Clearly, there's a tremendous gap between the medical advice doctors think their patients are listening to and what the people are actually doing to improve their health, because an increasing number of patients are ditching their doctors and turning to naturopaths, herbalists, chiropractors, acupuncturists, spiritual healers and other professionals for help.
In particular, the study shows that 36% of adults turn to so-called CAM (complementary and alternative medicine), and that number rises to 62% if you include prayer, a popular healing modality sometimes called spiritual healing, energy healing or vibrational healing. Nearly 20% of adults use herbal medicine, nutritional supplements or functional foods (superfoods) to address their health concerns.
Here's perhaps the most startling number of all: 28% of the people using alternatives believe that Western medicine won't help them. This is a shocking number that should serve as a wakeup call to organized medicine: the public isn't buying the medical racket any longer. With the faked clinical trials, the monopolistic control of drug supplies, the FDA's insidious attacks on nutritional supplements, the lack of medical justification for most surgical procedures, the rampant hospital overbilling, the prescription drug discount card sham, the terrible service offered at doctors' offices, and the outrageous prices charged for it all, the public is finally getting fed up with the whole silly game. They're turning to healing that really works -- healing with thousands of years of safe, effective use to back it up -- and they're doing it in droves.
Western medicine is on the way out. In its place will be a system of health and healing based on nature, not profits. In this new system (an ancient system, actually), we'll turn to plants, superfoods, physical exercise, avoidance of metabolic disruptors, daily meditation, and holistic health practitioners for our healing. We'll finally come to accept the reality of mind/body medicine, and we'll realize that there's more to a human being than an assembly of neatly-labeled organs and cells. It's happening right now, and frankly, the only people still going to Western doctors these days are those who just don't know any better. Truly healthy people -- those who are young, vibrant, lucid, flexible and strong, regardless of their age -- don't visit MDs. They don't take prescription drugs, they don't eat processed foods, and they wouldn't be caught dead in any hospital (actually, you might be caught dead in a hospital, since hospitals are by far the most dangerous place you can be, thanks to rampant antibiotics abuse and resistant superbugs).
By the way, what's most remarkable about all this is that alternative medicine continues to succeed even while the FDA, the American Medical Association, medical schools and most doctors relentlessly work to discredit it. To organized medicine, alternative medicine is a threat: a threat to their power, their control, and their profits. Old-school doctors don't make money when people seek out a master herbalist. Pharmaceutical companies don't earn revenues when people turn to herbs that cost mere pennies and yet are far more effective than hundred-dollar drugs. Not surprisingly, there's a tremendous campaign underway to discredit alternative medicine in any way possible. (The AMA has actually been twice convicted of conspiracy to destroy alternative medicine practices by the U.S. federal courts.) This campaign has been operating for decades and was, for many years, quite effective. Today, however, its foundation is crumbling. The illusion that modern medicine makes people healthier is finally starting to vanish. It's about time. Western medicine is a scourge on society. It is corporate greed at its worst, and it does virtually nothing to improve the lives of everyday people. The Emperor has no clothes.