We live in a world where we are bombarded by information from the medical community, or more precisely, those making a profit from that community.  In magazines, on radio, television and the net, it is difficult to turn around without reading about some new pill that is essential to our existence.  While there is no doubt that many of these medications do remarkable things, it is easy to forget there are other options, such as the program for Maximized Living Doctor Derek Bittner offers.

Folk, or alternative medicine, often gets a bad rap.  When we think of folk remedies, we think of bleeding a sick person with leeches until they become sicker and eventually die, or rubbing a wart on half a potato and then burying the potato under a pine tree during a full moon.  This latter treatment probably never hurt anyone, but has never conclusively been proven to cure warts.  On the other hand, try to prove beyond a doubt that it doesn’t, as there are people to this day who will swear by the treatment.

What we forget when we dismiss folk or alternative medicine is that the reason many of these treatments stayed so popular for so long is that a lot of them worked.  Aspirin, for example, derives from the folk practice of making willow bark tea.  There is a chemical in willow bark that works as an analgesic and which science has turned into aspirin.

Even leeches have come back into vogue.  They are fortunately, no longer used to draw blood from those who desperately need their strength, but they have been found to help those with clotting issues.  The point is that medicine and healing can be found in places we are no longer led to expect.  Pills are only one way to cure what ails you, and possibly not the best.