Question:
My friend's grandma has alzheimers' disease (A.D.). Her cognitive andself care functioning is deteriorating even with the use of westernmedication. My friend is thinking about trying the oriental herbalmedicine. We have read some studies about oriental herbal medicine,which is claimed to be effective in treating A.D. However, all of thestudies were done by OMDs. It's kind of bias. Do you think it reallyworks? Have you seen any successful case?

Answer: No, I have never seen any successful treatment of AD using Asian medicine.There are diseases that Asian medicine can't treat either. And, although Iknow very little about Asian practitioners, I would be very suspicious of anystudy which claimed to treat "Alzheimer's Disease" by Asian medicine. Asianmedicine works on entirely different theories from Western medicine. Theybelieve disease is caused by imbalance in the body, and treatment is aimed atrestoring balances. In Western medicine, two patients with the exact samesymptoms could expect the same treatment. In Asian medicine, the symptomscould be caused by different imbalances and would get different treatment. Sosomeone who claims to treat "Alzheimer's Disease" (a Western diagnosis) hasn'teven done a proper workup of the patient, by the standards of Asian medicine.

That said, most of the Western treatment of Alzheimer's aims at relieving thesymptoms. If the patient believes in the efficacy of Asian medicine, herbscould relieve anxiety and make the patient feel better, at least as long as thepatient is still able to believe.