THE UNTAPPED POTENTIAL OF NATURAL MEDICINE: A Call Back To The Actual Medicine

EXCERPTS FROM THE FORWARD: This forward is about my own personal experience with alternative medicine. And to bring all of us to proper understanding I want to make references to lose definitions of this important subject. Alternative medicine is loosely defined as a set of products, practices and theories that are believed or perceived by their users to have the healing effects of medicine but whose effectiveness has not been clearly established using scientific methods or whose theory and practice are not part of bio-medicine. Bio-medicine is then said to be part of medical science that applies the principles of biology, physiology, molecular biology, biophysics and other natural sciences to clinical practices using scientific methods to establish the effectiveness of that medicine. Yet Alternative Medicine includes herbology, acupuncture, homeopathy and other oriental practices; Ayurveda, Naturopathy and the rational practice of natural medicine - Phytotherapy all of which have successfully been practiced for many centuries worldwide due to their constant effectiveness without any negative effects.Even body touch including chiropractors, message, body movement and yoga whose use is based on the idea that injury in one area of the body can affect other parts of the same body, are all alternative medicine and have also been used, successfully over millions of years. It is also well known that for a few centuries, man has gone from a simple herbal diet of mainly vegetables, grains and fruits, known to balance the body's nutritional wellbeing to a diet rich in animal fats, oils and complex processed carbohydrates and with known nutritional excesses and deficiencies leading to a number of chronic diseases. In contrast, Herbal and dietary approaches in the form of herbal medicine and dietary nutritional supplements supported with good emotional mental health and Phytotherapy have been shown to facilitate better and faster healing. While alternative medicine is widely accepted and used by a significant number of people all over the world due to its good results, we still have critics of it who argue that “there" is really no such thing as alternative medicine" - just medicine that works and medicine that doesn't. My personal experience, does not support these critics of Alternative Medicine and I know that many people all over the world have gone through similar experiences. And for these critics of alternative medicine, my experience simply and clearly defines the difference between the medicine that works and that which doesn't. Alternative medicine has been used for millions of years to treat various forms of ailments before the emergence of conventional medicine less than Three hundred years now. Alternative medicine certainly has advantages over conventional or what is called science based medicine in that it has no known side effects. And from my own experience the two cannot, in any way be compared.Researchers and the author of this book is one of them; have also pointed out that their research findings have shown that Alternative Medicine has no adverse effects; adding that "standard treatment replaced with 'Alternative treatment' does not only give rapid improvement but also gets rid of adverse effects of conventional treatment". I am the living witness. Geoffrey Sheridan Ouma - Council Member - Eldoret University