Natural Medicine

I believe there's a lot to be said for natural healing, though Seinfeld and Tor Eckman undoubtedly set the cause back twenty years with that hilarious episode ("The Heart Attack"). Nonetheless, I found this interesting, the yoga stuff aside:

Three years ago, Treuman Katz got some troubling news: At 60, he was on his way to becoming a diabetic.

Katz, CEO of Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center at the time, could have relied on the region's top specialists. Instead, the man who had spent nearly 40 years running two of the country's pre-eminent hospitals reached out to a naturopathic doctor.

He took herbal supplements, changed his diet, started yoga and hired a naturopathic trainer. Soon, his blood sugar dropped and he began to feel healthier than he had in years, he said.

"The body and spirit are inextricably tied together in natural medicine," he said. "You don't hear that in Western medicine. It's always just about the body."

Such comments might raise eyebrows coming from someone like Katz. This is, after all, a man who has been enveloped in the world of conventional medicine since birth. . . .

"My objective is not to convert," Katz said. "But the bottom line is that the cost of health care is staggering because we're not taking care of underlying issues."

I find that last paragraph particularly interesting.

Bonus coverage:

KRAMER: I'll tell you what to do, I'll tell you what to do. You go to Tor Eckman. Tor, Tor, he'll fix you right up. He's a herbalist, a healer, George. He's not just gonna fix the tonsils and the adenoids, he is gonna change the whole way you function - body and mind.

JERRY: Eckman? I thought he was doing time?

KRAMER: No, no, he's out. He got out. See, the medical establishment, see, they tried to frame him. It's all politics. But he's a rebel.