Natural Health and Wellness Glossary

Health Related Terms	Natural Health Related Comments
Alternative Medicine "A variety of therapeutic or preventive health care practices, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic, and herbal medicine, that do not follow generally accepted medical methods and may not have a scientific explanation for their effectiveness."	There are three key points. Alternative medicine is any method of treatment other than prescription medication, the heroic medicine of chemotherapy / radiation therapy, and surgery. It is not defined by the practitioner or institution, but by the method of treatment. Alternative medicine was yesterday's quackery, is today's complementary medicine, and may be tomorrow's new branch of medicine. It is always about a professional doctor - patient relationship. The word medicine denotes a professional doctor - patient relationship. Popular examples would be: Acupuncture Biofeedback Body Work Chinese Medicine Chiropractic Homeopathy Hypnotherapy Naturopathy For self-care or group treatments, alternative therapies is the preferred term. Alternative medicine is simply an after the fact modern classification of phenomena that has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years, long before biomedicine arrived on the scene. In short, when one method does not work for you the natural response is to try another or alternative method. When exploring the individual branches of alternative medicine four questions need to be answered. The answers to these question will reveal whether or not each branch of alternative medicine is mostly quackery or something that the public should seriously consider using. What is the method of treatment utilized? What are its therapeutic effects? What medical conditions does it effectively treat? What modes of action could plausibly account for these therapeutic effects?
Alternative Therapy "A term given to nonconventional therapy usually given by persons who do not have a medical qualification."	In natural health contexts, therapy is the preferred term for self-care whereas treatment or medicine is the preferred term for professional care administered by another person. Alternative therapies is, thus, the preferred term for self-care alternative healing methods and covers therapies like aromathreapy, herbal medicines, visualization, meditation, and yoga. Therapy would also include individualized training sessions and group classes. The point being that therapy is always something that you can eventually use to treat yourself with.
Biofeedback "A training technique that enables an individual to gain some element of voluntary control over autonomic body functions; based on the learning principle that a desired response is learned when received information such as a recorded increase in skin temperature (feedback) indicates that a specific thought complex or action has produced the desired physiological response."	Biofeedback links the mind with the body through high-technology devices that allows the mind to control certain bodily functions. In this treatment method, an individual is hooked up to monitoring devices which provides feedback of how brain waves, breathing patterns, muscle activity, sweat gland function, pulse, skin temperature, and blood pressure are responding to relaxation techniques, such as meditation.
Biomedical Model "A conceptual model of illness that excludes psychological and social factors and includes only biological factors in an attempt to understand a person's medical illness or disorder."	The simplistic biomedical approach of medicine generally looks for single, very specific causes for diseases, with correspondingly specific treatments, such as antibiotics for infections, that are expected to be effective for that illness in most people, under most conditions. Further, the biomedical model assumes that all disease is caused by structural anatomic or biochemical abnormality. The physician's responsibility is limited to finding the abnormality to be cured. But without an easily discovered abnormality the simplistic biomedical model often fails.
Evidence-Based Medicine "The process of systematically finding, appraising, and using contemporaneous research findings as the basis for clinical decisions."	Michael L. "Millenson decries the lack of scientific-based medical practice and medicine's failure to wake up due to its own historical studies. He cites data that 85% of current practice has not been scientifically validated despite medicine's claims of the physician-scientist."[4] Evidence-based medicine is an open admission by the scientific community that the practice of modern medicine has failed to live up to the standard of being based upon science. It is a recent movement that really did not become popular until the establishment of the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University in 1995.[2] The mere fact that evidence-based medicine is being promoted speaks historically to a practice of medicine that was not completely based on science. A major problem with evidence-based medicine is that "the knowledge gained from clinical research does not directly answer the primary clinical question of what is best for the patient at hand."[1]
Fresh Air	During the 19th century, fresh air referred to air without any strong smells or miasmas. During the 20th century, fresh air began to refer to pollution free air.
