You are getting the short end of the stick if you only rely on Western medicine.
There’s no denying the great strides we’ve made in the Western medical field in the last 50 years or so. Western medicine, which comes from ancient Greece and Rome, is based in scientific fact. Tests, studies, labs, pathology, causes, effects. With all that testing we’ve discovered how vaccines work. We can treat imbalances in our brain and blood. We can transplant organs from one person to another or from an animal into a human. We can prolong the life of a person with serious forms of cancer. We can help people hear who have been deaf their entire lives. What we can do is truly astounding.
All of those treatments come with a price and we accept that price. If you get a transplant, you take a drug for the rest of your life that helps your body accept that organ or your body will reject it and you might die. That drug comes with its own set of side effects. The transplant and the drug might fail. But, they might work. If you have stage 4 cancer and undergo radiation and chemotherapy, you will spend days and weeks in pain with vomiting and stomach cramping. You will probably lose your hair. You will get rashes on your feet and you won’t be able to walk for a time. You may or may not fully recover. The cure could kill you before the cancer does. But, you try it anyway, because the trade off seems worth the risk and it might work.
We accept the downside because the chance to prolong our lives is worth it. The side effects can be horrible, but most of the time, after weighing the options, being dead would be worse.
Western medicine is most helpful when you have a major trauma that must be fixed. It’s a life or death situation. You’ve got a limb hanging off that must be reattached. If there is an acute issue that must be dealt with immediately, like a pandemic, or like you feel suicidal and want to die, Western medicine is a great choice. Thank god we have those drugs and vaccines!
On the other hand, there is an entire world of Eastern medicine, which has it’s roots in ancient India, China, and Japan, that includes alternative therapies that many people never explore. These mostly gentler and kinder therapies work *with* your body instead of invading it. They sometimes take more time to work. They can have fewer-to-no adverse side effects. They need time, intention, and active participation. Eastern medicine focuses on maintaining both balance and harmony between your body and mind. It’s thought of as a more holistic approach which places the emphasis on prevention through healthy lifestyle choices, instead of pulling out the big guns after the fact.
If you go a traditional route when you have a cold, you may buy over-the-counter medications that target your cold symptoms and suspend them pretty well for a few hours or all day. And then maybe you take something else for nighttime. You’d do that for about ten days and then your cold would subside, because that’s about how long colds last. The medicine doesn’t fix the cold, it makes the symptoms less.
Eastern medicine would ask you to attend to your body in ways that take more time, but might ward off colds in the future. Instead of the OTC med, you might try drinking warm water with squeezed lemon wedges a few times a day, possibly with honey. If your nose is stuffed, you could break it up with some steaming hot chicken soup and fresh ground pepper. Or put a few drop of eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils on your chest and massage it in with a carrier oil. (It’s basically a natural Vaporub.) If your nose is too runny, you could try combining peppermint, lavender, and lemon essential oils and rub them with a carrier oil on the back of the neck or throat every few hours. If your throat is raw, a spoonful of honey might help coat it. Eucalyptus, lime, and lemon essential oils rubbed on the chest with carriers are great for coughs, too. Lavender and peppermint oils can also bring down a fever.
Doing these things is more effort than taking a couple pills twice a day and you might not have time for all that. But, if you do, you become an active participant in your body getting better. You think about what’s happening in your body. When you rub the oils in, you appreciate the properties of the herbs. You check in with your body to see how it’s receiving them. You get grounded in yourself and encourage your cells to begin the healing process stimulated by the essential oils. You imagine and set the intention to repair and regenerate so new proteins and enzymes will be created. You’ll be tapping into the powerful placebo effect, which has a poor name association, but is actually a wonderful healing tool.
Even though this slower, gentler way takes more of your participation than simply taking an OTC medication that is only targeting symptoms and not getting rid of the virus, if you keep up with treating your body with probiotics, essential oils, intentions, along with eating better, moving your body, and doing other healthful things, the preventative care you’re creating will begin to ward off colds and infections before they start in the future.
Eastern medicine is classified as “alternative” here in the USA but in other places of the world, it’s the way they do regular medical practice. What we call Western medicine, or modern medicine, is really a by-product or natural evolution of the pharmaceutical industry. When they got involved in the early 1900s, they changed the scope of how medicine works and how healing the body is approached. The faster the better and whatever side effects occurred were acceptable.
Before this change, during even the early 1900s, medical schools here in the USA taught homeopathy, including Boston and Stanford Universities and New York Medical College.
When the American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical companies began to work together, they suppressed practices that didn’t utilize pharmacology for an obvious reason. Money.
The pharmaceutical companies needed money to do their research. The research they did substantiated their claims that the drugs they developed worked. The doctors and teachers in the colleges reinforced these ideas by teaching about drugs and therapies that made money for the pharmaceutical companies – so they could make money for more research.
That isn’t all bad, and in and of itself this is a brilliant business plan that has only grown larger and stronger over the years. They built an ecosystem that regenerates itself and all the important players are represented and everyone is benefiting. Well, almost everyone. You are not if you aren’t complementing your Western Medicine with holistic practices.
Where chronic conditions fit in
Here’s the thing about chronic conditions – they aren’t going away. Not fully, anyway. You can get many of your symptoms under control using medication and truly, it can be life changing. But Eastern practices are super complimentary, and it would probably improve your quality of life to include some in your routine.
Things to consider: How much discomfort are you in? What are the downsides of trying to include alternative methods? Are there any contradictions that could worsen your symptoms? Do you have enough energy to be an active participant in your healing?
This book is full of alternative ideas that can become a part of your regular health routines. Not everything is for you, but the stuff that speaks to you could be really helpful.
It’s important to note that none of these ideas are meant to replace medical care of doctors. Please see the specialists that are meant for you and consider their advice carefully.
-Updated October 2025