Dr. Peter J. Weiss

Hi, I’m Dr. Pete Weiss of More Health Less Care, and today I’d like to talk to you about four things that I like about alter­na­tive med­i­cine. The first is that alter­na­tive med­i­cine is not “big busi­ness” in the same sense that tra­di­tional med­i­cine is big busi­ness nowa­days. Yes, a lot of money is spent every year on alter­na­tive med­i­cine, but alter­na­tive med­i­cine providers typ­i­cally are solo prac­ti­tion­ers or in very small groups, maybe two or three at the most.

This is not what you see in tra­di­tional med­i­cine, where big­ger is bet­ter, where there are very large physi­cian groups, hos­pi­tal chains and other large orga­ni­za­tions. I think when you have an orga­ni­za­tion that’s very large; it’s easy for the orga­ni­za­tion to lose focus on the indi­vid­ual who needs care. On the alter­na­tive side, providers are always focused on pro­vid­ing the best care they can, not on run­ning a huge orga­ni­za­tion.

The sec­ond thing I like about alter­na­tive care is the holis­tic focus. As you know on the tra­di­tional side, there’s a hyper spe­cial­iza­tion these days. There’s an ear doc­tor, nose doc­tor, throat doc­tor, lung doc­tor, spleen doc­tor, liver doc­tor, kid­ney doc­tor. There are so many doc­tors, it seems like there’s even a pinkie doc­tor. That’s just how it is.

On the alter­na­tive side, yes there are spe­cial­ists. You may have a chi­ro­prac­tor or acupunc­tur­ist or another spe­cial­ist, but almost all of them approach their prac­tice from a holis­tic, whole per­son approach.  They con­cern them­selves with the whole per­son — mind, body and spirit — not just the nar­row slice of the per­son related to one organ or one organ sys­tem — not just related to the com­plaints that they’re hav­ing or their rea­son for pre­sent­ing.  They’re more con­cerned about the whole per­son, and I like that.

The third thing I like is that alter­na­tive providers sim­ply have a lot more time than tra­di­tional providers. You know it’s not unusual to have a 10-minute doc­tor appoint­ment, a 12-minute doc­tor appoint­ment, or a 15-minute doc­tor appoint­ment. You can’t really find out too much about a per­son in fif­teen min­utes. You can’t really cre­ate a deep and mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship in fif­teen min­utes three or four times a year. But that’s just the way it is in tra­di­tional med­i­cine.  It’s got­ten very, very short, and a half an hour appoint­ment or an hour appoint­ment would be unusual in today’s world.

On the alter­na­tive med­i­cine side, that’s more nor­mal.  It’s nor­mal to have a 45-minute appoint­ment, an hour appoint­ment or even longer.  Within that time you can really get to know a per­son. The provider can know you and you can know them, and that’s the best rela­tion­ship for heal­ing.

And lastly, alter­na­tive providers tend to touch peo­ple a lot more, and touch is impor­tant.  It’s really been left out of a lot of doctor-patient inter­ac­tions on the tra­di­tional side these days.  The doc­tor rushes in, the doc­tor rushes out, maybe he slips his stetho­scope on you, touches you lightly, but not very much. As humans, we relate to each other through spend­ing time together, con­ver­sa­tion but also through touch­ing. Touch­ing is so impor­tant, and I believe it’s an impor­tant part of heal­ing and an impor­tant part of a ther­a­peu­tic rela­tion­ship.  You see that a lot more on the alter­na­tive care side.

So these are four things that I like about alter­na­tive care.   “Alter­na­tive” care — I think it’s los­ing its pejo­ra­tive nature, the term “alter­na­tive,” and, as I was think­ing about this, I was think­ing, “when do I use alter­na­tives?” I use alter­na­tives when what I do isn’t work­ing. If I’m on the high­way and there’s a traf­fic jam, I’m look­ing for an alter­na­tive route.  And I don’t think that tra­di­tional health care is work­ing all that well for most Amer­i­cans these days, so maybe it’s time that you look for an alter­na­tive.