by Don Ingwerson When the subject of placebos enters into the conversation, what’s the perception? That the brain can fool the body? That doctors sometimes use it to convince the patient that a substance or pill will change the existing conditions of the body? Are there ethics guiding the use of placebos? The 60 Minutes interview concerning placebos brought to
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by Don Ingwerson “Mindfulness Meeting This Way” proclaimed a small sign at the entrance of one of the many medical buildings on the UCLA Campus – and suddenly I felt invigorated. I was not there to attend a mindfulness meeting, but to interview the GWish (George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health) project director, Dr. Margaret Stuber, about a Templeton-funded
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by Don Ingwerson Where to start when thinking about health? Everyday there seems to be a new twist on ways to gain the promise of better health or ways to overcome health problems – and many of these ideas seem logical, requiring only modest changes in lifestyle. But it’s easy to get hooked on a new fad, which is soon
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by Don Ingwerson Since complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) include the area of prayer, I keep abreast of reports that mention CAM. The attached report mentions alternative and complementary medicines. In prior reports, prayer was the leading alternative medicine used by the public (49%). I found this report interesting and I’m sharing it with you. I hope you find the
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by Don Ingwerson Article first published in the U-T San Diego. Amid the nation-wide debate about health care and each person’s search for a safe, effective, and affordable approach is the realization that being healthy is an individual responsibility and personal endeavor. A synopsis of an article in The Atlantic by Dr. David H. Freedman says, “the medical profession kept
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A guest post written by Charles Lindahl “Peeling Away Health Care’s Sticker Shock,” a recent Wired magazine article on the high cost of health care, concluded, “The health care business is about patients. But the patient population has been largely powerless….” A new study by the Institute of Medicine found that, “patients often find the health care system uncoordinated, opaque,
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by Don Ingwerson An English chap by the name of Tony Lobl recently wrote an article published in the Huffington Post UK on a topic I’ve been excitedly exploring for years: patient-led care. The most intriguing aspect of his article was when Lobl described a future health care system as being patient centered. Instead of the medical/drug industry deciding what
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by Don Ingwerson Medical overtreatment is leading us to “be sicker and poorer” according to Shannon Brownlee, acting director of the health policy program at the New America Foundation. Brownlee describes the medical scenario that leads her to this conclusion as: “Sometimes the test leads you down a path, a therapeutic cascade, where you start to tumble downstream to more
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by Don Ingwerson Would practicing alternative medicine allow her to spend more time with patients and, thus, lead to an environment more conducive to healing? This final question came from a young lawyer turned physician who, like me, attended a recent RAND Corporation meeting on alternative health care. It really spoke to the heart of the conversation that night and
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by Don Ingwerson This is a re-post from October 31, 2011. According to MedicineNet.com, complementary medicine is “a group of diagnostic and therapeutic disciplines that are used together with conventional medicine” and “alternative medicine is used in place of conventional medicine.” Why am I taking this space to explain complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)? Because one type of CAM is
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