Healer "One that heals or attempts to heal, especially a faith healer."	A healer is a practitioner of alternative health practices who works with, rather than against, the natural recuperative self-healing properties of the human body. Healers are said to heal because all healing comes from within the body. Healers heal the body by applying treatment from without the body.
Health Psychology "The aggregate of the specific educational, scientific, and professional contributions of the discipline of psychology to the promotion and maintenance of health, the prevention and treatment of illness, the identification of etiologic and diagnostic correlates of health, illness, and related dysfunction, and the analysis and improvement of the health care system."	Once upon a time the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist was that the psychiatrist was a medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry while a psychologist had nothing to do with treating illness. Times have changed. These days, many psychologists are in the health business. Some of them have a specialization in health. You should expect a health psychologist to be using the mind - body model of health. Psychologists provide alternative medical services when they use biofeedback, hypnotherapy, or cognitive behavior therapy to treat an illness.
Heroic Medicine "Denoting an aggressive, daring procedure in a dangerously ill patient which in itself may endanger the patient but which also has a possibility of being successful, whereas lesser action would result in failure."	Conventional medicine has had a marked historical preference for heroic medicine. Heroic medicine is any medicine or method of treatment that makes people suffer, get sick, get weak and run down and/or die. Further, physicians often prefer to start off with these bold and daring treatments. Heroic medicine, in short, is aggressive, reckless and foolhardy medicine that has a high potential for harming the patient.
Life-Extension Book Review: Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach (1982) -- "The book's central premise is that animal experiments are now adaptable to humans who want to live to the age of 150."	Life-Extension is what happens when quackery meets up with people who have been educated in the basic sciences. These people often dwell on biochemical egg-headed discussions of the effects these drugs have on the human body, as if a critical use of science supported their nonsense. This movement is characterized by vicious personal attacks on all forms of alternative medicine, natural health and quackery while they steadfastly refuse to recognize their own position as quackery Quackwatch -- Your Guide to Health Fraud, Quackery, and Intelligent Decisions, a web site, has a web page on Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach which clearly labels the methods advocated by this book as quackery. This movement advocates the extreme use of growth hormones, prescription drugs, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and other substances that science supposedly claims to cause people to live much longer than normal. In short, any person who is mostly into the heavy use of drugs, vitamins and other substances to the annual expenditure of $1,000+ because it is the scientific approach to health is a follower of this Life-Extension quackery.
Lifestyle "The particular attitudes, habits or behaviour associated with an individual or group."	Lifestyle describes the particular attitudes, habits or behaviors associated with an individual. Lifestyle is under the control of the individual. And, their lifetime accumulative effects are theorized by advocates of natural health to be connected to all lifestyle or degenerative diseases. Individuals improve their health by carefully changing to a healthier lifestyle.
Materia Medica "1. Material or substance used in the composition of remedies; a general term for all substances used as curative agents in medicine."	The use of all Materia Medica, or medicine, is historically quackery based upon a myth as old as mankind that medicines possess magical curative powers.
Medical Scientism "the belief that there is one and only one method of science and that it alone confers legitimacy upon the conduct of research."	Scientism is the religion of reductionist scientific materialism. The mantra of medical scientism is double-blind randomized clinical trial peer reviewed research published in respectable journals. Medical scientism, as a form of academic snobbery, says that just because a treatment method was shown to work on you that fact alone is not good enough for the medical community to accept its effectiveness. The essence of medical scientism is that there is only one acceptable method of medical research: Whatever the members of their elite private club says that it is. Critics maintain that there are other ways, such as observational evidence, clinical experience[1] and research published in any kind of a research journal. The primary problem with this one method of medical research is that it was clearly developed to test the effectiveness of drugs. Trying to force this method of drug testing on non-drug forms of alternative treatment methods is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Further, peer reviewed respectable journals like NEJM, Lancet, JAMA, and BMJ have been unable to prevent biased papers ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies from being published.[5],[6] These same pharmaceutical companies are a primary source of funding for medical/drug research. In some cases, doctors listed as authors on ghostwritten research papers never reviewed the raw data, just tables compiled by a medical writing company. Another problem with medical scientism is that its one way of science seems more interested in being a welfare system for researchers than it is about solving the mysteries of health. NASA, after all, got man on the moon without the necessity for double-blind randomized clinical trial peer reviewed research published in respectable journals. This is because medical research, just like science, is designed to go on forever. No single piece of research is ever considered conclusive or final. Often the same research seems to be done over and over again which moves health research in a never ending spiraling of endless research circles that refuses to directly answer basic health questions. Medical scientism is, thus, about a never ending drive for more and more reductionism. Nothing about science prevents people from taking a direct approach to solving the mysteries of health. An argument can, also, be made that what an individual needs in order to improve their own health is more synthesis rather than further reductionism. Hence, what might benefit the progress of immortal science is not necessarily helpful for the mortal individual.
