Quotes & Sayings About Alternative Medicine

It is time for the scientific community to stop giving alternative medicine a free ride There cannot be two kinds of medicine - conventional and alternative. There is only medicine that has been adequately tested and medicine that has not, medicine that works and medicine that may or may not work. Once a treatment has been tested rigorously, it no longer matters whether it was considered alternative at the outset. If it is found to be reasonably safe and effective, it will be accepted. — Marcia Angell

Alternative medicine is simply medicine for which there is no evidence of effectiveness. Once — Daniel J. Levitin

Medicine's a funny business. After all, dispensing chemicals is considered mainstream and diet and nutrition is considered alternative. — Charles F. Glassman

Co-creating our lives from a heart-centered and spirit-connected space is simply more efficient, effective and healthy. — Heidi DuPree

Unfortunately, modern medicine "threw the baby out with the bathwater" while striving to transform the healing arts into the healing sciences something was lost. For all its wonders and improvements in care and healing, modern medicine is the third leading cause of death in countries like the United States, and a significant part of the population seeks out alternative treatments since the medical system is not meeting their needs1. — Erich Hunter

Many of those in the medical fraternity instantly label treatments in the traditional, natural or holistic health fields as quackery. This word is even used to describe Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Indian Ayerveda, two medical systems which are far older than Western medicine and globally just as popular. — James Morcan

Problems in medicine do not mean that homeopathic sugar pills work; just because there are problems with aircraft design, that doesn't mean that magic carpets really fly. — Ben Goldacre

In some aspects of alternative medicine we are fighting an almost medieval belief in magic but debunking such beliefs is like telling people that the tooth fairy is sniffing glue. — John Diamond

A feeble body makes a feeble mind. I do not know what doctors cure us of, but I know this: they infect us with very deadly diseases, cowardice, timidity, credulity, the fear of death. What matter if they make the dead walk, we have no need of corpses; they fail to give us men, and it is men we need. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Transformation is always an inside-out process. — Heidi DuPree

The higher self knows there is no right or wrong, no good or bad, and accepts that both light and dark must exist to maintain the balance of the whole. — Heidi DuPree

I have to laugh when people ask me if I do alternative, herbal, acupuncture or holistic medicine. 'No,' I reply. 'We do state-of-the-art medicine. In other words, we find the biochemical, nutritional and environmental causes and cures rather than blindly drugging everything. Sure, herbs are gentler, safer and more physiologic than drugs and holistic medicine attempts to incorporate many diverse modalities, etc. But there is no substitute for finding the underlying biochemical causes and cures. This is real medicine. This is where medicine should and would have been decades ago, if it had not been abducted by the pharmaceutical industry. — Sherry A. Rogers

Alternative medicine plays into this exaggerated notion that you can prevent disease simply by doing the right thing. — Marcia Angell

If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine. — Richard Dawkins

It is a very brave choice to go against traditional medicine and embrace the alternative route. It's easier to try the traditional route and then, if it fails, go to the alternatives, but often it can be too late. — Suzanne Somers

Perhaps the greatest danger in the way that alternative therapists behave is simply the promotion of their own treatments when patients should be in the care of a conventional doctor. There are numerous reports of patients with serious conditions (e.g. diabetes, cancer, AIDS) suffering harm after following irresponsible advice form alternative practitioners instead of following the advice of a doctor. — Simon Singh

Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some alternative sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as orthodox medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The alternative label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate. — Richard Dawkins

The failure to accept cancer as a systemic disease is one of the greatest failures in modern medicine. — Michael Lam

If insurance companies paid for lifestyle-management classes, they would save huge sums of money. We need to see that alternative medicine is now mainstream. — Deepak Chopra

Every herbalist has their favorite plant. Mine is Rhodiola rosea. — Chris Kilham

You see that the people who are drawn to alternative medicine are often fairly healthy and they go to alternative medicine for what I call the 'symptoms of life.' Fatigue, joint pains, inability to concentrate, perhaps, the kinds of things that anyone over twenty-five gets at some point. — Marcia Angell

