Thanks @alexwalkerjones for the contents, I’ll definitely check it out.
If I may just point out, I’m not skeptical myself. In fact, I’m descendent of indigenous native americans, from both my father’s and my mother’s sides, so it’s most common for me using plant-based medicine — and I’ve seen it do a way better job to some “non-urgent” illness than pharmaceutical drugs.
That being said, I just want to make it clear that such directory wouldn’t be intended for me or other users, but rather it would be a resource for our physicians / medial teams. A directory made by specialists for specialists.
Again, thanks for the contents you pointed me to!
—
Hey @oliver75gaskell, thanks for sharing your experience. I hope valerian helps me as well.
I’m not in the UK, I’m in Brazil. Fortunately (most the time), using plant-based medicine is a fairly common thing for non-urgent cases. Also, for physicians here, it would be considered rude, impolite and likely even anti-ethical (reportable offense) if they say something like “you must not take that [x plant based medicine]” without a reasonable cause. Yes, we still get some weirds looks of disapproval and skepticism when it comes to “alternative” medicine — or, paraphrasing you, “ancient medicine” — but, unless there’s evidence suggesting a serious risk, they can’t “order” you to stop. At least I’ve never seen something like that happening.
In my case, given my combination of neurological conditions, I’d likely follow their advice had they said no. But gladly, so far, two out of three from my “main” doctors are ok with me joining the trials — I still need to the remaining one, and she’s the “chief” doctor and the “responsible” for me & my team. I think she’s gonna be fine with it though as long as the other two specialist are ok with it.
I did get that weird look of skepticism — that face that looks like “suuure, let’s see how it goes [but at the first sign of anything bad I’m gonna blame that plant and you’re gonna drag your sorry *ss back here for me to fix it]”. So, yea, it would be most helpful to have that directory of information (or even a landing page + links) for specialists who take care of users like me. With that, hopefully, users like me wouldn’t have to deal with the disapproval/skepticism looks from the specialist to whom I depend on for my well-being, you know.
That look in their face is a “hard pill to swallow” when you are someone who literally needs help remembering you gotta eat or shower & you depend on them to tell what to do so that you’d fell better — better meaning being able to function like a regular human being.
So, hope we can have something like that directory to forward to doctors, because even gathering these spread contents takes a lot of energy — and I have a very limited battery.
If you are curious on the “limited battery” thing, take a look at “spoon theory”. It’s a way of explaining energy limitations for a given disease (don’t remember which, right now — I don’t have it) and it’s analogous to my case.
That’s for the warm welcome you all, have a great rest of week!