Truly healthy

All rubbish, of course, but not just harmless rubbish. Given the superstitious nature of Trinidadians, it seems likely that these sellers of "alternative therapies" — from herbs to acupuncture to homeopathy to reflexology to aromatherapy to crystals — have probably caused persons to die because they put their faith in these frauds instead of real doctors. (Not, mind you, that I consider most Trinidadian doctors to be such a great alternative to alternative medicine.)

Let me deal with the above "therapies" in reverse order. The idea that hanging crystals around your body can improve your health is supremely doltish. There is no known scientific principle by which such a phenomenon could occur. Yet there is actually a qualified medical doctor in this country fleecing gullible people of thousands of dollars by using this mumbo-jumbo. Aromatherapy may have some limited effect if it helps relieve stress. There is evidence linking stress to heart disease and high blood pressure. But it is doubtful that the relaxing effects of aromatherapy persist beyond a few hours, and this is hardly enough to offset the kind of stress which causes illness.

Reflexology — which is nothing more or less than a foot massage — claims that there are nerves which lead from one's feet to every major organ in the body. Any first-year medical student could show this is untrue (well, maybe not first-year medical students in Trinidad). And, even if such nerves did exist, why would massaging them help your organs fight disease? If reflexology has any beneficial effects, they are the same as aromatherapy. Homeopathy is a "treatment" which claims to dilute medications in a water-and-alcohol solution, and this solution retains the "memory" of the medicine and is even more efficacious than the original. But, if you did Physics in school you might recall a little thing called Avogadro's Number, which allows you to calculate the number of molecules in given mass of a substance. Using this device, we can prove that the dilution in homeopathic "remedies" consist entirely of water and alcohol and sugar. As physicist and science educator Robert Park says in his book Voodoo Science, "There is no medicine in the medicine."

Then there's acupuncture, which is the only alternative therapy actually approved by the World Health Organisation. But anybody who claims that they can use acupuncture to cure you of any ailment is more interested in your wallet than your health. What acupuncture does is help relieve pain. Researchers have found that the treatment releases large quantities of pain-blocking hormones. Interestingly, though, nobody really knows how this works.

Which brings us to herbal treatments. Herbalists like to claim that, because their herbs are natural, they are safe. But the idea that nature is benign contradicts both logic and the most superficial of observations. Besides, the variability of natural herbs, in contrast to processed ones, means that you can never really measure the dose. Most importantly, many of these herbs have side effects. Ephedra, for example, which is used for weight loss, can cause liver damage or strokes.

So, despite the best efforts of Trinidad’s doctors to prove otherwise, Western medicine is still your best bet for getting well when you’re seriously ill. But are there any secrets to staying healthy, especially as you age? Actually, yes. Eat properly, exercise regularly, drink moderately, don’t smoke. This might seem obvious, but given the number of people who don’t know about this strategy, it must be some sort of secret.

But there are, in fact, a few esoteric factors involved in good health. The definitive study of aging is the Harvard Study of adult development, which has tracked its subjects from their late teens into their 70s. George E Vaillant, the study’s current director and author of Aging Well, adds stable marriage, the ability to see stumbling blocks as stepping stones, and a good education as key components of healthy aging. Vaillant emphasises that psychological factors are just as important to good health as physical ones.

In Aging With Grace by neurologist David Snowdon, in which he tells of his research into Alzheimer’s disease amongst nuns, Snowdon notes that idea density (defined as the numbers of propositions expressed per ten words in a sentence) of essays written by the nuns at age 22 indicated mental health six decades later.

"Somehow, a one-page writing sample could, 58 years after pen was put to paper, strongly predict who would have cognitive problems," he says.

Indeed, the links between mind and body are far more interesting than anything new age gurus would tell you. Medical researcher Michael Marmot has discovered that one’s status in society is a better predictor of good or ill health than purely physiological traits. "In general, the lower the social position the higher the risk of heart disease, stroke, lung disease, diseases of the digestive tract, kidney diseases, HIV-related disease, tuberculosis, suicide, other ‘accidental’ deaths and violent deaths," he writes in his book Status Syndrome.

Neurologist Robert Sapolsky, whose Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers is the definitive work on stress-related illness, has a small quarrel with this theory. "Humans can belong to a number of different ranking systems simultaneously," he points out, "and ideally are excelling in at least one of them (and thus may be giving the greatest psychological weight to that one)." But Sapolsky does agree that poverty is a criterion of low rank that has concrete effects. Apart from that, he has four broad recommendations for preventing stress from affecting health: a sense of control over one’s circumstances, predictability, social support, and outlets for frustration.

Given this, it is likely that anyone who can afford alternative therapies already has most of the traits needed for good health. They probably lack just one: intellectual development.

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com Website:www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh