For the Natural Medicine

Natural medicine includes medical ideas and practices that are named using also the expressions: naturist medicine – more often, biotherapy, integral medicine, traditional medicine. To a certain extent, meanings of these name overlap, without being, however, identical.

In order to understand what natural medicine is, we shall try to define it as a special medical discipline, which should belong to a new medical school and not to as a current trend in medicine or as fashion.

Natural medicine regards man as a whole, with two components, material and non-material, being in interrelation with the environment within he lives. Any organism being in his natural environment lives normally and is healthy; any organism taken out from his natural environment and moved in an improper one replies by changing his life conduct, then gets sick and dies, failing to succeed in entering in a normal relation with the new environment. In the same way, should within his natural environment are made certain changes (including here nourishing, pollutants in air and water or bad habits such alcohol and coffee consumption, smoking, synthetic cosmetics) the organism tries to adapt himself to the new conditions by paying the price of inner changes. Should these inner changes will exceed physiological possibilities of the organism, this enters in a series of functional disorders and than in sickness. So that to restore health means to restore the original physiological mechanisms. In order to do this, firstly there have to be retrieved from the life environment the unhealthy elements that have disturbed it: including here improper nourishing and bad habits, as well as the re-thinking of the life style. Simultaneously, to the organism have to be offered conditions that help him regain normal functions, to be capable to participate in disease elimination. In order the disease be defeated, there are also required external means to fight against it, i.e. that therapies that harmonize themselves with the organism’s inner mechanisms, working together against the disease. In order to harmonize themselves with the organism, these external means have to belong to the natural environment to which he belongs, otherwise, therapies themselves become external factors for environment change, i.e. disease makers and not means that bring health.

A complete natural medicine aims to achieve all the purposes mentioned above.
The natural medicine is centered on the natural environment; it intervenes gently on the human being putting into value the capacity of the human body to protect itself against the disease. The natural medicine treats firstly the causes of the disease instead of treating its manifestation, by considering and treating each human being as a unique entity instead of establishing pattern treatments for the disease and by judging the human being’s disease and suffering taking also into consideration his/her soul and intellect according to the principle “the doctor treats, God heals”.

Today, the natural medicine is considered more like a status, a field of ideas and practices with medical value, still under investigation and systematization, having as major characteristic the intention to avoid as much as possible the using of means belonging to the allopathic (conventional) medicine. However, we believe the natural medicine is much more than that.

A new medical school is required in order to structure the elements of this “field” of medical ideas and practices.

Two aspects should be strongly emphasized here: firstly, the understanding and elucidating of all the intimate phenomena related to the disease, by considering it as a condition of the body as a whole and not of only one organ; the state of illness should be analyzed from the perspective of the patient’s real life and in close connection with his/her life environment, instead of seeing it from the angle of the laboratory conditions in which the studies on the pathology are made; and secondly, the capacity of the human body to protect itself against illness due to the fact that our body is endowed with certain possibilities of regeneration that most of us are not even aware of.

The natural medicine starts from the basic point that for the treatment the human being has in its possession not only the external means but the inner resources of the body as well, both constituting the mechanism of defense against disease and recovery after disease. The allopathic medicine makes a huge mistake ignoring the inner resources of the body in fighting against the illness; and even more than that, the body’s own defense mechanism is annihilated through the adverse effects of the synthesis drugs, thus leaving the body in the sole care of drugs. Most of the time these therapies bombard the disease and the human body as well, often succeeding to bear the patient down before annihilating the disease. That explains, for example, the failure of the allopathic therapies in cancer cases at which the healing rate is insignificant and the mortality rate under therapy is very high. Just on the opposite, the natural therapy creates the condition for the body to regain the normal function of its own resources that are incredibly vast and efficient; moreover, the natural therapy intervenes also directly on the disease using natural channels not-harming the body and collaborating in harmony with the inner resources for the purpose of removing the illness condition. In addition, a complete therapy addresses the human soul as well, since in many cases the disease has its roots in the spiritual sufferings.
The natural medicine takes into consideration the implication given by the two major factors responsible for the starting, evolution and possibilities of treatment of the disease, namely: the state of intoxication and degradation of the patient’s body and mind due to overstressing. The intoxication state takes into consideration not only the self-administered toxins: tobacco, alcohol, coffee in excess, but also the un-healthy food: sugar, meat (mainly the meat coming from the intensive breeding farms), artificial soft drinks, sweets, canned food, and last but not least the intoxication with medicines. A disordered living style with overstressing activities carried out over a long period of time causes the weakening of the body, it consumes its own native reserves and leads to a progressive degradation. The state of mind depends on the stress conditions of the patient’s life, on its strength towards the stress factors, on the patient’s character and temperament, on his/her willpower, on the intellectual environment he/she is living in, on the patient’s education level, on his/her faith.

