Anti-vaccination sentiment is still spreading in our communities. People have lost faith in the authorities and in the medical field, and they are finding their own way. Unfortunately for them, the decision not to vaccinate their children will backfire.

Just this morning I read that there is a Measles outbreak ongoing in Ohio. For months now I've been reading about a resurgence of polio in New York. And of course Military personnel will no longer be required to take the Covid vaccine. The backlash against vaccination (what people perceive as an assault on bodily autonomy) will result in an increased death rate from vaccinatable diseases.

It's not an easy question, when and how to vaccinate. I don't exactly trust the official recommendations either, because I know that the guidelines are created by a council packed with representatives of Big Pharma. I am sympathetic with those who are skeptical. And I see the writing on the wall. If you don't vaccinate smartly, you are destined to be diseased.

There are a lot of anti-vax media personalities and websites that are spreading a bunch of BS. You can't believe everything you read on the internet. Of course you know that. But you also can't believe everything you read that you already agree with. If you seek "information" that supports your current position about ANYTHING, you could be allowing Confirmation Bias to steer you into a trap.

Rather than seeking supportive information, seek out the information that tries to prove your belief wrong. Test your belief. Check your understanding against what the experts say. Check your medical knowledge against the CDC, or come bounce it on me. I am not parroting anyone's sound bytes, I am a true student of medicine. I am interested in scientific studies or background information that sheds light on the hard questions.

The problem with the anti-vax craze is that a lot of the so-called "information" is coming from people who have zero science background and very little understanding of the actual risks and benefits of vaccination. Unfortunately for the anti-vaxxers, their sources are misguided and downright wrong about a lot of things. And they and their kids will suffer and die as a result.

I am always one to look for silver linings, and this particular situation has just one, which is that a reduction in the human population would be a quick way to reduce our impact on the planet. We are destroying habitat and polluting air and water at such a rate as to cause massive suffering and death in the not-so-distant future. Anti-vaxxers are offering to remove themselves and their children from the human population which will be a boon to future generations who survive diseases because their ancestors were vaccinated.

In this polarized time, people are falling into groups as if it were their only safety.  In politics if you aren't a Republican, you're a Democrat.  In medicine you're either pro-vaccine, or an anti-vaxxer.  In religion you're either devout, or an atheist.  I'm here to tell you that none of those are true.

I'm an Independent, politically.  I'm a vaccine moderate, meaning I think some vaccines are good and some not so good, and some people should get vaccines that other people should not.  I'm "spiritual but not religious" meaning that I don't go to any church but I have my own practice which brings me into contact with the sacred and sublime, and I believe that some such practice is essential for becoming a moral human.  In other words, I live in the grey.

If you are like me and don't fit into the pre-made groups, welcome.  Fellow seekers, people who do not accept anyone else's narrative and prefer to learn and discover and make our own story, we are this nation's hope for the future, this world's hope for the future.  Collective intelligence relies on both diversity and disagreement; we have to be able to talk about tough issues without shutting each other down.  Without disrespecting each other.

When you already know all the answers, in spite of not having done the study for yourself, you are taking a shortcut to a dead end.  People who are sure that one political party or the other is 100% on the right track are mistaken.  People who think that every single human should be given the Covid-19 vaccine are just as mistaken as those who think it's a government effort to inject micro-chips and track us all.  People who think that every single soul who does not agree with their religion is going to hell, they're already in a philosophical dead end.  It can be hard to turn around in a dead end.

It is important to understand the best arguments of your adversaries.  It is valuable to develop real arguments for your positions rather than simply saying that the other side is wrong, or so-and-so told you so.  Humans being social creatures are susceptible to accepting whatever version of reality is used by those around us--but we are also intelligent enough to question it.

It's time to develop our moderateness, our humility and kindness.  Nobody can know everything.  Admitting that we don't know is an opportunity to learn.  Admitting that we've been listening to an authority figure who doesn't actually know gives us an opportunity to investigate new sources, to check out different experts, and to develop a more nuanced and complete view of our world.  The truth pretty much always lies somewhere in the grey.

