From the point of view of scientific research, Sarah, the anecdotal case, was hampered by only studying one narrow question (why she got migraines), and only having one subject to experiment on (herself). What she had going for her was a background in science and logical thinking, which stood her in good stead. She went after the problem in a logical way. She learned all she could, kept detailed records, and removed and reintroduced variables in an orderly fashion.

Science isn’t a product that you ship or an orthodoxy you embrace on faith alone. Science is a way of examining the world around us, and accumulating a body of tested results. There’s nothing unscientific about deciding that your doctors aren’t practicing medicine terribly well. I did the same thing myself, many years ago, with an equally hard-to-diagnose condition.. For the record, during that long and vexing process I lost patience with alternative medicine a lot sooner than I lost patience with mainstream medicine.

Naturopathy had squat to do with sorting out Sarah’s migraines. Sarah did 95% of the work herself. All Dr. Ritcey did was spot the correlation between migraines and menstrual periods. Arguably, looking for patterns is something all of Sarah’s previous doctors should have done. Perhaps some of them would have done so if, at the beginning of the diagnostic process, they’d had the benefit of all that detailed tracking data Sarah had compiled by the end of the process.

Dr. Ritcey is a trained physician. That’s why she knows about things like regular fluctuations in hormone levels before and after menstruation. Scientific medicine, not naturopathy, taught her that. Scientific medicine also provided the tests that revealed Sarah’s low progesterone levels. If her wild yam cream contains progesterone, thank science for that knowledge as well. As for using creamed wild yam rather than a standardized pharmaceutical preparation for the delivery device, that’s just exotic packaging.

Seth Roberts thinks this is a story about naturopathy delivering superior results. He is mistaken. What the story itself tells us is that Sarah’s diagnosis and treatment owed almost nothing to naturopathy.

Side note: if you can find a consultant dietitian who has experience in this stuff, you have faster success in tracking down your triggers.

Arguing from authority (with the exception of legal reasoning) is a logical fallacy. “I know more than you, shut up,” is little more than an attempt at bullying.

Isn’t finding what works the most important thing? Or are you more concerned with ideological loyalty?

And then what do you do if they’re the only OB/GYN in town?

Why any woman would go to a male gynecologist is beyond me.

Gender has nothing to do with compassion or good care.

I know; I was surprised, too!

/sarcasm

Like going to a mechanic who’s never owned a car.

Ironically, my mechanic does not own a car. He’s a great mechanic, however.

I agree, and that’s why I believe that physicians should stop treating medicine as though it is.

“This is a complex interaction between two
people, often with no easy solution.  Both people in the interaction
bear the responsibility for the outcomes.”

But mainly the physician does, because they set the tone for the entire relationship. If their idea of medicine is to send in a nurse to speak with the patient and report back, a quick no-speaking exam to say that you actually saw the patient, then sending a scrip, if needed, back with the nurse to ‘explain’ everything, then they are clearly at fault. The only responsibility the patient bears in that scenario is for not firing the physician.

I eventually did fire the physician (who was ‘shocked and upset’ with me), but I had to drive 1.5 hours to the next OB, because people in small towns have very few choices.

“Nobody becomes a doctor just because it sounded like a good idea some
Sunday afternoon, the road is too long and hard for that.”

And no one stops being a physician when they burn out, either. The road there was too long and too hard for that.

My next physician gave me a list of foods to watch out for and I spent the next six months figuring out what I could no longer eat, with a few painful interludes. Five years later, I still have my gallbladder and no problems, with just a few dietary restrictions. (I can’t eat many fried foods, which is really better for me, anyway, lol.)

Again, taking ten minutes to speak with me was way less time than scheduling surgery and the aftercare so why is this bad, again?

Last, conventional medicine is based on a prescription pad, not on experimentation and data. If those things were important, more than two out of over a dozen physicians would have spoken up and said ‘Let’s find your trigger for migraines and gallstones.’ rather than ‘Let’s give you harmful medications and surgery that you can’t afford.’.

No matter how much you wish it were otherwise, actually treating individual patients is not conventional and is, therefore, the alternative.

He wasn’t complaining about the number of physicians. He was countering your personal experiences with his own.