Homoeopathic treatment is my first choice not only for me but also for my family. Homoeopathy should be developed as full- fledged alternative system of medicine. More research and more development are essential to make Homoeopathy more popular and useful Homoeopath treats their patients in more compassionate way. Homoeopathy is second largest system of medicine being practiced in India. — K. R. Narayanan

Metaphors are a window into the soul and carry us across the boundary between the lower and higher selves, connecting us to the universal energy field and the collective consciousness. — Heidi DuPree

Complementary or alternative medicine is really just unproven medicine. That's not an unfair criticism; that's just what it is. When an alternative medicine is openly put to the test and confirmed as useful by the scientific process, then it becomes just plain medicine. — Guy P. Harrison

Most allopathic doctors think practitioners of alternative medicine are all quacks. They're not. Often they're sharp people who think differently about disease. — Mehmet Oz

[Alternative medicine is defined as] that set of practices that cannot be tested, refuse to be tested or consistently fail tests. — Richard Dawkins

To truly regenerate, to find what we are seeking, we must change from within. — Heidi DuPree

Well, I've seen a bunch of acupuncturists and one of my sister-in-laws is an herbalist. So I know a lot about alternative medicine. I don't know a lot about the practice but I know about the world. — Tim Daly

Alternative medicine people call themselves "holistic" and say it's the "whole" approach. Well, if it's the whole approach, let it be the mind as well. Use logic, use sense, use the incredible five wits you were given by creation. — Stephen Fry

Your inner landscape determines your outer life. — Heidi DuPree

And when comfort is what we want, one of the most powerful tonics alternative medicine offers is the word 'natural.' This word implies a medicine untroubled by human limitations, contrived wholly by nature or God or perhaps intelligent design. What 'natural' has come to mean to us in the context of medicine is 'pure' and 'safe' and 'benign'. But the use of 'natural' as a synonym for 'good' is almost certainly a product of our profound alienation from the natural world. — Eula Biss

Mind-body medicine should not be an 'alternative,' nor should complementary and integrative medicine be something doctors are not exposed to during their training. — Bernie Siegel

From the unlimited wellspring of energy that flows from our center, life situations cease to be "too much" or "not enough. — Heidi DuPree

We should listen less to the opinions of those who either overtly promote or stubbornly reject complementary and alternative medicine without acceptable evidence. The many patients who use complementary and alternative medicine deserve better. Patients and healthcare providers need to know which forms are safe and effective. Its future should (and hopefully will) be determined by unbiased scientific evaluation. — Edzard Ernst

When we experience the loss of our outer life, the way to our inner light is cleared. — Heidi DuPree

I don't like medicine. There's an old Irish proverb that goes, "If I knew where I was going to die, I wouldn't go there." I suspect that I'm going to die in a hospital, so every time I go past one, I drive really quickly to get away from those things. So I spend a lot of money on health: gyms, I go to naturopaths, acupuncturists; anybody else who's almost the alternative to medicine. I think by the time you need medicine, it's too late. That's my belief. — Robert Kiyosaki

Giving authority to others to control your lower-self impulses only serves to keep you in the lower self! — Heidi DuPree

The argument that the chemical and drug companies often make, to counter the growing movement of natural or alternative medicine is similar to my warning about kissing cobras. They will say things like, "Not all things natural are good for you" and "Even walking to the bathroom in the morning carries risks!" They then trot out extreme, obvious examples like drinking hemlock, or kissing cobras, people falling down stairs in their house, and the like. Okay Mr. Chemicalman, some natural things can kill you, like CEOs of chemical companies who poison almost everything they touch with their products? That's assuming of course that CEOs are natural. — Steve Bivans

