By Elizabeth Stohlton
Alternative medicine is quickly becoming the newest and most popular health trend in Utah.
'As of 2001, there are more people going to alternative health care than are going to medical doctors,' said Russell Loveland, chiropractic physician.
Loveland said that the medical profession is just now beginning to wake up to the notion that vitamins work and are needed.
'That''s because economically in 1995 there were more upper middle-income people, and people who had to finance their own hospital expenses that went to alternative health care than the medical doctors and hospitals,' Loveland said.
'It gave a wakeup call to the medical profession that they were losing out and so they''ve had to start changing their thinking. Not because they wanted to, but because economically they will die out if they don''t,' Loveland said.
Loveland believes that many are choosing alternative forms of medicine because of a growing lack of trust in the medical profession.
Another reason for the sudden surge of those trying alternative forms of medicine is because of the Fen-Phen disaster that caused recalls of the medicine that induced fatal side-effects, Loveland said.
'That was the greatest gift that came to the American people because they stopped believing that government would protect them and they started having to own their own life. People are reading labels; people are doing all kinds of things to educate themselves,' Loveland said.
Loveland, whose services range from chiropractic care to autoimmune disease management and correction, believes that alternative medicine can only be as effective as modern medicine to a certain point.
'Early on, preventive medicine can be as effective as about anything out there in the medical profession,' Loveland said. 'As the disease progresses and the organ tissues and so forth are eaten and destroyed, it becomes less effective because the body can''t respond. That''s where surgeries become necessary.'
While medical doctors and alternative health care specialists don''t always agree on the form of treatment, they do agree that alternative health care in Utah is rising.
'In Utah, or maybe even the LDS culture, there is a ground swell of natural medicine based on several different things,' said Dr. Tracy Frandsen of the Spanish Fork Clinic.
One reason, Frandsen said, is based on interpretations of the word of wisdom where it talks about herbs.
'Another is several early quotes about the medical profession from early general authorities that has carried on down through the generations of LDS people,' Frandsen said.
Many people believe that if something is natural, it is good and cannot hurt them, Frandsen said.
'It''s kind of a paradox because we have such an educated populous in Utah but they don''t use their education to actually look at things from a scientific point. So many times in the natural medicine era it is emotionalism and not science that leads the way,' Frandsen said.