Third Opinion MD - S2 Ep 2 - The Strange and True History of Combating Health Fraud in America: Why and How the Boundaries of Orthodox and Unorthodox Medicine were Established with Guest Historian Dr. Eric Boyle

S2 Ep 2 - The Strange and True History of Combating Health Fraud in America: Why and How the Boundaries of Orthodox and Unorthodox Medicine were Established with Guest Historian Dr. Eric Boyle

05/24/22 • 55 min

In this episode, I turn to history to find out why and how selective types of healthcare become mainstream.

Do you ever wonder how some medicines are acceptable and other medicines are alternative or fringe? Who made these decisions and how did we get here? What does this have to do with your access to good healthcare and your ability to care for yourself?

Everything.

What Makes Medicine Mainstream?

There’s plenty of health fraud to go around since humans first tried to heal other people. In fact, health fraud was hard to manage even before the internet. Now that we live with more information than anyone could ever digest in a lifetime, it’s much harder to know what is truly good for us.

Starting with the industrial revolution, healthcare converted to a commodity. Towns and cities grew larger and when the care of the sick changed from families (the home) to professionals and institutions. Several individuals and companies tried to sell “snake oil” remedies and cures. Medical care needed to be standardized to a large extent for public safety and to make sure a drug or a nondrug treatment worked. But, casting a wide net to fight health fraud potentially limited access to good medical care that was not labeled as mainstream medicine.

My guest and historian, Dr. Eric Boyle, shares his research on the history of trying to control health fraud, also known as quack medicine. The title of his book is Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America. He reviews the attempts to eliminate health fraud while exposing the strengths and weaknesses of managing healthcare in the medical marketplace.

I confess that I first judged this book by its cover. I grew up in a household with an integrative doctor who practiced both traditional and nontraditional medicine. I heard some doctors, who never studied Chinese medicine, judge this type of medicine as quackery. I also trained in two models of medicine to be a doctor, and one model was acupuncture.

But Dr. Boyle’s research opened my eyes to how we are influenced to judge medical models that are not mainstream like acupuncture, osteopathy, naturopathy, and chiropractic medicine. He said, “I’ve always thought of myself as a little bit of a medical agnostic...I'm always fascinated by the way that people's world views unavoidably, in ways that people don't really understand, end up shaping their approach to medicine and how they think about medicine.”

Read the Full Show Notes and Transcript on my Website

In this episode, Dr Eric Boyle and I discuss:

definition of quack medicine, or health fraud
how boundaries between orthodox and unorthodox medicine were established
reasons for sectarian (nontraditional) medical groups forming in the 1820s as a response to “heroic” medicine
combative relationships between different medical groups like traditional physicians, osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths
anti-quackery operation launched by the American Medical Association and the reasons for their efforts (protect the public, political and economic gains)
self-reliance for one’s health and how it’s changed over time
the challenges in combating quackery in the twentieth century

Resources

For more information on the topic of quackery in 20th-century American healthcare, read: Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America by Eric Boyle

Follow on Instagram to receive updates on podcast episodes and more! #thirdopinionmd

In this episode, I turn to history to find out why and how selective types of healthcare become mainstream.

Everything.

What Makes Medicine Mainstream?

Read the Full Show Notes and Transcript on my Website

In this episode, Dr Eric Boyle and I discuss:

definition of quack medicine, or health fraud
how boundaries between orthodox and unorthodox medicine were established
reasons for sectarian (nontraditional) medical groups forming in the 1820s as a response to “heroic” medicine
combative relationships between different medical groups like traditional physicians, osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths
anti-quackery operation launched by the American Medical Association and the reasons for their efforts (protect the public, political and economic gains)
self-reliance for one’s health and how it’s changed over time
the challenges in combating quackery in the twentieth century

Resources

For more information on the topic of quackery in 20th-century American healthcare, read: Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America by Eric Boyle

Follow on Instagram to receive updates on podcast episodes and more! #thirdopinionmd

Previous Episode

S2 Ep 1 - How Do the Doctors of Tomorrow Train in the US Today? Behind the Scenes of Integrative Medical Education with Alisha Harrington

This marks the beginning of season 2 where I explore how to make integrative medicine possible in our healthcare system from the inside out. In this episode, I sit down with my guest, Alisha Harrington, to talk about how doctors are trained today, how we combined two models of medicine in our training to deliver whole-person care, and how we imagine changing medical education to create the integrative physicians of tomorrow.

Alisha and I are each trained in Chinese and Western medicine, but we had to gather our training in different ways. Alisha is currently a fourth-year medical student at Western University COMP Northwest, an osteopathic school in Oregon. She is training to become a board-certified family physician after practicing as a licensed acupuncturist for nine years. I, on the other hand, went to medical school and residency, first, to become a family doctor, and then trained in Chinese medicine to become board certified in both fields.

Rethinking Medical Education

Imagine a healthcare world where you have the choice to get healthcare from one doctor with training in both traditional Western medicine and Chinese medicine. I’m not talking about a wellness clinic because most of these clinics are made up of practitioners trained in different ways and they bill you separately. If you have struggled to coordinate your healthcare team or spent as much on your health from both conventional and unconventional practitioners, you are not alone. In fact, this problem has been around for decades.

