Shared Vision > January 2001 > Natural Medicine

Natural Medicine:
BC Leads the Way

By Lily G. Casura
Page 1 of 2

Last year, MacLean's rated British Columbia the healthiest province in Canada, and Vancouver the healthiest city. A few months later and a three-hour drive to the south, Seattle, Washington was named "hands down America's healthiest city" by Natural Health magazine. As other media jump on the bandwagon and proclaim the wonderful health of the Northwest, we have to wonder: is there something about this part of the world that produces such a focus on health and healing? And perhaps more importantly, are things here really as healthy as they seem?

Lorna Hancock, Executive Director of Vancouver's Health Action Network Society (HANS), an organization of 6,000 members that began in her basement office more than 20 years ago, says the "greatest energy for natural medicine" did seem to come from the West Coast.

Certainly the famous 1997 Angus Reid poll, which introduced us to the idea that Canadians were making rapid strides in embracing alternative medicine, proclaimed that. Fifty-six percent of its British Columbian respondents said they used natural medicines, 14% higher than the national average, and a far cry from Nova Scotia's 19%. The typical BC respondent had used alternative medicine for more than five years, was satisfied with the modalities he or she had tried, and was open-minded about alternative practices on the grounds that they might help and most likely wouldn't hurt, and also that they were closer to nature. More than three-quarters of the British Columbians surveyed agreed strongly with taking responsibility for their own health, and using doctors and healthcare practitioners more as consultants than traditional authoritarian caregivers.

(The poll makes interesting reading. It cites chiropractic, followed by herbology, acupuncture, and homeopathy as the most likely practices for British Columbians to have tried. It also describes the profile of the "typical" natural medicine user in Canada today: an affluent female baby-boomer, aged 35 to 54, living in BC, and earning a salary of CDN$60,000 or more. But the Angus Reid poll also points out the greatest growth of all is in the youngest sector. Canadians, aged 18 to 34, increased their natural medicine use by 146% over the five-year period surveyed.)

When an American magazine, Metropolitan Living, tried to uncover why another Northwest city, Seattle, got such high marks for embracing alternative health, it came to a surprising conclusion. Consumers, it seems, are driving the trend: not the doctors, practitioners, supplement sellers, or even the media. It's a case of informed consumers wanting and demanding choices, even if they have to pay the costs out of pocket.

"Natural medicine is something that people have readily accepted for more than a decade," says Ralph Golan, MD, author of Optimal Wellness: Where Mainstream and Alternative Medicine Meet. With physicians typically taking "10 to 75 years longer" to accept new thinking and incorporate it into their practices. "It's a mistake to use physicians' acceptance as the barometer of the validity of a given approach," he says.

Hal Gunn, MD, co-founder with Roger Rogers, MD, of Vancouver's Centre for Integrated Healing, agrees. "There's been a real shift happening in the general public's acceptance of natural medicine," says Gunn. "In BC, the majority of people use some form of natural medicine to support their wellbeing." Gunn says conventional medicine is beginning to respond, and despite the history of a formerly adversarial relationship between conventional and alternative medicine, he sees that "bridges are beginning to be built." Similar to Golan, Gunn points to the interest of the general population, "which is further ahead in its acceptance," and conventional medicine's response to this interest, as fueling the trend.

Across Canada, in Toronto, Ontario, radio host Christine McPhee could stand for a little of this enthusiasm. In July, her syndicated radio talk show, "The Touch of Health," was cancelled abruptly because of mounting and increasingly personal pressure from several disgruntled and self-proclaimed "Quackwatcher" physicians. "Quackwatch" is the brainchild of Stephen Barrett, MD, an American doctor on a crusade against what he perceives to be the rampant quackery of natural medicine. In Canada, the two main proponents of Barrett's point of view seem to be McPhee's most ardent attackers, Dr T. Polevoy and Dr P. Marchuk. Polevoy's website, www.healthwatchers.com, was criticized for being a hate site and was shut down by regulators at one point, says McPhee.

Despite McPhee's popularity, her show was cancelled for what amounted to political reasons. "I can't stand the heat," said one of her bosses, in response to Polevoy's one-man e-mail-and-letter crusade to the station saying McPhee should be taken to task for promoting alternative medicine. "I'd have to hire someone part-time just to respond to his mailings." A colleague of McPhee's, a medical doctor also being persecuted by the Canadian Quackwatch, says she's received more than 100 e-mails from this man alone in recent months.

Vitriolic opponents and passionate defenders-with natural medicine, it seems it was ever thus. Few things cause so many strong feelings as how people feel about their health, and what they'll do to retain their right to protect it. "All we've ever wanted," says HANS' Director Hancock, "is for the people who prefer a non-drug approach to healthcare to have the same rights and privileges as those who prefer drug therapies."

Shared Vision January 2001
Natural Medicine: Page [1] [2]