|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Cathrine Gabriel
In some areas the natural health field has seen tremendous positive change and in others I question whether things have changed at all.
I remember how uncomplicated and simple natural supplements used to be when I first started retailing in the early ‘70s. Rustic health food store shelves held your basic vitamins and minerals, kelp and brewer’s yeast tablets, cod liver and wheat germ oils, herbal teas and maybe some ginseng tablets and tissue salts. It’s a far cry from the sophisticated, high tech natural health products that line the shelves of today’s glass and chrome stores.
Over the years the supplement industry has steadily grown to nine percent of the US$184 billion drug, over-the-counter and supplement industry with natural and organic foods enjoying a growth rate of 20 - 25 percent per year.
What fuels this continuing growth? Much of the answer lies simply in information. Canadian publications gave health food stores valuable tools to support and promote the products they sold. Savvy consumers, aware of the side effects related to pharmaceutical drugs, were turning to non-drug approaches to address health issues. A plethora of health books guided the layperson through the maze of options available to help them take charge of their own health. The arrival of the Internet put information at our fingertips. Consumers were no longer at the mercy of mainstream media and information could no longer be suppressed as easily.
In 1979, social worker and young mother, Lorna Hancock, heard a disturbing news report that launched her into action. Pieter Taams, a Vancouver medical doctor had just lost his medical license because his practise included prescribing vitamins for his patients. It’s almost commonplace now to hear of physicians recommending diet and lifestyle changes and recommending supplements. “But in 1979 this was a rarity and there was essentially no public outcry for Dr Taams. Nowadays, when physicians are investigated for their use of natural medicine, the public backlash is a loud and clear,” says Hancock. Taams did the only logical thing - he turned his back on conventional medicine and became a Naturopathic Physician.
One of Canada’s strongest consumer health organizations, Health Action Network Society (HANS), with Hancock one of the principal officers, was born in 1982. Option Magazine, the society’s original quarterly publication (now Health Action), often collaborated with Common Ground magazine to bring public awareness to the many issues that HANS embraced: pure food and water, the regulation of natural health products, questioning vaccinations, food irradiation, fluoride pollution, genetic modification of foods, pesticide use and more.
I can recognize that public awareness in BC has certainly increased over the past 20 years resulting in holistic disciplines such as chiropractic, naturopathic medicine, herbology, acupuncture, registered massage therapy, homeopathy, etc. becoming more mainstream. This is evidenced by the notable Angus Reid Poll of 1997 indicating that 56 percent of British Columbians embraced alternative medicine, 14 percent higher than the national average.
Fluoride has been discontinued in many BC communities, making British Columbia the leading province in Canada being close to fluoride-free. That many communities are voting fluoride out of their municipal water supplies and that Vancouver remains unfluoridated is due much to the efforts of HANS’ long-time director and Fluoride Committee Chairman, Len Greenall. He has tirelessly educated public servants, citizens, media and legislators on the economic motives behind the use of this industrial poison and health and environmental hazard.
To those who know of their long-time work with local environmental issues, New Westminster pioneers, Dorothy and Russell Beach, are affectionately referred to as “the original environmentalists.” Both in their late 80s, they still work tirelessly on behalf of clean rivers, unpolluted air, pure food, and sustainable forest practices.
HANS’ Environmental Chairperson, recipient of numerous environmental awards, and great grandmother, Thelma MacAdam, is encouraged by slow but steady movement in awareness of the hazards of pesticide use. She has petitioned governments at all levels to eliminate the use of pesticides in our food and environment.
MacAdam is buoyed by the good news that Hudson, Quebec, has the Supreme Court precedent-setting right to ban the use of chemical pesticides in most lawns and gardens. Here, Lions Bay and Port Moody are moving to follow in Hudson’s footsteps. Additionally, Loblaws (Super Valu, Extra Foods, and Canadian Superstore) will be dropping the sale of pesticides and offer safe alternatives in their garden centers by the spring of 2003.
Over the years I’ve witnessed many natural health products - tryptophan, lysine, pau d’arco, octacosanol, comfrey root, chaparral, and the latest threatened herb, kava kava - be either relegated to prescription drug status or outright banned from the marketplace. There is still much work to do in this area for fair and equitable regulation of natural health products so we may retain the ones we have and regain the ones we’ve lost.
Dr. Taams has been just one in a long line of medical doctors who have either lost his license to practice medicine or been investigated by the CPS for integrating natural and allopathic medicine. How far off is the day when a physician, in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, will be “free to use unproven or new prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic measures if it offers hope of saving life, re-establishing health or alleviating suffering?”
“Yes, there are still challenges,” says Lorna Hancock. “But we know from experience that the power of one (times many) is alive and well in western Canada. That 100th monkey will eventually tip the scales and we’ll break into a new way of looking at health and wellness, the world and our relationship to it.”
Cathrine Gabriel has been involved in the natural health field for more than 25 years, is the Executive Administrator of the Health Action Network Society in Burnaby, BC and the co-host of the Healthy Living Show on 650 CISL radio. For more information about HANS see their Web site at www.hans.org or call 604-435-0512.
 Top
|
|
|
|
|
|
