It strikes me that if this is true of a single herb having those undesirable side effects, it’s amplified many times over when you’re dealing with an isolated pharmaceutical.

Which is why people have learned to expect side effects. And, unfortunately, side effects are of mild worry to doctors who recommend pharmaceuticals. They are aware of them, but they generally counter them by giving another drug.

Which may in turn have other side effects.

Exactly. It would be revolutionary if the pharmaceutical profession began to use a model which is characteristic of herbal prescriptions. That is to say, combine substances from the get-go to minimize side effects and maximize adaptive effects.

Is there any indication that this is happening at all?

No, I don’t think so. There is a continuing focus on purification.

You’ve written some very interesting commentary on the relative invasiveness of different health care methods. As a chiropractor, I have for years heard chiropractic referred to as noninvasive, presumably because it doesn’t involve breaking the skin and thereby “invading” the body. But in your writings, I found a very thought-provoking model in which chiropractic adjustments lay somewhere in the middle of the invasiveness spectrum. We included your model in my most recent chiropractic textbook, Fundamentals of Chiropractic. Could you describe it?

I was so delighted the day that that hit me, straight between the eyes. At one end, the most invasive is surgery that goes deep into the body. An example would be working on the valves or the blood vessels of the heart. Or going in deeply and changing around the intestines. At the other end are treatments where there is no touch between the practitioner and the patient. It might be prayer or distant healing.

I remember music therapy and art therapy being near that noninvasive end of your scale as well.

Medical systems all over the world, the ones with long histories, like Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, Persian medicine, biomedicine, have tried and developed a lot of different ways to affect the functioning of the body, which vary in their level of invasiveness. Taking a pill is also invasive, because you’re putting something into your body that wasn’t there before. Acupuncture is invasive because you’re being needled. Chiropractic is in the middle because you’re using your hands, or an instrument, to move vertebrae and other parts of the body as well, and on this basis performing a lot of interesting diagnostic and reparative processes. But the skin is not broken. So it’s somewhere in the middle and so is massage.

What writing or research projects would you like to do in the future?

Presently I am conducting interview research with acupuncture practitioners. From there I intend to expand to interviewing a wide variety of medical practitioners, including chiropractors, osteopaths, naturopaths, biomedical practitioners including nurses, and probably some others, to slowly build up a large data set about how different kinds of practitioners view medical reality. I will publish my findings. After that? One useful thing would be to develop an intake questionnaire that could help link patients with practitioners who share a similar worldview, because such similarity should contribute to improved communication, willingness to participate actively in self-care, and finally, a better outcome. That’s a big goal, but as the song says, “Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won …” Besides, talking to practitioners is fascinating and rewarding!

For further information on Dr. Cassidy: www.acuhealingworks.com

Daniel Redwood, DC, the interviewer, is editor-in-chief of Health Insights Today.