Homeopathy is the only non-violent health care system — Ron Harris

Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of 'medicine.' That's something you might remind your New Age friends who've gone gaga over 'holistic medicine' and 'alternative Chinese cures. — Anthony Bourdain

Only a system in which all parts flourish is holistic. — Chris Kilham

England has a long history of supporting alternative medicine - maybe it's because they don't have such a strong pharmaceutical industry in England, and homeopathy has been taught and promoted there for hundreds of years. — Dasha Zhukova

Alternative therapists don't kill many people, but they do make a great teaching tool for the basics of evidence-based medicine, because their efforts to distort science are so extreme. — Ben Goldacre

One cannot judge a performance in any given field (war, politics, medicine, investments) by the results, but by the costs of the alternative (i.e., if history played out in a different way). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Attraction isn't about physical appearance. It's about energy. — Heidi DuPree

If any remedy is tested under controlled scientific conditions and proved to be effective, it will cease to be alternative and will simply become medicine. So-called alternative medicine either hasn't been tested or it has failed its tests. — Richard Dawkins

You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? - Medicine. — Tim Minchin

Giving and helping from the heart becomes like a magnet, amplifying the energy to all those involved in the exchange. — Heidi DuPree

A mistake that a lot of people make, and I've been guilty of this as well, is that we assume that just because something is natural it is therefore safe, and ergo, good for us. I like to point out that cobras are natural too, but I don't want to kiss one. — Steve Bivans

Unlike much of orthodox medicine, alternative approaches to healing typically honor the wisdom and capability of the human body. Their goal is often to support and strengthen the powerful healing forces already at work within us. — John Robbins

The ability to do perform Reiki comes from an internal freedom. The power to be free from stress, tension, and anger. — Nikita Dudani

There is no better example of the weakness of our dominant medicine than its clearly ineffective War On Cancer. By the same token, there is no better example of the superiority of complementary, alternative medicine than its management of this dread disease. We are equally concerned about whether mainstream medicine's demand for proof works to maintain it at its current level of ineptitude. — Robert Atkins

Calling holistic medicine "alternative medicine" is no longer appropriate. The best approach now is "integrated medicine" in which we take the best of both worlds. — Candess M. Campbell

There are plenty of quacks in the field. Fewer than you'd expect, though still plenty (in alternative medicine). — John Bradshaw

Natural,my ass! The worst poison known to man comes from a tree frog in South America. You cannot imagine how small an amount would be necessary to kill you.and it's natural.Calling something NATURAL is a MEANINGLESS MARKETING PLOY."
"All right,calm down! Maybe I like alternative medicine because it's been in use for more than six thousand years.After all that time,they have to know what they're doing."
"You mean the wacky idea that somehow in the distant past people had more scientific wisdom than they do today?That's both crazy and counterintuitive.Six thousand years ago people thought thunder was a bunch of gods moving around furniture."
-Conversation btw Dr.Jack Stapleton and Vinnie — Robin Cook

When we take on responsibility for others, or make them wrong so we can feel right, we get in the way of spirit. — Heidi DuPree

What is odd, perhaps, is how the primacy of patient autonomy and informed consent over efficacy - which is what we're talking about here - was presumed, but not actively discussed within the medical profession. Although the authoritative and paternalistic reassurance of the Victorian doctor who 'blinds with science' is a thing of the past in medicine, the success of the alternative therapy movement - whose practitioners mislead, mystify and blind their patients with sciencey-sounding 'authoritative' explanations, like the most patronising Victorian doctor imaginable - suggests that there may still be a market for that kind of approach. — Ben Goldacre

I tried to change the conventional paradigm, for example, by insisting on the reality of mind-body interaction, by stressing the importance of natural therapies, by focusing attention on lifestyle issues, by looking at worthwhile aspects of alternative medicine. Many people have been threatened by that. Doctors especially tend to think that they know everything about the human body, and don't realize that medical education has really omitted many very important subjects. — Andrew Weil