Medicine "1. Any substance, liquid or solid, that has the property of curing or mitigating disease in animals, or that is used for that purpose. Simples, plants and minerals furnish most of our medicines. Even poisons used with judgment and in moderation, are safe and efficacious medicines. Medicines are internal or external, simple or compound. 2. The art of preventing, curing or alleviating the diseases of the human body. Hence we say, the study of medicine, or a student of medicine."	Webster's 1828 Dictionary definition of medicine, which is shown to the left, clearly points out the historical meaning of conventional medicine. Medicine is any substance that has the property of curing or mitigating disease. The use of medicine is historically quackery based upon a myth as old as mankind that medicines possess magical curative powers. It is no coincidence that medicine has a double meaning. Medicine has one primary method of treatment: Materia Medica, or medicine. In natural health contexts, physicians can benefit people who find themselves in acute medical emergences. But, when it comes to lifestyle diseases their offer of a quick fix is illusionary and can benefit only a few lucky people. Their position on the elderly is that it is natural for old people to die. So, it is foolhardy to expect them to go to extraordinary measures in order to save people with limited financial means from dying from lifestyle diseases. Biomedicine today claims that diseases are to be treated through the introduction of prescription medications.[8] Depending upon how you look at it, the Western medical system currently is either eclectic, or a royal mess, which consists of a large number of unrelated treatment methods that largely have not been supported by science.[4] While the public equates conventional medicine with science due to a successful public relations campaign of the American Medical Association, the advent of evidence-based medicine documents that it is not. Making prescription medication the primary treatment method of biomedicine, while separating surgery from medicine, makes this Western medical system comparable to the various alternative treatment methods offered by alternative medicine. "For traumas, acute bacterial infections, and medical emergencies, allopathic medicine is very effective, but it does not handle viral infections, degenerative diseases [or lifestyle diseases], serious cancers, mental illness, or functional illness nearly as well."[9] Modern medicine, with its high technology, is also good at making diagnosis. In short, biomedicine is good at preventing and treating bacterial infections and for treating medical emergencies, such as acute traumas.
Miasma "Infecting substances floating in the air; the effluvia or fine particles of any putrefying bodies, rising and floating in the atmosphere, and considered to be noxious to health."	During the 19th century, disease was generally believed to be spread by foul smelling air, or miasmas. It was in reference to the horrific smells of urban life which came from horse manure, open sewers, and uncollected garbage. Webster's 1828 Dictionary definition of miasma, which is shown to the left, was written when the miasma theory of disease was generally believed to be correct.