Many people have this idea that naturopathic medicine is off in lala land somewhere, and that nothing about it is based on reality.  While this could be true for some practitioners, MY practice is based on what we can deduce from what we know and what we are learning.  I base my decisions on scientific findings, and not just one study, but composites of information that add to the big picture.  I advise against using unsubstantiated treatments, and against using any new pharmaceutical drug until it has been on the market at least 10 years.

Ironically, the treatments given by many conventional doctors are not based in science or even in common sense.  Sometimes a treatment idea gets broadly adopted before it has been really studied.  Once everyone thinks that is what works, they just keep doing it.  Patients demand treatments that have no evidence behind them at all.  It takes a lot of information to turn around public opinion after the people have been brainwashed by doctors.

Take chemotherapy for example.  Chemo is poison intended to kill the cancer.  In many cases chemo causes the death of a cancer-ridden patient.  Sure, there are specific cancers which respond very well to chemo, but there are many more that do not.  Doctors will sometimes give in to a patient's desire to "do anything possible" to help, even when they know that it will not help.  It is in fact easier to give people the poison they demand, than to explain to them why they won't benefit from it.

For another example, take a look at the ACIP schedule for vaccinating babies.  While I agree that vaccination is effective for preventing epidemics, there is little evidence behind the schedule.  Vaccinating a newborn for Hepatitis C is destructive, not helpful.  The schedule for vaccination is based on convenience.  Doctors stick the babies with multiple vaccines at every wellchild visit, and don't worry about possible negative effects (and lack of benefit) from that practice.  The vaccination schedule bears some research to make sure that we are building appropriate herd immunity while also not hurting anyone's baby.

I ran across this post about statins today.  Many people take statins. Statins are drugs that stop your body from making its own cholesterol.  There is no evidence to support the use of statins for preventing heart attacks, and they may actually increase the risk of heart attacks in women.  They're also linked to the formation of cataracts, crippling muscle pain, dementia, fatigue, diabetes and erectile dysfunction.  Doctors give statins when they want to lower someone's cholesterol and don't think they can get that person to change their diet and lifestyle.  The evidence says that diet and lifestyle are FAR more effective for adjusting blood lipids than statins are.

Oh and last but not least in my list of conventional medical madness is the idea that eating cholesterol makes the body's cholesterol go up.  For 20+ years the medical establishment has been teaching that if you eat too much eggs and bacon, you will have high cholesterol.  The truth is that your body MAKES cholesterol from pasta and bread.  Your body makes cholesterol because it NEEDS cholesterol.  Cholesterol is not evil.  If your cholesterol is too low, you are sick.  People get high cholesterol from being sedentary and eating too many carbs, not from having an egg breakfast and a full and active day.

Just because something is widely accepted as the state of medicine does not mean that it is the best we can do.  We can do better.  The status quo is for dead people.  Living people have the capacity to keep learning and trying new things.  I urge you to question everything that you think you know about healthcare and health. Many things that have been accepted for a long time are about to be turned on their heads.

What I hear is that most everybody in America is frustrated about healthcare.  Maybe you have good insurance, but then the doctor doesn't listen, or the treatment doesn't work.  Maybe you're on pills and don't know what they're for.  Maybe you don't have insurance and flat out can't afford to get help.  Maybe you think something's wrong but don't want to confirm it because then you'd have to deal with it.  We all worry, and it's not easy to sort out what to do.  Doctor Google can be misleading, and sometimes terrifying.  The assortment of supplements at the store is overwhelming.  Everybody thinks they know what will help you, but they don't know your whole story.  They don't know the half of it.  It's not an easy situation.