The natural medicine as a successor of the traditional medicine specific to each country has to be understood and adapted to the particularities of the land. It is necessary that the doctor as well as the patient understand the spiritual blueprint of the space they live in. For a Romanian and Christian doctor it is much easier to treat in Romania a patient who declares himself/herself as being a Christian, who is an active believer and is aware of the fact that the illness may be the consequence of his/her sins or of the sins of his/her ancestors, than to treat a patient who is a proponent of foreign medical practice, living philosophy and religion.

If the patient understands all these things, he/she may become aware of the origin of his/her sufferings and can understand his/her chances of treatment, the measures to be taken for this effect on his way of life as well as the proper therapy. This means that it is necessary for the patient to cooperate for the achieving of his own healing. He should not “let himself in the hands of the drugs” as if they may contain portions of health in themselves, which may be swallowed and then bring recovery. The patient must participate to his own treatment together with the doctor in order to get the best results and obtain the improvement of the condition and the recovery.

Since the success of the treatment is ensured by the harmonious cooperation between the three elements indissolubly connected, namely: a correct diagnosis, an adequate therapy and a cooperative patient, it is necessary that nothing related to the patient’s suffering should be kept back from him. The patient must be precisely informed about his health condition, about the risk, as well as on the most indicated manner of treatment irrespective of his beliefs and conceptions in the medical field. That is, on one hand, a matter of medical deontology: today, an increased number of patients are getting to be treated according to the decisions taken by the doctors together with the patient’s family, even in conditions of his full mental capacity. Thus, for the sake of treating the patient gently, they put him in the situation of not being able to decide upon his own chance. In certain situations, for patients suffering from a serious disease the inducing of a shock may even have beneficial effects for those who really want to live and are capable of fighting for life. On the other hand, the patient is more cooperative when remote from the conditions he lived until then, including the bad food habits, living habits, dangerous habits and not finally, the stress and emotional instability, the devastating effect of the critics towards the natural medicine disseminated by the “serious” doctors, and addressed to a patient who is unprepared for such a confrontation. On several occasions, in their family environment, the patients tend to request some deviations from the treatment, taking advantage from the compassion shown by the family members that can be more easily persuaded by the patients’ requests. That’s why it is recommended to hospitalize the patients in case of serious affections to the natural medicine clinic which can ensure the correct treatment without interruptions and without jamming that may jeopardize the health if not even the live of the patient as well as the reputation of the doctor who prescribed the natural treatment.

In case of serious illnesses the treatment is and should be regarded as a part of the entire treatment, which is to be administrated to the patient until its re-integration to a normal life. Therefore, the patient should have a spiritual, mental and physical support. In case the patient is religious the strengthening of his relations with the religious cult he belongs to is recommended; he should be more present in practicing his religion, insisting more with his thinking upon what is eternal and immortal instead of looking at the wickedness of this world. Mentally, the patient must be prepared to understand and accept, but most of all to participate to the proposed treatment and to maintain a state of balance in order to bring optimism in the patient’s thinking and behavior. Physically, the patient must be prepared both to make more easy the elimination of toxins out of the body and to restore the harmonious functioning of the organs in the body which are most frequently tired or worn out by the unhealthy living habits. The physical exercise is necessary; it has to be established according to the state and evolution of the disease, and according to the purpose of rehabilitation after recovery.

The natural medicine belongs to the doctors who will have the courage to reconsider their professional training and the studies they have accomplished during medical school.
In connection with this matter it must be said that a person who is unable to establish alone the diagnosis and the cure for his patient cannot be called neither a doctor nor a healer. There are many healers who appeal to a doctor in order to establish the diagnosis and who appeal to the prescriptions of some renowned and sometimes deceased healers under whose auspices they work in order to establish the treatment. Thus, there are patterns of treatment formulated and applied for various generic disorders, such as: prescriptions for cancer, prescriptions for hepatitis, etc., etc., some of them extremely complicated, other even ridiculous by their component elements and which generally, if used without responsibility may rather do harm to both the patient and the natural medicine concept.

