BBC - Alternative Medicine - The Evidence – Acupuncture, Healing & Herbs

For thousands of years, what we now think of as Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) was the only medicine; now, traditional cures are being treated with a fresh respect. For BBC TWO, scientist Professor Kathy Sykes from Bristol University Kathy Sykes investigates why science is starting to respond to these centuries-old remedies….

Part 1: Alternative Medicine: The Evidence on Acupuncture
Kathy begins her journey in China where she sees some incredible demonstrations of acupuncture. The most astonishing is a scene in a Chinese hospital in which doctors perform open heart surgery on a young woman - using a combination of acupuncture and conventional pain relief instead of a general anaesthetic. In China, she discovers, acupuncture is used alongside western medicine and, at times, as a replacement.

So, what does western science make of these claims? Kathy meets the key scientists, both in the UK and in the US, who have put them to the test. She discovers that - although for most conditions and illnesses acupuncture cannot be shown to work - scientists have, intriguingly, uncovered a number of conditions relating to chronic pain in which they can be fairly certain acupuncture is having a powerful effect.

Kathy recruits a team of top scientists and alternative practitioners to find out if acupuncture might be having an effect. Over several months they devise an experiment which they hope will find the answer and finally uncover the secrets of acupuncture. Kathy and her team scan the brains of volunteers undergoing acupuncture. The conclusions challenge current understandings of the workings of the brain and throws new light on this ancient practice.

Part 2: Alternative Medicine: The Evidence on Healing

Kathy discovers that although there is no evidence that healers have any special powers – some of their patients have made remarkable recoveries. It’s a mystery that Kathy only finally solves when she discovers that each of us has a powerful self-healing mechanism which may explain some of the apparent ‘cures’ people have experienced after healing. Kathy explores this extraordinary human capacity and finds the key to triggering it.

She travels the UK meeting healers who describe their methods and powers. She meets doctors who are so impressed they have even invited healers into their surgeries and hospitals. Kathy finally tracks down a team in the United States who are putting healers through a series of tests to find out whether they do have any special powers.

Kathy is still unconvinced and starts to look elsewhere for an explanation. In the United States, Kathy meets a knee surgeon who has just made an amazing discovery. In an experiment, he gave a group of his patients a fake operation. He opened them up – but instead of carrying out the usual procedure – simply sowed them back up again having done nothing at all. Incredibly, this group of patients did as well as those who had the real procedure.

So, could the power of the mind explain the benefits people experience from healers? And have healers tapped into this power somehow? The conclusion throws new light on all healing processes, and has a surprising and inspirational message for every practitioner and patient.

Part 3: Alternative Medicine: The Evidence on Herbs

Kathy Sykes continues her investigation, this time looking at the ancient practice of herbalism. Kathy discovers that some herbs do indeed have powerful healing properties. Indeed, some may even offer answers to medical conditions that baffle modern science.

Kathy travels through South Africa, Germany and Britain. Everywhere there are distinct herbal traditions, each with their unique practices and distinctive plants. But one claim underlies them all – herbs have remarkable properties that make them powerful medicines.

In South Africa, she learns about a herb which is being touted as a new weapon in the fight against HIV-AIDS. She listens to the stories of patients and their carers who claim it is saving lives.

In Britain she meets people who are pinning their hopes on herbs – some with remarkable results. And in Germany she meets the scientists who are taking them apart and submitting them to rigorous clinical trials. Out of this has emerged at least eight ‘super herbs’; herbs that in clinical trials performed so well that may give their pharmaceutical competitors a run for their money.

So, what’s their secret? Working with fellow scientists, Kathy discovers that plants contain much more than a single – or even two or three – active ingredients. They are enormously complex chemical cocktails that have medicinal properties modern pharmaceuticals simply can’t reproduce.




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