Some complementary therapies, such as relaxation techniques, yoga and others, are now found on many rehabilitation programs and recommended by conventional doctors. If you do decide to go complementary you may be pleasantly surprised by your doctor’s response, as Barbara Rowland, author of The Which? Guide to Complementary Medicine, points out: ‘Some doctors are still opposed to complementary treatments but they tend to be the older ones. Four out of ten doctors now offer complementary therapies, so they are not all against them and so long as you are taking the correct drugs most would be quite happy to endorse complementary therapy and some may even offer it under the NHS.’
Your doctor, not surprisingly, will be considerably less happy if you decide to reject conventional treatment altogether. However, this may be an option you wish to pursue if conventional treatment has failed, you have reached the point where the doctor has told you that no further treatment can be offered, or if you are feeling so thoroughly disillusioned with mainstream medicine that you feel you want to try something else.
Greta says: ‘My doctor has been very encouraging and interested and is convinced that chelation therapy has worked for me. The health authorities say it is all in the mind and will not fund my treatment. My cardiologist was not keen, but I told him because I wanted to make sure he would continue to treat me. Afterwords he could see how much I had improved but he said die only way to prove it was to go for another angiogram and I was not prepared to do that. He then took the attitude, “Well, people develop collaterals”. He is not convinced.’
Even if you do expect to meet opposition it is still worth telling your doctor you are having complementary treatment. Feeling unsupported by your medical advisers can in itself be a source of stress. Certainly if you are planning to take anything pharmacologically active, such as herbs or supplements, your doctor should know.
