Your Health: Taking an alternative route

By GRAHAM REID

Mary Gordon can say exactly, and with some irritation, why she goes to a naturopath. Two years ago, at 40, the fit and active management consultant of Parnell who would go to the gym four or five times a week, started to feel inexplicably weary.

She'd always pushed herself hard, was highly motivated, and in her work was flying to Sydney regularly - but began to feel unnaturally tired. It started with a sore throat, she felt ill and lost her voice, and thought she had a bad flu. Unusually she took to her bed for six days and managed to recover enough to push herself through her workload.

"But I kept getting sick every two or three weeks. I had it about three or four times and I thought, 'This isn't me'."

So she did what she always did, went to a doctor.

"He said I'd been overdoing it and you find that with women in stressful roles - that I should take it easy. I said I thought there was more to it than that."

The doctor conducted no tests and she was prescribed only rest. A fortnight later she was feeling so bad she went to an emergency clinic in Remuera and received the same response. She was just run down. They gave her a medical certificate for a week off work. Again no tests, no treatment.

Within the week she was back at her GP's office and was told it was the flu that was going around. She was given antibiotics and followed the course but after returning from Sydney a week or so later had to take to her bed again.

When a friend recommended a naturopath she made an appointment, went through a series of tests and on the naturopath's advice had a blood test at the Diagnostic Laboratory. She was found to have glandular fever "and a few other viruses".

"As a matter of courtesy I went back to my GP, and because I was feeling pretty annoyed. I told him I had glandular fever because the naturopath told me. The response was quite cynical and he said I better have a blood test to check. And yes, I did have it.

"So I said, 'How come you guys didn't pick this up? You didn't test me and I kept telling you."'

Ask around clients of alternative therapists and Gordon's story is not uncommon. Peter Brant of Papatoetoe started going to a naturopath 20 years ago when, at 50, he was recovering from cancer.

"I was quite anti-doctor at the time. It took them 13 years to find out I had cancer in my chest. When I started passing so much blood they couldn't ignore it."

For three years after treatment he was dismal and depressed and, having been active up until the operation, frustrated by his condition. After doctors had been ineffective in treating his despair and physical debilitation, he went to a naturopath.

The first treatment - he admits it was an unknown concoction of over a dozen potions - knocked him sideways but he modified the dosage and noticed a small but appreciable improvement. Over the years, and with repeat visits for medications varied to suit his changing condition, that improvement has continued and now, like Gordon, says his first call for treatment would be a naturopath.

His own doctor has been supportive and he has been to his regular naturopath for treatment of cancers on his ears which have also been successful.

"But I don't exclude going to the doctor," says Brant. "I'm reasonably reasonable."

Gordon, too, like most of those who follow alternative medical paths, doesn't discount conventional treatments.

"I think there is a place for [doctors], but when you are not sure why you are feeling so down the naturopath is my preferred alternative source - and they have a better understanding of subclinical problems. Once you've got a broken arm or appendicitis then the doctor is a must. But in terms of preventative treatment, the naturopath is the way to go."

Gordon and Brant may have little in common in their lifestyles, but in their choice of alternative treatments over orthodox practices they are among a substantial number of New Zealanders who are looking to alternative - or complementary - treatments.

For many it is a lifestyle choice: natural treatments are perceived to have fewer debilitating or no side effects; natural healers take a holistic approach rather than simply treating symptoms, and such treatments are cautionary measures to anticipate problems.

Karen Moffatt, a medical herbalist and naturopath, is also a director of The Body Corporate, a company which works with businesses on health issues.

"I'm getting more and more people who are coming in a well state and they want to know how to stay well. Or they are healthy and feeling more tired than usual or getting colds and are thinking, 'What can I do about it?', rather than waiting until they are really sick."

She believes people today are better educated about complementary therapies and are looking more at the preventive than curative options. Many are disillusioned with the medical system and sometimes feel like guinea pigs for doctors who prescribe pills but don't treat underlying causes.

"Also, complementary therapy is a little more mainstream and people aren't scared about it. It's not people wearing Roman sandals, purple pants and tie-dye T-shirts waving incense and chanting. People's attitudes have changed and they are asking more questions. We also tended to think doctors knew everything and are starting to realise they are human beings like the rest of us and don't know absolutely everything.