“The deck is stacked against doctors: the
human body is complex and every case is different, they aren’t given
enough time to effectively do their jobs…”

Charting and reviewing said charts by my physician took less time than constant check-ups to get new prescriptions from previous physicians. Not to mention, of course, the time taken to treat the problems I would have had if I’d been forced into decades of pain management via medication. So try again.

“…and they’re constantly under
pressure from higher up to treat more patients or do less tests to save
money.”

Exactly. Instead of ordering a dozen useless tests, they could have sent her home with a simple chart and actually figured out her problem, as well as we can right now.

“Sounds like you should be doing something to change the system
rather than blaming it on the doctors themselves.”

In reality, it should be the physicians themselves who are changing the system.

The right thing to do based on this article and accompanying comments is try to do your own research AND enlist the aid and expertise of doctors AND perhaps try the natural way too.  When you’re in that much pain, you want to put any and all resources to work on the problem at the same time.

Next thing I want to read up on, all triggers aside, are they any closer to a cure?

Second, doctors condition people to expect a cure for every problem because they have become dispensing machines for the most part. Describe symptoms, receive prescription. In and out in 10 minutes. Works fine in many cases because many problems are simple. But some are not and the insurance model does not allow for extensive histories and stabs-in-the-dark diagnoses for complicated problems. 

Finally, human bodies are complex, as has been noted above several times. What works for me may not work for you because everyone has different chemistry. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you received inadequate care because you weren’t cured on the first try. Sometimes symptoms mask other symptoms. Sometimes patients make stuff up. Sometimes they just want attention. Sometimes the doctor is really thinking about his golf game. Reality is never as straightforward as we would like.

RTFA:
“Over the same year that she tried fifty drugs for her migraines, she tried thirteen different birth control pills, hoping to find one that was tolerable and made  her migraines better. She never did. None of them made her migraines worse, but some caused nausea.”

She did try birth control pills – they did not help her

Your sarcasm and mockery don’t serve your point when you are not even reading the article – they just show your lazy bias.

“So I guess the moral of the story is that conventional medicine fails when you refuse to take it?”

It failed her, apparently. Pretending this story applies to all cases of conventional medicine use and then mocking that statement is weak. Classic unscientific straw man weak tea. 

This is not about naturopathic versus allopathic medicine – it is about personal responsibility for one’s own health and finding what works, in the face of mindless and lazy prejudice such as that being demonstrated in some of the more dismissive comments here..

So I guess the moral of the story is that conventional medicine fails when you refuse to take it? Do we need our hospitals to wrap their trade in superstitious nonsense to get people to go along with their diagnosis? Maybe buy out a gift shop from Sedona and redecorate the waiting rooms?

It’s two doctors, but that’s a fair observation. Naturally, this is my own account, but I don’t feel I am confrontational with my doctors. My boyfriend is extremely aggressive when it comes to making me go to the doctor with the smallest medical problem, and I tend to wait things out, for the reason that I don’t like taking up time better spent on other people’s more pressing concerns.

I agree with you that doctor/patient relationship is indeed an interaction between both parties. That is exactly my problem, though. My issue here is that my doctors show very little interest in interacting. They do not take a few extra minutes (literally … I’m in and out of offices usually in under five minutes) to explain their decisions or provide information. 

I don’t need explanations because I mistrust their expertise or training. I need their explanations because it makes *me* a more informed patient, and so better equipped to make observations and provide useful information for them to make future diagnoses. I try under my own power to ask intelligent questions, but this can be difficult since I’m not medically trained, and sometimes it does feel like a test.

The last time I asked about a different kind of hormonal birth control, my doctor switched me to a different brand (didn’t explain how it was different, and when I asked, he said just to try it). When it didn’t do anything for me, he switched me back to the old one. It was the clinic where I buy them who told me there was such a thing as a low dose option to try.

“This isn’t Starbucks where you spit out your order and it comes out at the end of the counter.”

Again, 100% agree. But that’s how my doctor acts.

I appreciate that my doctor has to play the odds … medical diagnosis is an elimination process. But I think he should be OK with the possibility that the process can take more than one visit sometimes. When I ask *him* for *his* assessment for when I should follow up if something doesn’t clear up, he acts like I’m questioning his orders. Dude, I’m trying to get your opinion now so I don’t rush back here in a panic a day later complaining my meds aren’t working.

