Alternative and Complimentary Medicine

I started looking into complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) after traveling through Asia and India and marveling at the success with which folks were healed using healing systems entirely foreign to the methods I learned in medical school.

I was spurred on by my father’s death at age 62 of a heart attack. He took all the pills his cardiologist gave him and pretty much watched his fat intake. He died hardly knowing his grandchildren. We now know that the low-fat diet, high carbohydrate diet promoted by the American Heart Association may not be all that healthy for a lot of us. Moreover, there have been serious reactions to the so-called Statin drugs such as Lipitor and Mevacor, etc, including death. Healing my own hypertension and high cholesterol came through the CAM strategy of healing. I never required the Statins or other drugs to bring my cholesterol and hypertension to normal.

My mother died of ovarian cancer and I realized you can’t knock out the immune system with chemotherapy and then expect the body to fight the cancer. It has been a long road from her unnecessarily difficult death to a new understanding of healing strategies.

The real reward for me, in complementary and alternative medicine comes when my cardiac patient tells me he now has the energy to mow his lawn after only being able to walk to the mailbox before we started working together…when my patient hugs me because her fibromyalgia and arthritis symptoms have been relieved through CAM strategy…when my diabetic patient tells me of his ulcers healing on his leg after chelation treatment…when my post-menopausal patient is smiling, happy and energetic after natural hormone balancing…when my obese patient gets back into a size 6 dress…when my memory loss patient begins remembering again.

These are just some of the reasons I am so gratified practicing complementary and alternative medicine. I invite you to join our family and start to change your life.

Dr. Alan D. Thal, MD