I offer a win-win deal: I will take a thorough history and get to know you enough to have an idea how the parts of your life are affecting you.  Then I educate you about your options, including alternative and conventional therapies.  In the end, using real information you choose what you want to do.  Conventional medicine is the best answer for some situations and conditions.  Naturopathic medicine helps as long as you are willing to do more than pop pills and sit on the couch.  If I can't help you, I will help you find someone who can.  I consider it my job to provide you with current, personalized, unbiased information, not to keep you a slave to some treatment that only I can offer.

My personal slant is scientific.  I realize that many people consider Naturopathy to be quite "alternative".  Considering what has happened with pharmaceutical medicine, an alternative is much needed.  Naturopathic Medicine (as I use it) is a combination of traditional healing (forgotten in the age of pharmaceuticals) and the application of new knowledge about how our choices affect body function and healing.  Conventional medicine is not keeping up with the changing times. A simple change in your diet or lifestyle could do you more good than a drug that you take for the rest of your life (and save you a gazillion dollars).   Making informed, gradual improvements to your diet and lifestyle will save you money, increase your quality of life, and help you stay away from the doctor, the pharmacy, and the hospital.

If you are one of those skeptics who has avoided alternative medicine because you don't think naturopaths have any real training, come see me for a free 15 minute introduction. I would like to tell you how a science-minded skeptic like myself can embrace Naturopathy.  I can show you some of the great research that supports nonpharmaceutical and nonsurgical approaches to health.  There's plenty of it.

There are plenty of reasons to seek alternatives when facing the gauntlet of what insurance will buy for your health.  It's not cheating to get a second, or third opinion about any persistent health problem.  Before you take the toxin, or submit to the knife, it is wise to be sure that is what you need to do.

In this day and age, it is necessary to second guess every information source.  So much "information" goes by that it becomes difficult to sort out what is advertising and what is not.  Even reporting about scientific research can completely skew the issue.  It doesn't pay to be gullible.

The problem is that we are wired to be gullible.  We humans would much rather trust in some comfortable authority figure and believe what they say, than to do all that research and work ourselves.  Figuring out the truth takes time...and sometimes the truth is elusive.  We just don't know everything yet.  We'd rather just believe.

Modern first-world culture is divisive and argumentative.  People agree to disagree more often than agreeing in substance.  As in other parts of our public arena, in the healthcare debate the shouting overwhelms reasonable conversation. Conventional treatments espoused by governments and establishment medical business may not be supported by the research. The policy came about when someone had to make a decision by a deadline using the best information available. We all do it.  We have to go on what we know, even if it is incomplete or incorrect. More information comes along, but established policy stays the same.  This is the downside of bureaucracy. Proponents of established methods will say that this must work because it is the rule, and don't worry about finding out the truth.

Alternative treatments are espoused by a wide range of practitioners and patients.  Often alternative treatments have little or no science backing them up.  Proponents say this works because they have seen it work, and maybe it did.  Just because there is no science doesn't mean it isn't true. Proponents also commonly claim that the science backs them up when it does not.

The Skeptic doesn't believe anything just because an authority said so.  The Skeptic asks questions, and studies the important questions, so as to be able to know if someone is speaking from a position of knowledge and perspective, or blowing a lot of hot air.  The Skeptic realizes that real information or falsehoods can come from any side, and runs every morsel through an internal fact-checker.  The truth is a moving target, and the skeptic is ever on the hunt.

Speaking of mixed feelings....  I learned today that the penalty for not participating will be $95.  That's only $15 more than a Portland Parking ticket.  Of course, there is the possibility that decent care might result from being covered within this system.  But not necessarily.  I have a deep distrust, and dislike, of health insurance and what it has done to healthcare in America.  Mandating health insurance is... un-American.  Letting health insurance control what care is given and to whom is no better than socialized medicine.  It simply puts the power in the hands of megacorporations that are already mixed up with our government.  And it requires that everyone's personal health information go into an electronic medical record, supposedly to improve care, but potentially useful for other projects.  If the government would decide what care to provide based on what has the best outcomes for the most people, I would be less opposed to that.  It's not a simple situation, that much is for certain.  The best answer is just as the bumpersticker says: don't get sick.