And that all said, I do like my pharmacist.

For me green tea must be avoided at all costs – guaranteed migraine if I have it. for other people, not so much.

Problem: constant sweaty armpits.
Dermatologist solution: Drysol (heavy duty antipersperant, applied to underarms and sleep in tight shirt with saran wrap…yuck.) He said it was probably nerves.
My solution: I tried Drysol and hated it. I eventually found that doing yoga address the underlying problems with my “nerves” and it went away.

Problem: restless legs
Conventional solution: they have a drug for that
My solution: I happened to realize that I didn’t get it if I was consisitent with taking a multivitamin. That worked for years. When I got pregnant it would sometimes occur even with prenatals. Magnesium seems to help. Doing some research to try and figure out what it was in the vitamins led to information on how calcium/magnesium balance affects contraction versus relaxation of muscles…

Problem: mouth ulcers
GP solution: “meh, some people get them, we don’t know why, nothing you can do do about it”
My solutuion: after internet research, I discovered there are different things (as with migraine triggers) for different people that lead to them. For me, it seems to be acidity in food, but the solution is taking one caplet of L-lysine a day. That took me from almost always having at least one ulcer, to almost never having any. If I don’t take it, they come back within a day or two. If I take the hard pill versus the powdery caplet I still get them.

Problem: horrible daily headaches
GP Solution: just stress, take some Naprosen (like I hadn’t tried that)
My solution: I did some research online and discovered myofascial pain, cervical headaches, and other possible causes. Went to a chiropractor and hated that. Did some more research, saw a PA at the GP office and said I think it’s related to my neck. He said “I doubt it, but here’s a referral to a head and neck pain clinic”. Correcting postural problems, physical therapy, subtle exercises, relaxation exercises–all this worked and gave me the tools to keep it in check to this day. Had I gone back to the GP just complaining that Naprosen didn’t work maybe they’d have given me a pain killer or a muscle relaxant.

Problem: crazy horrible itching head to toe
Conventional Solution: emergency room, where they gave me a shot for allergy and said it was probably something I ate.
My solution: same as above. DUH! But, I later figured out it was a prescription medicine for mentrual cramps that I became allergic to because it happened a month later when I took it again…and never sense.

Obviously, there are some issues that you go straight to the doctor for, do not pass go. But there are many complicated things that require logic, trial-and-error and TIME to figure out. It is everyone’s right to choose whether they want to invest that time…or just take a pill.

Personally, I’m in the camp that we take too many drugs for to many things that can be more simply fixed.  A change in diet is a ‘natural’ cure, as is eliminating triggers (for migraines or otherwise).

There is a big difference between saying “the stress of what you’ve convinced your problem is could be causing your problem” and “I don’t know what is causing your problem”.  The first is uncomfortably close to blaming the patient for the problem.  Which I feel is usually unhelpful.  Yes, stress is a real thing,  but you can sometimes account for it, and treat it appropriately, with either medicine, or exercise or cognitive therapy.  It is likely more than one of the “50 meds” tried was one that reduces stress, or the effects of stress.

While your personal experience suggests her approach was 100% ineffective for your problem, consider that if we had a pool of 100 BobDoleDoppelgangers with similar symptoms, it is possible it could have helped some.  You may have done everything right, but your presumed hypothesis that you were dealing with a environmental trigger/allergen may have been incorrect.  And yes, we don’t have a smoking gun to say what exactly was going on with Sarah. 

If you don’t mind my asking, how many Bob Dole Doppelgangers are there out there?  If you all have the same genotype, you guys could be more helpful than twin studies. 

Would a broader discussion of systemic failings of our medical and scientific institutions draw the same number of comments?

Discovering I had both types of herpes IN MY SPINAL FLUID. I take daily anti-virals and my migraines went down to one every three months or so. Which Imitrex treats just fine. I do not recommend asking your doctor to search for spinal herpes as it takes a lumbar puncture during a flare-up to find it. On the other hand, if you end up in the hospital with meningitis it’d be a good idea to suggest looking for it.

So you see, conventional medicine sure helped me. Every day that I take my valacyclovir I thank modern medicine for my pain-free existence (and no more hospital visits)