While my efforts for the last five years have been focused on migraine, my career in medicine began about 15 years ago as the result of an entrepreneurial opportunity. I was intimately involved in starting a company that made a nutritional supplement that we marketed to the alternative doctor market. I was the only member of our company who had any sales or marketing experience so it was up to me to attend the various complementary and alternative medical (CAM) conferences all over the country. My lack of medical or scientific training was a hindrance in the beginning but in the long term proved to be a blessing as you will see.

Almost from day one I fell in love with my new career. I started attending a wide variety of CAM conferences including chiropractic, naturopathic, Chinese medicine, nutritional medicine, and even conferences for MDs and DOs that were doing alternative therapies. I started out thinking I was going to meet a bunch of quacks but I quickly realized that I was meeting a lot of individual health care practitioners who were dedicated to helping their patients get well. Sure there were some whackos and charlatans in the group but the overwhelming majority were good people searching for the best answers they could find.

I was introduced to homeopathy, acupuncture, herbal medicine, functional medicine, therapeutic massage, chelation, ozone therapy, cranial/sacral massage, energetic healing, electrodermal screening, a vast array of nutritional therapies, and on and on. You name it, I was exposed to it. I found it all fascinating and largely confusing. I could not figure out how the various components of CAM fit together.

You understand this from your own experience. We all have some sense that there is something good about alternative medicine but we are not sure what and so we turn to the internet, the health food store and the book store to learn more. The result is that we get overwhelmed and confused. Too many products, too many stories and modalities, we simply do not know which way to turn or who to believe.

I had the perfect learning opportunity as I was attending all the major conferences. I started sitting in the lecture hall and reading all the books and for awhile I just got more confused and overwhelmed. There was no apparent path to clarity, no guiding philosophy through the morass that is complimentary and alternative medicine. Slowly but surely the uncertainly lifted and I found a path to clarity and a guiding philosophy. This will be the subject of my next post.