 I had someone recently ask me, is there ever a condition where you would not recommend someone seeing their doctor for? And the short answer is there are probably the majority of chronic conditions I would not recommend people see their doctor for besides to rule out red flags and maybe to do some labs because I know where that road goes and I thought in this video I would share a very specific example of what that looks like and use it as an illustration just to show the difference between often how conventional care practices and how alternative medicine views things differently and how it practices. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Heim doctor of Chinese medicine and licensed acupuncturist so before we jump into this video here today check out these two links right below this video. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine there's a link right below this video to contact my private practice and clinic and there's also a free guide below the video which is for daily rituals that could potentially help you add years to your life with Chinese medicine so check those out right below the video. Now I've seen many people where typically in the aftermath of loss you know divorce or having a parent die rarely seeing a spouse or even a kid die where people end up taking antidepressants you know I've seen many many people where they start having anxiety or depression or panic attacks following some kind of difficult life experience and a lot of people just do whatever the doctor says and I get it I mean they're an authority and they must be an expert in medicine theoretically but there was one woman that I had that was young that went through a very similar loss of one of her parents and was experiencing the same symptoms of anxiety and depression and she couldn't sleep for months and had panic attacks but the difference for her was that she was absolutely adamant about not taking medication and I find these people to be a relief honestly because they want to find the healthiest way to cope with loss understanding that loss and not sleeping well after loss is normal it's not pathological doesn't need to be medicated away unless you really want it to and she wanted to deal with it she wanted to feel the emotions and she really wanted to deal with the healing process and what she viewed as a more healthy way so even though she was experiencing a lot of these same really intense symptoms that other people had because she'd seen other people take antidepressants she was very scared by them actually and working with her over a period of about three months we got her to a point where within about a month she was sleeping normally at least seven hours again not having to use any kind of sedative not using alcohol not using Xanax not using anything and within three months she was good she could sleep normally her appetite was back she was stable during the day she didn't feel like she was gonna have a panic attack five times a day at work and she was free and I told her you know you don't have to come back unless you want to or you want to check in once a month or reach out as needed and I viewed that experience as really an archetypal evolved healing response right she wanted to feel it she wanted to deal with it she didn't want any suppressive medications and three months later she'd gone through it and she was fine she didn't need anything to feel normal she had adjusted and she had healed and she dealt with it and I was really reminiscing on how few times I've seen that happen how often patients don't want medication how often people want to feel the pain how often people are really willing to confront things head on and deal with whatever's coming at them and I don't want this to turn into some judgmental video about do this or don't do that or you're evil if you take antidepressants or medication because I don't believe that to be true I think they're helpful when they're helpful but it was so refreshing to see someone that was willing to even in suffering deal with the suffering and as a result she was free way faster than almost everyone I deal with you know dealing with that at the beginning is much harder after 20 years of antidepressants so I thought I would use her case as kind of a good example on and a good story on archetypes of healing when I sum up how I view conventional medicine versus alternative medicine or integrative medicine whatever you want to call it root cause medicine I don't know if you want to use that term what I see as the main differences are really simple what I see in conventional medicine is that good or bad it's primarily used to treat symptoms and there's nothing inherently wrong with treating symptoms I treat symptoms all day long too the problem is that it's often easy now for hard later a good example being taking antidepressants right now and then trying to get off in five years very very difficult and you're not going to feel well for a long time taking antidepressants for six months and getting off them going to be a lot easier and it can be a lot lower dose typically much much much easier and less painful to get off because inevitably what happens if you stop this after six years nothing has changed in the intervening six years so of course you're going to feel horrible but what if it's something like just indigestion get acid reflux and so you're taking PPIs or you're taking something else for your stomach because it bothers you a lot I find that it's the same thing it's easy now versus hard later right trying to stop those after five years is going to be a much longer recovery process versus for the next six months we're going to look at dietary changes I'm going to have you take an herbal formula every single day twice a day to heal the stomach and the gut lining and manage the reflux symptoms you're going to have to figure out what it is about your life if stress is a major factor because you're working 75 hours a week then you're going to have to do something with that and let's say it's anxiety right we just talked about anxiety but SSRI is very much easier to discontinue in the short run versus after 10 or 20 years I can tell you that for a fact long-term antidepressants just like any medication really and really any lifestyle change I mean all these ways we habitually utilize neural pathways then end up wiring them to a certain degree but medications like antidepressants there are studies showing that long-term use causes physical changes in the brain so six months of that 20 years of that it's a big difference right and so it may mean if you don't want to do that the next six months are going to be really really hard you're not going to sleep well you're not going to feel well your appetite's going to be crazy you're going to feel uncontrollably anxious some days like you can barely get through the day but in six months of treatment you're going to be free forever and that's what I see if you deal with it right now but that's not the case for most people in SSRI's they're giving them for six months at a time maybe I mean I see innumerable patients where they're prescribed them by their general practitioner they're not even checked up on they're just allowed to get refills for literally years I mean add-in fun item forever and it's a little scary to me actually it's really scary to me what about migraines right another thing let's say you have horrendous debilitating migraines easy now it's just taking whatever migraine medication your doctor gives you and whatever OTC stuff for pain relief but if you want to do hard now for easy later which is really the integrative way to deal with it in other words deal with it medicine you may have a really uncomfortable next few months horrible actually bad sleep feeling terrible barely can work calling out of work but then you learn that hey maybe for a couple my migraines it's dietary I don't know why that's weird so let me adjust my diet maybe for some of them it's stress maybe for some of them it's something you're taking maybe it's a medication you're taking and then you have to unpeel and get to the root cause and figure out what's going on here for me with Chinese formulas I find that almost right away within a month people have less days of migraines almost immediately than they did the month before sometimes they go from having a migraine every other day 50% of the days to now just 20% 10% of the days within three weeks so what I see is the big difference between conventional medicine and alternative or integrative or non-traditional medicine is that one is primarily symptomatically focused which is not good or bad it just is and often works in the short run and one is often dealing with trying to figure out why you're having that and sometimes that means a lot more short-term pain but long-term freedom and I'm not here to judge and say what's good or bad all I know is that if you want this to be over forever for good and not have to deal with it again I would highly recommend trying an integrative or holistic approach so that you don't have to deal with this for five years or 20 years or even a year so in my mind that's the biggest difference between conventional and alternative medicine that's just what I see clinically most people on medication don't get better over time I just really never see that the medication just to be increased or changed or altered or combined so I don't really see a lot of healing at all coming out of conventional medicine and that's why I do what I do right but that's it for my rant for today guys before you go two related videos for you right there and I'll catch you in the next video