Assorted Thoughts on Holistic Medicine

How do we define Holistic Health? Perhaps we need to start with Health. Is it absence of pathology? Or absence of pain? Or could it be something more, like the ability to function at a certain level?

Can I declare a person who cannot jog a mile healthy? Or are they sick when they could no longer feed themselves by tending a garden?

We look at "healthcare" from a totally screwed up perspective. Somehow we have been led to believe that we can be fixed by medical professionals for a hefty fee. In reality, the healing comes primarily from within.

All "medicine" can do is sew up wounds, repair breaks, and encourage healing. We need to take back the responsibility if there is any hope of health.

Is my headache caused by deficiency of Tylenol?

If the stress hormones (like cortisol) shut down repair and growth process, would it not be a good idea to try and relax us to prevent illness with some yoga and meditation?

Is it morally justified to prolong the suffering of a sick old person because we (and our doctors) are scared of death and think it's wrong to ease the person dying in pain into the inevitable?

My 83 yo mother is blind with Alzheimer's and her doctor wants her to have a colonoscopy! Is that a waste? And if she has cancer, should we give her a full course of surgery, chemo and radiation to keep her alive and miserable for another 18 months or so, instead of letting/helping her slip away with some dignity intact?

Health decisions are for the patients, the individual, not the administrators, to make. Is it not wrong that many people will be killed by drugs, or not treated when conventional medicine fails while alternative therapies would succeed?

A Thousand Suns tells the story of the Gamo Highlands of the African Rift Valley and the unique worldview held by the people of the region.

This isolated area has remained remarkably intact both biologically and culturally. It is one of the most densely populated rural regions of Africa yet its people have been farming sustainably for 10,000 years. Shot in Ethiopia, New York and Kenya, the film explores the modern world's untenable sense of separation from and superiority over nature and how the interconnected worldview of the Gamo people is fundamental in achieving long-term sustainability, both in the region and beyond.

"Keeping drugs illegal gives government something to focus on as they fight the war on drugs rather than the war on dismay, despair, isolation and fear which has driven the drug use in the first place." Prof. R Batey

Professor Robert Batey AM, FRACP, FRCP, MD, trained at Sydney Hospital, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and the Royal Free Hospital in London in hepatology and addiction medicine. As well as working at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and in various regional centres, he is currently clinical adviser to NSW Health in addiction medicine. He recently accepted a Chair of the Academic Board of the Sydney Institute for Traditional Medicine.

Coming to this question from a background of nearly 30 years of working with dependent patients, I believe firmly that it should.

I want to walk you through the feelings which have brought me to the position that we ought to make a change to how we view the use of drugs of dependence. Nobody has any problems with antibiotics. We are talking about drugs which can cause dependence and lead to very inappropriate behaviours in those who use them. 

"...The law did have an effect on me. However, a lot of people did dabble during the 60s and 70s - now we have a hepatitis-C epidemic, thanks to the fact that those who dabbled in heroin had to do it under cover, sharing injecting equipment. Our society now faces the fact that 250,000 people have hepatitis-C, 20% to 30% of whom will end up with cirrhosis and need liver transplants. So our keeping the drug illegal in the 70s, all based on good thinking, led to consequences we just had no idea about but are now having to deal with.

Keeping drugs illegal gives government something to focus on as they fight the war on drugs rather than the war on dismay, despair, isolation and fear which has driven the drug use in the first place. This approach gives work to Customs agents, Federal Police and others, resulting in great news stories, such as large quantities of drugs being shown in people's underwear or in condoms which they hold up and say, "I wonder where they inserted this?". People think that is wonderful and get a chuckle out of it, but these drugs kill people. The people who are bringing them into the country are making millions of dollars at the expense of young people's lives. Despite the war on drugs, we are now seeing more heroin back in Sydney than ten years ago, thanks to the war on drugs and the war on terrorism which has allowed Afghanistan to now start producing more heroin than ever before.

The Stateline program on 4 February said it all, I think, sadly and innocently in some ways. We saw the story of a man who had committed suicide on the front lawn of some young people in western Sydney because these young, unemployed, under-engaged drug using teenagers had just heckled him and heckled him to the point of his killing himself - an extraordinary tale. Cannabis and other drug use were blamed to a significant degree for this outcome, whilst the issues of poor parenting, lack of work or social support systems were addressed far less clearly. The current system completely failed that man. If the kids who caused him to take his life were charged with his death and sent into the penal system, is there much hope that they would be rehabilitated? My answer is "No, there is not a lot of hope that they would come out of it better people." Our system failed everybody in that story - yet it was presented as a very intense, thoughtful look at drugs in our society.

Our current system criminalises the drug use that makes life bearable for some; it hardens the minds and hearts of those who do end up in the penal system; it ignores the bleedingly obvious societal factors which lead to dysfunctional drug use in the first place; and it allows this system to run beneath the surface of the law, out of reach of the police for much of the time, making millions of dollars and ending hundreds of tragic lives."