"Alternative" health care has become so popular in recent years that some analysts estimate that more visits are now made to alternative medical practitioners than to primary care physicians. It's become so popular that not long ago, the New England Journal of Medicine felt compelled to lambaste the movement in a scathing editorial. Many allopathic practitioners and adherents believe that these methods are unproven, faddish, and possibly even dangerous, so they feel justified in opposing them; but I believe that they are missing an important part of why these methods have become so sought after. We are, in fact, experiencing a revolution in health care in this country, but the reasons might have as much to do with the way the medicine is administered and organized as with the actual methods used in healing.

Twelve years ago, I was living in the high country of Colorado and I had contracted a a stubborn, persistent cough; so I finally decided that I should see a doctor. First, the physician prescribed some pills-about which, incidentally, he gave me no information whatsoever-but the cough remained. So I went back after I finished taking the prescription and he ran some tests this time, concluded that the problem was related to my childhood asthma, and prescribed an inhaler that I was supposed to use several times a day.

Two nights later, I awoke in the middle of the night and turned over in bed. I felt the bed lurch and tilt, and I gasped, thinking that the bed (which was a fairly rickety affair) must have fallen off the frame. My gasp woke up my husband, and I told him what I thought had happened; he got up and checked it out. "The bed's fine," he told me. "You must have dreamed it."

I agreed and turned back over, but was hit by another wave of dizziness. In the morning, I found that my balance had been so profoundly affected that I couldn't walk without falling. I called my physician, thinking that this had to be related to the new inhaler he had prescribed, and I was told that he would get back to me. In the meantime, I called the pharmacist, who confirmed my suspicions that vertigo was indeed a possible side-effect of the medicine I was taking; so I stopped using the inhaler. Two days later, I could walk normally again; three days later, I received a call from my doctor's office telling me that my problems could be related to the inhaler, but to just keep taking it and see if I got used to it. The cough eventually went away on its own.

Six years ago, I was walking around barefoot in my office, and I snagged my little toe on my typing chair. When I recovered from the initial wave of pain, I took a look at my foot and saw my toe sticking out at a bizarre and stomach-turning angle. I thought I must have broken it, so I called my physician at the time (I had moved to California), and asked if they could fit me in to examine my toe. The receptionist put my doctor's office manager on the phone and I described to her what had happened. "Well, there's nothing you can do for a broken toe," she said. "Just tape it to the next one." So I hung up and did that, but now two toes were sticking out at a bizarre and stomach-turning angle. I called her back and told her, "That didn't work. It's still at the same weird angle." "Well now," she told me, "life is just like that. Sometimes things happen to our bodies and they're just not the same as they used to be. We just have to live with it."

"Can I please just come in and have the doctor look it at?" I pleaded. "Sorry," she told me; "his schedule's too full."

When I hung up, I began to suspect that my toe wasn't broken; it must be dislocated. So I called up my chiropractor and asked if he could take a look at it. "Sure!" he exclaimed, when the receptionist put him on the line; "just come on in!" So I drove to his office, waited five minutes, and then my chiropractor took one look at my toe and popped it back in place. The excruciating pain went away immediately and he refused to charge me for the treatment.

Another time, three years ago, I came down with a really awful, terrible stomach flu. I tried to tough it out, but as the day wore on, I began to experience some irregular heartbeats and I worried about my electrolyte balance and level of dehydration. I put off calling my acupuncturist as it was now Saturday night, and I didn't want to bother him, but when things didn't improve, I finally broke down and called his emergency number. The sweet man met me at his office, gave me a treatment which was immediately effective, then gave me some herbs and homeopathic drops to help me through the rest of it.

Yet another time, while I was traveling, I came down with bronchitis. I called my acupuncturist's office, his receptionist put him on the phone so that he could determine what herbs would help me, and then she took her lunch hour to go to the post office and express mail the herbs to me. That night, her husband followed the package on the Internet to be sure that it was making its way to me.

