To remedy certain kinds of non-life-threatening health issues many Hudson Valley residents initially elect to keep it natural, working with the human body’s power to heal itself. Although relatively few health insurance providers reimburse for massage therapy, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, or herbal supplements, these popular alternative therapies to conventional allopathic medicine continue to soar in popularity. They’re most often used to treat conditions that don’t go away easily on their own, such as back pain, anxiety, headaches, depression, substance abuse or other compulsive behaviors. If the objective is, for example, targeting renal glucose re-absorption for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, aromatherapy alone would be patently irresponsible, however conclusively the mind-body connection’s been proven. And of course it’s illegal to practice medicine without a license.
Licensed acupuncturist and certified herbalist Hillary Thing, who ran a clinic in Kingston for ten years and now owns Accord Acupuncture & Herb Shoppe on Route 209 in Accord, says it makes sense for people to seek natural treatments any time they have a condition that isn’t life-threatening. She believes pharmaceuticals are toxic for people and the environment.
For people who are not insured, it’s often less expensive to seek alternative treatments initially. This isn’t a good idea if you have a really high temperature, have broken a bone, or believe you may have a failing organ. One reason conventional doctor’s visits get really expensive quickly is that, due to liability concerns and possibly business pressures, conventional western medical doctors often order a battery of tests to rule out all kinds of problems. That provides a good defense against any later allegation of medical malpractice. According to a medical malpractice law firm Chicago office, this tactic is not optimal for the patient and for the system.
The diagnostic process is less rigid in the alternative fields. “My goal is to lead someone to better health overall, instead of just masking the symptom,” says Thing. “People are really interested in understanding what’s going on with them and engaging in a treatment that feels good, that returns their health to them. Sometimes it’s a diet adjustment, or perhaps taking some herbs.”
Thing estimates that about ten percent of her present practice is comprised of people seeking relief from the symptoms of Lyme disease, a tick-borne ailment that’s often misdiagnosed initially by conventional doctors, and is also tricky to treat. But she’s also seeing more people than she used to with complaints of depression, anxiety and insomnia. From a Chinese medicinal perspective, she says, depression arises from energetic stagnation. For someone with that complaint, she might recommend an increase in physical activity and perhaps spending more time outdoors.
“The world right now is kind of depressing, to be sure. But by looking holistically at a person’s lifestyle, I seek to understand where the place of stagnation is and then approach changing that,” says Thing. “Holistic means that physical symptoms are seen as potentially related to the emotions and life circumstances of an individual, and then it seeks to make connections. It can be very enlightening for the person who is experiencing, say, knee pain, to figure out it might really stem from something that seems otherwise unrelated.”
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