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As patients we can seek conventional “modern” medicine or opt for “holistic” treatment from the realm of natural medicine. But this appears to be too dichotomized a description. A growing number of people today include elements of both. Modern medicine sometimes borrows from the natural world. Conversely, most naturopaths don’t rely solely on natural medicine. At critical junctures throughout a person’s life, modern medicine is indispensable. And together with the alleviation of global poverty and the implementation of public health measures, modern medicine has contributed to more than a doubling of worldwide life expectancy in the past 120 years.
Natural Medicine
Different forms of what is termed “natural,” “alternative,” “functional” and “traditional” medicine as well as “holistic care” aren’t new concepts. Naturopathy, for example, was brought to the United States from Germany in the 1800s.
Alternative medicine percolated in the late 1960s and 70s when, according to a 1980 article, authors wrote that “holistic healthcare” was a “rebellion against the philosophical and clinical orientations of scientific medicine that has occurred in the U.S. during the 1970s.” This counterculture movement included self-care practices, such as incorporating “natural health foods” into one’s diet. A diverse group of practitioners began offering a wide range of therapies “outside the mainstream of modern medical practice.”
Consulting mainstream WebMD today we see that holistic practices like naturopathy emphasize disease prevention and the body’s “innate ability to heal.” “Mind, body and spirit” are involved in the healing process.
According to STAT News, hospitals affiliated with Yale, Duke, Johns Hopkins and other premier medical centers have established programs that feature aspects of complementary alternative medicine, such as acupuncture, chiropractic care and massage therapy.
Holistic healthcare can encompass numerous other modalities, including steam baths, natural dietary regimens and supplements, herbal remedies, yoga, meditation and other elements of spirituality and mindfulness.
According to The Guardian, 23 states and three U.S, territories have licensing systems that permit the use of the title “naturopathic doctor.” There are more than 6,000 registered practitioners. In addition to providing dietary advice and supplements they’re permitted to perform some diagnostic tests and prescribe certain medicines.
Practitioners of natural healing insist that the whole person is the object of treatment, not a localized symptom related to a particular disease or condition, which explains the oft-used adjective holistic.
The Association of Accredited Naturopathic Medical Colleges states its goal is to provide the “most natural, least invasive and least toxic therapies to treat illness.”
There’s a wide range of estimates on the percentage of Americans opting for natural medicine. The American Association of Naturopathic Physicians states that 38% of adults in the U.S. use some form of alternative medicine, often as a complement to mainstream care. Statista says that in 2021 around 24% of adults in the U.S. reported using herbal medicines, supplements or teas to treat health problems. In addition, approximately 10% of survey respondents reported taking non-prescribed drugs such as marijuana or “magic mushrooms” (psilocybin) as “alternatives” to synthetic pharmaceuticals.
Thousands of years of ancient medical knowledge have led to the development of many pharmaceuticals in use today. A wide variety of plants and herbs have medicinal properties. For example, scientists isolated morphine from opium in the 1800s, and it became a naturally derived medicine and the first to be commercialized. Among others, aspirin is derived from willow tree bark, digoxin from the flower, Digitalis lanata, penicillium mold naturally produces the antibiotic penicillin and artemisinin, found in sweet wormwood, is used to treat chloroquine-resistant malaria.
Like their synthetic counterparts, naturally derived therapeutics have benefits and harms. Some have conspicuous risks. Despite the fact that cannabis is natural, for example, it carries certain risks with it. Psilocybin has abuse potential, too. Also, some naturopaths prescribe hormones that are produced naturally by the body and can be chemically engineered to yield the same formula. Taking hormone therapies can be beneficial but may also pose risks for women and men.
Modern Medicine
There may be some degree of romanticization of the “natural” going on in wealthy countries with robust health systems, writes Kenan Malik, columnist at The Guardian. Poverty and fragile health systems force many people in developing nations to rely exclusively on traditional medicine But Malik reminds us that it’s our wealth and robustness of healthcare that protect us from the “ravages of nature.”
Preventable and (now) treatable disease was and is the main driver behind premature death. In the not-so-distant past, for example, bacterial infections such as tuberculosis were major contributors, but also smallpox and many childhood diseases.
Broadly speaking, modern or allopathic medicine is a system in which medical doctors and other healthcare professionals treat symptoms and diseases using pharmaceuticals, surgery or radiation.
Advances in modern medicine have been key drivers extending our life expectancy and quality of life. Improvements in surgical techniques have helped, better diagnostics and huge leaps forward in science and (medical) technology. To illustrate, pharmaceuticals have saved hundreds of millions of lives: From antibiotics to vaccines to cardiovascular medicines to HIV drugs to cancer pharmaceuticals and therapeutic agents in many other disease areas.
The advent of molecular biology and combinatorial chemistry facilitated the rational design of compounds that target specific diseased tissue, block or slow the action of certain substances and replace missing hormones or other chemicals vital to human functioning.
An article in The New Republic published in 2023 summarized the steady progress made in what it called “evidence-based medicine” over a period of centuries: “Establishing an effective body of practical, evidence-based medical procedures took hundreds of years; evidence-based medicine only outstripped homeopathy and other unproven treatments around 1910, when, according to [then] Harvard professor Lawrence Henderson, “for the first time in human history, a random patient with a random disease consulting a doctor chosen at random stood better than a 50-50 chance of benefiting from the encounter. … In the 113 years since, evidence-based medicine has racked up a staggering number of wins.”
In 1915, most Americans died before their 55th birthday; 18% of children before their 5th birthday. The number one cause of death then was tuberculosis.
After 1915, life expectancy steadily improved until the past decade or so when there’s been stagnation in the U.S. owing to, among other things, the opioid crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.
U.S. life expectancy from 1865 to 2021
Globally, modern medicine has helped more than double life expectancy since the early 1900s.
Modern medicine isn’t solely responsible for the improvement in life expectancy. Beginning in the late 1800s, improved sanitation, clean water, better nutrition, reduced levels of (abject) poverty, oral rehydration solutions for children with diarrhea and refrigeration have been just some of the public health measures that have helped increase life expectancy.
Today, there are areas in which natural medicine can assist in improving one’s health, particularly with respect to disease prevention. But the critical role of modern medicine can’t be ignored or minimized. It has been indispensable in raising global life expectancy and boosting quality of life.