I'm studying for boards these days.  We have a long list of herbal medicines we are supposed to know (in addition to a 3x longer list of Rx meds).  I consider this to be my opportunity to sort out which plants I want to use in my practice.  I am studying up on each one, and deciding if I think the evidence is sufficient for me to recommend it.  

On the internet I find two dominant claims about phytomedicine. 1) Herbs don't do anything useful, are inert or inactive, and 2) Herbs might cause you grave harm and could interact with your medications and kill you.

The conflict between these two claims is amusing to me.  If plant medicine is so worthless, then why isn't it harmless?  If herbs don't do anything, then why are we so worried about them?  And on the flipside, if a plant can cause drastic changes to your physiology and interact dangerously with your medications, how can it be inert and wimpy?

Plant medicine is more useful than conventional practitioners want to admit.  Many would like to convince their patients to avoid plant medicine entirely, because it is unpredictable and unknown to them, and so seen as dangerous instead of helpful.  It is my observation that conventional practitioners are extremely concerned about interactions between herbs and medications, while they very rarely check for interactions among the medications that they prescribe.  I have studied cases in which my patients or family were prescribed many meds that are processed by the same pathways in the liver.  Their physiology must have been significantly altered in ways that have certainly not been studied.  Show me a drug study that gives four or more medications and measures their combined effects!!  Yet it is no problem finding a baby boomer on that many meds.  When people complain that herbal medicine hasn't been studied enough, remember that pharmaceutical medicine is mainly studied by the people who wish to profit from it, and that negative results are routinely swept under the carpet.

One criticism of plant medicine rings very true, and that is the inconsistency of the contents of the supplement.  Plants grow differently in different places, are harvested with varying levels of care, different parts of the plants are used, different methods are used in processing them, and different kinds and amounts of fillers are added.  There is tremendous variability in the amount and quality of the plant matter in any given capsule.  Some contain little, if any, of what they claim to contain.  There are higher quality supplements available to licensed Naturopaths, and we trust them more, but I for one intuitively trust plants more than pills.

If you can't be sure of the contents of a capsule you bought on the internet, what can you be sure of?  I am sure that plants contain more constituents than we have researched, more than we know about.  I am sure that the whole plant often has actions that one of its components does not.  All the constituents in a given plant (or combination of plants) may have a synergistic effect that we never completely understand, because of the complexity of plant matter and life itself.

So I operate on a few assumptions, based on experience and centuries-long traditions.  In most cases fresh herbs are more potent that dried and processed ones. There are exceptions when processing removes a constituent that is harmful, or when a concentrate or extract really is better.  But not always.

I am pretty sure, from a commonsense gardener's point of view, that I trust my dirt more than dirt in China.  I happen to live where the soil is good and many plants grow.  If I lived in the desert, I'd want to know that my plant medicine came from a clean place.  If I'm going to buy herbs, I'd like to know what kind of care was put into its selection and care, where it grew, how it was harvested and processed, stored and delivered.  I want a minimum of fillers, and I want to know what fillers they are.  I want to know it all.

Most of the herbs on our study list have a very long list of traditional indications, and just a tiny little bit of actual science on a few of their constituents.  A few of them have plenty of science, usually the poisonous ones.  Dr Google sends warnings about avoiding this plant, because it can kill you.  Tell me this: what pharmaceutical medication is not dangerous if overdosed?  They all are!  Toxic herbs are the most potent medicine available to an herbalist.  The trick is in knowing how to dose them appropriately.  The use of toxic herbs is not appropriate for lay people to attempt without guidance, and so the warnings are welcome.

Plant medicine is both more powerful than we realize, and more benign than pharmaceutical medications.  Its reputation should not be marred by the offenses of a few profit-seeking supplement companies.  We are designed to eat plants, touch plants, live in harmony with plants.  When you sip your coffee, or put ketchup on your burger, you are partaking of plant medicine.  Look out!!  It might make you feel better.