The natural medicine is often criticized by the doctors belonging to the so called “classical” or conventional medical school – the allopathic medicine; their claim is the lack of scientific grounds, or the fact that some substances selectively extracted from plants may have toxic effects.

However, we are able to inform you that according to the World Health Organization’s statistics most people worldwide treat themselves using first the traditional Chinese medicine (made up of acupuncture, phytotherapy, diet-therapy, energy massage, energy gymnastics, etc.) and then the homeopathy, and on the third place is the api-phytotherapy; the allopathic medicine ranks only on the fourth place. We believe that people today have good reasons for having so much confidence in these medical practices and we also believe that the allopathic medicine should be allowed to take its well deserved rank in our society, namely the rank given by its beneficiaries, i.e. the patients.

And this, because the test of time - that is the hundreds or thousands of years since these treatments have been applied successfully and with no harmful effects - can overcome any conjuncture argument said out loud from a high position on the social ladder. Within all the medical writings since ancient times until nowadays, there was no mention found about the adverse effects of plants, as we find plenty today within the leaflets of the synthesis drugs. Since ancient times and until the advent of the synthesis drugs, people used plants for treatment together with other natural products. For thousands of years their effects have brought great advantages for the sick persons. And this, when the short time test (usually, a few years), by which numerous allopathic medicines show their disadvantages on a statistical scale, proves to be a counter-argument for the allopathic therapy. This is, however, a “detail” not presented by the allopathic medicine. How many times, was there necessary to withdraw from the market the allopathic drugs, after they had sufficient time to produce harmful and even disastrous effects upon the people which they have been prescribed for?

Concerning the accusations saying the natural medicine would be a non-scientific procedure it also must be said that very thorough studies are being made on the chemical composition, on the structure of the component substances, on the characteristics and all other scientific parameters of the medicinal plants, since long time and everywhere throughout the world, in the same manner as for the other therapeutic substances. Here, we must take into consideration an element entirely recognized within the scientific environment, namely, that plants act upon the body through a phyto-chemical complex and not by a unique substance that may be selectively extracted and used alone. This is the great secret of the medicinal plants’ miracle with the numerous effects produced by one and the same plant, without any harm to the patient. One plant produces generally, a couple of thousands of substances, many of them being similar, as they all come from a number of synthesis lines. The therapeutic effects of the plant are owed to the combined working inside the body of the components of the phyto-chemical complex and not to the totalized effect of many substances. That is why the medicines produced by the selective extraction of some unique substances in plants usually have the same effect with the allopathic medicines obtained through synthesis.

The allopathic doctors use only synthesis drugs. They do not know the medicinal plants and their effects, and are not familiar with the other natural cures. And why? Because these matters of study cannot be found neither in the medical schools’ curricula nor in the classical post-university professional training. In order to get familiar with these therapies the student has to do extra work and study in addition to the compulsory matters of study; these additional efforts are made by those doctors who understand they have to treat their patients by using the methods that are the most closely related to the human nature.

And then, the allopathic doctors who do not know these methods, how can they express their opinion about a field they are not familiar with?
However, not wishing to make a polemic closing I am trying to remind to all the readers of this letter that our ancestors and grandparents, farmers and peasants, have fertilized their land using natural substances, have used the food products produced in their own farm or in the neighboring farms, and that were processed through natural means and techniques, i.e. without using any chemical preservatives and colorants, they made and had their bread of whole meal or the polenta made of corn, not treated with chemical herbicide, grown in a land that was not treated with insecticide, and then when they reached to better living conditions, they eat meat obtained without the so called wonder concentrated forage, drank wine instead of beer, had pie instead of sweets and ice-cream, had made their clothes of hemp and linen, and have lived a long and happy life in their houses made of wood and clay. And when they became old, if they got ill, then they resorted to quack medicine, i.e. disenchantments and medicinal herbs. And they lived many years further on.
This is, in my opinion, a natural life style, close to the nature, and I believe that from within this life style that regrettably, is almost threatened with extinction, we can extract our fundamental ideas for the traditional medicine which, together with innovations and improvements, we can call as the natural medicine and employ for the benefit of the human being or what was left of it.

Dr. Cristina Aosan