Health Care Fads

A medical doctor was being interviewed on Canada AM recently.  One of the points she was making was that people wanting something "natural" for their conditions was a fad.  The hair stood up on the back of my neck for moment.  From my perspective people wanting to look after their health in the least toxic, least invasive way is not any more a fad than people who want a medical approach.  After all natural approaches have been around a lot longer than than the modern approach to medicine has been.

Her comments got me to think about fads in health care.  Indeed, there are many fads in both medicine and natural health care.  Drug commercials a few years ago were all about arthritis medications.  Turn on the TV today and there seems to be non-stop advertising for erectile dysfunction drugs.  When the new wonder drug hits the market, the "performance enhancing" drugs will take a back seat.  Surgeries also go through fads.  When I started practice chymopapain injections where the big thing for spinal disc problems.  I never hear of them anymore.  Arthroscopic knee surgeries are loosing their luster.  Yes we may soon look on them as just another medical fad.

Natural health care has plenty of fads as well.  I can't even begin to enumerate all the products and procedures that I've seen since beginning practice that were the greatest thing and now are virtually unheard of.  There was the berry from South America, the root from South Asia, the extract from the liver of a marine mammal - all promising to cure most of man kind's ills.  Then there were the therapies that promised to reverse degenerative arthritis, alleviate pains instantly, and of course the machines where people would loose weight without doing anything.

I don't have a methodology for evaluating whether something in medicine is a fad, but I have developed a procedure I use to try to spy fads in natural health care.  I think adopting cutting edge procedures is valuable, but I want to keep my eyes open widely when things have only been around for a short period of time.  Fads don't stand the test of time.  I'm  also very cautious of products that are proprietary.   That is to say only one company has the technology to produce a given product.  Having a patent can be a good thing, but creating a monopoly probably isn't, especially when the focus of the company seems to be on putting down similar products rather than the benefits of their product.  The term "secret formula"  can be a red flag (although you can't call KFC a fad with their secret formula).  I also look at who is promoting the product or procedure.  Are there independent people or is everyone closely tied to the company?  What do experts I trust say about the product or procedure?  I really shy away when promotional material consists almost entirely of miracle stories.  Too good to be true is usually too good to be true.  I want to know how thing product or procedure actually produces the claimed results.  Does the process follow logically to the claimed results?

There will always be fads in health care.  Fads in natural health care are seldom dangerous and generally do provide significant benefits to at least a portion of the people who try the product or procedure.  The greatest draw back is that they can be costly if you don't get results.  On the other hand medical fads can be very dangerous.  Think of the deadly side effects from some of the arthritis medications or the chymopapain injections.  I'll opt for natural health fads over medical fads any day.