A 1993 landmark study from the New England Journal of Medicine reported that in 1990 “Americans made an estimated 425 million visits to providers of unconventional therapy. This number exceeds the number of visits to all US primary care physicians (388 million.)” Nearly 30 years later, little has changed in the demand for additional types of care and there are far too few medical doctors who practice more than just traditional medicine.

The Impacts on Your Third Opinion

Integrative medicine is an approach to healthcare that brings together conventional ( or Western medicine), lifestyle and complementary medicines (like Chinese medicine) in a strategic way to address the whole person. That’s like giving your auto mechanic more tools and knowledge to choose from when working on your car rather than having to take your car to two different mechanics to fix it. If your doctor knows about other types of medicine, especially ones you are seeking, they are more likely to listen to you and guide you to a healthier self.

If you want your physician to be able to practice integrative medicine, a lot needs to change in the healthcare system. The most fundamental changes have to start with the way people are trained as doctors. Did you know that there are no medical schools in the US that offer both kinds of training unless someone does this on their own by completing separate programs? That’s not only expensive, it’s preventing most physicians today from even considering it. The history of this is really complex, the separation of these types of medicine was intentional, and it’s worth knowing about how and why it happened.

You can learn about it in an upcoming season 2 episode. Stay tuned!

In this episode, Alisha Harrington and I discuss:

The definition of an osteopathic doctor
The difference between how medical and osteopathic doctors are trained
The difference between training as an acupuncturist and as a physician
How rigorous medical training is for traditional doctors and the sacrifices they make to their personal health, which leads to:

Increased rate of physician suicide
Poor lifestyle
Not being a good role model for patients

What makes integrative training so beneficial for patients and doctors
How integrative medical schools might be possible
More reform should happen in the way doctors are trained in order to:

build resilience
prevent burnout
Address patients needs on a more holistic and individual level

Resources

My blog post helps you understand the different types of medicine like osteopathic,

traditional Western, and Chinese medicine

New England Journal Of Medicine report in 1993 on the patterns of use of nontraditional medicine in 1990 compared with traditional medicine:

Next Episode

S2 Ep 3 - Healing Traumatic Stress with Modern Science and Ancient Principles of Chinese Medicine: Interview with Guest Alaine Duncan

When a word like trauma is used frequently in society and in the media, we think we know what it means. But, when we apply more than one medical model to understand trauma, it’s an opportunity to go “back to the drawing board” to understand and treat trauma more compassionately and effectively. As we emerge from the pandemic’s toll of loss and isolation, a growing mental health crisis surrounds us. The status quo for treating mental illness is no longer sustainable. This crisis is the best time for reflection and integrative approaches to healing.

In this episode, I sit down with my guest, Alaine Duncan, to discuss her innovative and integrative approach to understand and treat complex trauma. Alaine Duncan is a licensed acupuncturist, a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, and a very gifted educator. She has a unique approach to acupuncture that integrates modern understandings of the neurobiology of traumatic stress with ancient healing principles from Chinese medicine. She co-authored the book, The Tao of Trauma: A Practitioner’s Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory in Trauma Treatment.

Chinese and Western medicine operate from different foundations, but they are compatible with each other to give the best possible outcomes for your health. The journey to understand Chinese medicine starts with an introduction to two major principles called Yin-Yang theory and Five-Element theory. Alaine Duncan and I discuss these two principles in this episode as well as the influence of Taoist philosophy on Chinese medicine’s approach to health.

The Impacts on Your Third Opinion

There is an inseparable relationship between two parts of a whole. One part of your body cannot be well unless the other part is thriving. This is why you have to understand the big picture, and not just your illnesses as separate conditions on a list. The mind, body and spirit are connected to define your state of health, which is why mental illness should be treated in the context of the whole person.

In this episode, Alaine Duncan and I discuss:

Acupuncture’s core value in restoring essential regulation in the body that becomes dysregulated from disease
The introduction of Chinese medicine principles of Yin-Yang and Five-Element theories
Taoist philosophy and how it pertains to the Chinese medicine principles
Polyvagal theory and the role of the autonomic nervous system in responding to a perceived threat, which includes
Sympathetic nervous system
Parasympathetic nervous system (dorsal and ventral vagus nerve)
The definition of complex trauma, sympathetic arousal and parasympathetic collapse
The zone of resiliency and regulation that all people have and the zone that healthy people operate within
The five steps to the self-protective stress response and how any of these steps can be thwarted from completion with experiencing complex trauma
The role of epigenetics in creating transgenerational trauma and re-establishing resilience and growth in future generations

Resources

Follow Third Opinion MD on Instagram to receive updates on podcast episodes and more! #thirdopinionmd

The Tao of Trauma: A Practitioner’s Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Treatment, by Alaine D. Duncan with Kathy l. Kain, Berkley: North Atlantic Books, 2019. You can purchase through this link (supports independent book stores) or anywhere you choose to shop online.

Review and Join Alaine Duncan’s Newsletter: News & Views on acupuncture and integrative medicine, bridging worlds for trauma survivors.

Linear and Circular thinking explained: Western Medicine’s philosophical approach is partly influenced by Aristotle’s concept of noncontradiction. An example would be how the concepts of A (presence) and non-A (absence) cannot exist at the same time. This differs from the Eastern medical model that embraces a more circular perspective and understands duality in a more complex way around the laws of Yin and Yang.

· For more information on Aristotle and his law of noncontradiction, review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction.

For more information on the laws of Yin and Yang, see my blog on this topic, entitled: How the Y...