and attracted a large following. Hom-
eopathy came to the United States in the 1830s and quickly
won many supporters, including Daniel Webster, John D.
Rockefeller and Mark Twain.
But conventional medicine vilified it, largely because of
Hahnemann's Law of Potentization that says homeopathic
medicines grow stronger as they are diluted. This defied
the dose-response principle of pharmacology, which says the
larger the dose, the greater the effect. But starting in
the mid-1970s, interest in complementary therapies,
including homeopathy, took off again.
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