Mind - Body Connection or Biopsychosocial Model "It treats the biological, psychological and social issues as systems of the body, similar to ... [bodily] systems such as the respiratory and cardiovascular systems. ... For a patient, they have not recovered from a disease until they feel better and their illness is over. Because of the importance of illness, much more information needs to be gathered during a consultation. ... For this reason, the interview process should encourage the patient to give as much information [as possible] ... This is a patient-centred approach, and generally involves open-ended questions designed for the patient to do much of the talking."	The complex biopsychosocial model is concerned with illness, the subjective sense of suffering or reduced capacity to function. The biopsychosocial model is a much more complex systems theory approach to health, illness and healing. It does not look for single, specific causes for illness, but sees health, illness and healing as resulting from the interacting effects of events of very different types, including biological, psychological, and social factors. All of these are seen as systems that affect and interact with one another to affect personal health. The mind-body connection says "loudly and clearly that the causes, development, and outcomes of an illness are determined by the interaction of psychological, social, and cultural factors [along] with biochemistry and physiology."[7] This model says that wholeness and integration is the answer rather than more and more medical specialization by body parts. Sample psychological factors (thought patterns, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior) When it comes to treating a specific individual the placebo effect is always beneficial. Depression caused by patterns of thought. Positive and Negative Attitudes Personality types, such as Type A Psychoneuroimmunology -- The study of how emotional and other psychological states affect the bodies immune system. Sample social factors (relationships with other people) Being in a hospital dramatically increases your risk of getting a communicable disease or iatrogenic injury. Family life, or your relationship with all your family members Social support systems Hostile work environments In natural health contexts, the word illness is often used to mean a person's perception of being sick.
Natural "Pertaining to nature; produced or effected by nature, or by the laws of growth, formation or motion impressed on bodies or beings by divine power. ... In this sense, natural is opposed to artificial or acquired."	Webster's 1828 Dictionary got the definition of natural correct. While a certain group of scientists would say that everything is natural, natural health advocates would find such a definition as being patently absurd. Natural is what is opposed to artificial. Natural is what naturally occurs in nature without any assistance from man. What can only be made by man is called artificial. While natural is what naturally occurs in nature, if mankind did not and had never existed. Man can produce both natural and artificial toxins. Evolution has given living creatures a natural way of dealing with natural toxins. Man made artificial toxins might be especially harmful to life since these toxins may not be biodegradable. Evolution has not given living creatures a natural way of detoxifying many of these artifical toxins. For example, how does the human body effectively deal with plastic leached into food from microwave cooking in plastic containers? Doing what is natural is only a relative guideline rather than an absolute maxim. Jack LaLanne often preaches: "If man made it, don't consume it!" Yet, also believes in drinking high protein shakes made from soy protein powder as well as soy milk. Soy cannot be safely consumed by man unless it is first heavily processed. And, while many animals live a physically active life and engage in aerobic activities like running, no animal naturally lifts weights or works out on a treadmill. So, use of the word natural in natural health contexts only connotes a preference for trying simple natural therapies first even though much of what we advocate is not 100% natural in all respects. There is no requirement in natural health to do only what is completely natural.
Natural Healing Practices	Natural healing practices are a subset of both treatment methods and alternative medicine that looks towards nature for natural causes and explanations, rather than towards the supernatural. From the point of view of treatment methods, biomedicine can be considered a natural healing practice because it looks towards nature rather than the supernatural for explanations.
Natural Health "Natural health is an eclectic self-care system of natural therapies that builds and restores health and wellness by working with the natural recuperative powers of the human body."	Natural health is an eclectic self-care system of natural therapies that builds and restores health by working with the natural recuperative powers of the human body. See our tutorial on: What is Natural Health?
Natural Therapy "Natural therapy is the treatment method used by advocates of natural health, which is a form of alternative medicine."	Natural therapy is the treatment method used by advocates of natural health. Natural therapy criteria: Its mode of action exists in the physical realm of existence. Can be physically measured or detected. Always targets health, illness or healing. Is slow acting, simple and inexpensive. Is under the control of the individual. See our tutorial on: What is a Natural Therapy?
Patient Empowerment "Having the right to make one's own choices and of having the ability to act on them."	Patient empowerment is a concept that has recently emerged in the health scene. It embraces the idea that patients have the right to make their own choices about their health care. The empowerment model is based on the assumption that to be truly healthy, people must bring about changes not only in their personal behavior but also in their social situations and in the environment that influences their lives. This empowerment model has evolved out of the realization that patients cannot be forced to follow a lifestyle dictated by others.