"A lot of the conditions people are suffering are not diseases as such and more conditions brought about by lifestyle, such as conditions brought about by stress-related disorders and immune dysfunction. These are not things you can put into a category and say, 'Yes, you have this virus or disease'."

The "lifestyle/stress-related condition" argument confirms the opinion of outspoken Wellington anaesthetist Dr Graham Sharpe who bluntly dismisses alternative treatments as a symptom of our times.

" If people were still dying every day of TB, if people were still being killed by anaesthesia, if people were dying of appendicitis, or women were dying in childbirth they wouldn't be running to alternative medicines.

"They live in a society where people don't die of these things because they have the luxury of science and medicine."

Sharpe sees patients shifting between orthodox and alternative medicines as "a bob each way" and bristles that "so-called alternative medicine, I call it scam" doesn't undergo the same level of scrutiny as conventional medicines. "The government has got a body [Ministry Advisory Committee on Complementary and Alternative Health] looking at complementary medicine - but not with a scientific or critical eye.

"Medicine as a profession has come under public scrutiny, as it should, and these buggers should be subject to the same."

But the surveys suggest most of us steer a middle path and do not consider the various approaches to be mutually exclusive.

Moffatt, whose company also has doctors, dentists and other orthodox practitioners on contract, objects to the word "alternative" because it creates the impression these treatments are in opposition, "whereas what we do does complement".

"I'm a believer there is a place for both professions. I feel sorry for medical professionals, and doctors in particular, because they are overworked and overburdened. They really are just ambulances at the bottom of the cliff and they don't want to be that, but they don't have time to invest in preventative health."

Not everyone is convinced by complementary practices. A Herald Digipoll found 68 per cent of people over 60 believe orthodox medicine is best for treating ill-health.

In later years illnesses can be accident-related and require surgery or interventionist treatments; older patients have been brought up in a conservative climate where the doctor's word was gospel; they may have had a long association with a GP and found treatment satisfactory; or a lifetime of experience tells them alternative practices simply don't work.

The younger Mary Gordon is clear why she questions traditional ways: "Doctors tend to give suppressive pharmaceuticals and I want to keep my body healthy. And they tend to sometimes think you are neurotic if you are tired and can't get out of bed and they can't put their finger on it. They just don't take the time and do proper consultation and test you."

A familiar comment from patients of complementary practitioners is that they take their time - an hour is not uncommon for a consultation - and that as patients they are listened to, although as Gordon notes of her naturopath, "She listens, but I don't go there to have someone to talk to."

"It's a more complete type of consultation," says Moffatt, "and some of [the patients' concerns] might be psychosomatic because we are dealing with peoples' emotions and they have a huge effect on their physical well-being."

For some there is a darker subtext: that doctors are simply overworked pill-pushers held captive by the big money and influence of pharmaceutical companies.

For most clients at naturopaths the efficacy of their treatment is the evidence they need. Sharpe is dismissive: "We'd be pretty weak if we relied on that in scientific medicine, we'd get nowhere. Alternative is a bullshit term, it's either medicine or it's not.

"The advances in the last 50 years have been scientifically based. If they been based on, 'It works' we would have stopped in the 1700s and would still be using hypnosis and poisoning people with mercury, and we wouldn't have antibiotics."

But for Ray Turley of Red Beach - at 72 she is putting up a website and does photography part-time - it is about results. She has been going to a naturopath for eight years after concern that doctors were prescribing drugs to treat problems, not looking at causes. She suffered from polymialgia rheumatica and was prescribed steroids. She did research into the treatment "and thought, no way".

"'I found with homeopathic treatment I was a lot better and didn't have side-effects."

Turley: "You've got to put your faith somewhere. I don't know how the lights come on in the house, but I know if I put the switch down they do. I have faith because one works and the other doesn't. All I can go by is the fact that after treatment I came right.

"I'm not decrying doctors. I got the flu this winter and went to the doctors and got the only antibiotic I could take to help clear it up. You've got to be sensible."