What are the differences here between the "alternative" treatments and the ones officially sanctioned by the medical establishment? One very significant difference is the accessibility of the practitioner. I couldn't get in touch with my primary care physician for an emergency unless I stormed his office with a submachine gun. Most physicians are so protected by a phalanx of determined, immovable middlepeople that you can never get ahold of them when you really need them. Sure, you can go to a walk-in clinic where you sit in an uncomfortable waiting room filled with people who have potentially infectious diseases that you might not be exposed to otherwise and then see a health care practitioner who has no knowledge whatsoever about any of your medical history. Or you can go to an emergency room where once again, you wait and wait and wait, in extremely uncomfortable circumstances, and then you can't leave until they decide to let you go!

Another difference, at least in the first case I described, is that the solutions prescribed by the physician did not work, and one of them had significant, insupportable side-effects. The solutions offered by the "alternative" health care providers did work, and they did not have side-effects. The latter is a substantial reason that many people are switching over to holistic health care, particularly for chronic health conditions where a person might have to take medication for the majority of their lives. Many medications prescribed for various chronic health problems, such as asthma or arthritis, have side-effects that create other health problems that then have to be treated-usually with more drugs. The inhaled steroids that most physicians rely upon for treating asthma have been shown in a study at McGill University to increase the risk of glaucoma, while the anti-inflammatory drugs prescribed for arthritis can create serious stomach problems. Why take medications with side-effects if there are other methods that work (possibly better) and have either no side-effects or positive ones, such as improved digestion, or increased energy?

Another significant difference that is often overlooked by a system which seeks to treat symptoms rather than people is the human component. With the alternative practitioners that I have visited, I always feel like they care about me and whether I get well or not. The main feeling I received in the two situations involving the physicians' offices that I described above was that I shouldn't bother the practitioner; he or she was too busy and too important to see to my health needs. And the fact that the receptionist at my acupuncturist's office was so kind and caring as to take her lunch hour to ship me my herbs really warmed my heart and boosted my spirits. This alone, as we now know from studies in psychoneuroimmunology, can have a very positive effect on one's immune system. Healing is more than simply treating symptoms.

The other aspect of the health care revolution that bothers conservative health care practitioners is the availability of remedies to the lay public. In general, the public is viewed as not-very-bright ignoramuses where our health is concerned (hence, the refusal of the office manager even to set up an appointment for me when I wouldn't take the advice she dispensed so erroneously and philosophically over the phone). We are extremely fortunate with respect to the easy availability of well-prepared herbs and other remedies. We can treat our prostate problems with saw palmetto, our circulation problems with ginkgo, our allergies with stinging nettle. We don't have to know how to find, identify, and gather the herbs or how to prepare them for medicinal use; we can simply go to the health food store and obtain what we need for our day-to-day health care needs. We don't have to depend upon someone else prescribing them for us; we don't have to wait for an appointment to obtain them. They are generally less expensive than pharmaceutical options, less toxic, and less dangerous (although, of course, some herbs can be extremely toxic).

However, with freedom comes responsibility, and it is up to us as health care consumers to use this freedom wisely so that it isn't taken away from us. We need to be well-educated if we are to use these remedies wisely and well. For example, we need to know what the contraindications are for any herb that we want to use. People with a history of heart problems or high blood pressure should steer clear of herbal preparations that contain ephedra, for example. We need to research brands to make sure that the company who produces the product is a reliable and reputable one. Some companies' herbal preparations have so little of the herb that they purport to contain that they are useless. We need to know what kinds of interactions might take place between different herbs, between herbs and prescription drugs that we might be taking, and between herbs, supplements, and foods. Drinking grapefruit juice, for example, can have the effect of concentrating certain other substances that we take to harmful levels. And gulping a jillion remedies without medical guidance, in some sort of panicky desire to cover all our bases, is never wise.

The health care revolution is an exciting one, and one that promises to provide us with more control over our own health than we have perhaps ever had in any other time in history. We need to make certain that we don't abuse this power, and we need to make certain that it's not taken away from us by vested interests, even if they are well-intentioned, such as the people who believe that homeopathic medicine is innately bogus. Most of all, we need to monitor the way that our health care is structured and carefully consider the elements that make it most effective, so that we don't end up with a new integrative health system where the practitioners are just as inaccessible, busy, and disconnected from their patients as those who practice high tech Western medicine. Healing is an art as well as a science, and the human component is one of the most important ingredients of all.