Prevention "The act of going, or state of being, before."	There are actually three different levels of prevention. Primary Prevention - actions taken to avoid disease or injury. Secondary Prevention - actions taken to identify and treat an illness or injury early on with the aim of stopping or reversing the problem. Tertiary Prevention - interventions to contain or retard the damage caused by a serious injury or a disease that has progressed beyond the early stages and causes lasting or irreversible damage. When physicians claim that they are interested in prevention they are referring to high-technology used to detect diseases (Secondary Prevention) and the management of diseases like diabetes (Tertiary Prevention) because they offer no hope of cure. Just about the only Primary Prevention services provided by physicians are vaccinations as Primary Prevention services are too time consuming. Prevention according to medicine means detecting and managing infectious diseases, while in natural health contexts prevention means avoiding getting sick entirely. In short, medicine does not prevent anything, other than more serious progression of existing disease states and a handful of communicable diseases that are allegedly prevented by vaccination.
Quackery "Quackery used to be a pejorative term describing medical charlatanism. As medical charlatanism became more popular and as using pejorative terms became politically incorrect except for the formerly oppressed classes, quackery evolved into alternative medicine and complementary medicine by those who practice it, and into unproven therapies and questionable methods by those who are critical of it. When quackery is mixed with scientific medicine, the latter is called a mainstream modality and the result is called integrative medicine by those who practice."	Outside of outright consumer fraud, what is considered quackery is purely a matter of politics as consumers in a free market economy have the right to decide how they want to spend their own money. This modern concept is known as patient empowerment. The word 'quackery' is derived from the word quacksalver ("someone who boasts about his salves"), which historically was an insult used against physicians using heroic medicine. It was historically associated with the use of mercury in Europe as medicine in the form of salves. The German form of the word is quacksalber and is based on the word quecksilber in German which means quicksilver or mercury. Who were the Quacks who originally topically treated diseases like syphilis with salves made from mercury in Europe? Why it was the educated and then politically correct professional physician, of course.
Surgery "A branch of medicine that involves cutting open the body to manually correct injuries and disorders and to diagnose injuries or diseases."	Most of the success stories made by conventional medicine in treating heart disease have come from surgery rather than from medicine. Historically, advances in surgery developed by trial and error over the need to treat battlefield injuries. Surgery was considered a trade or a form of lowly physical labor throughout most of Western history. In Europe the distinction between surgery and medicine is rather distinct, while in America the differences are more muddled. The lofty educated physician did not perform surgery because it was beneath their aristocratic social position. While natural health advocates surely do not recommend unnecessary surgery most of the criticisms directed against conventional medicine are referring to Materia Medica or medicine rather than the field of surgery.
Treating the Disease or Physical Examination "During a physical examination, a health care provider studies a patient's body to determine the presence or absence of physical problems. A typical physical examination includes: inspection (looking at the body) palpation (feeling the body with hands) auscultation (listening to sounds) percussion (producing sounds)"	When you treat the disease, either a high-tech diagnosis is made with the expensive tools of modern medical science or a diagnosis has been made based upon a physical examination of the patient. It would also include taking the medical history of the patient. In short, treating the disease emphasizes pathology and centers on the simplistic biomedical model of health.
Treating the Patient or Case History "All the relevant information or material gathered about an individual, family, group, etc., and arranged so as to serve as an organized record and have analytic value for a social worker, student, or the like: used esp. in social work, sociology, psychiatry, and medicine."	When you treat the person a case study is taken that ascertains what the patient has been doing wrong because all illness is assumed to be the fault of the patient. Further, the natural healer will try to regulate the life of their patients, their diet, etc., first before using any drugs. Once the wrong behavior has been stopped; drugs in the form of nutritional supplements and herbs are given that will assist the patient in recovering naturally from their situation. In short, treating the patient emphasizes the behavior of the patient and centers on the complex biopsychosocial model of health otherwise known as the mind-body connection.

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