Thursday, December 14, 2006

Complementary Approach to HIV/AIDS

by Henry Dreher

The internist is Jon Kaiser, MD, and like Ornish he does not reject mainstream treatments. Rather, he offers a new program that radically shifts the emphasis away from drugs toward natural therapies that raise the patients' own healing capacities to heretofore unimagined levels. Dr. Kaiser's work represents not only a potential leap forward in the fight against AIDS, if offers a new approach to immune empowerment for anyone -- sick or well -- whose immune system may be vulnerable.

Dr. Kaiser's brand of AIDS medicine can only be called complementary, since he uses natural therapies -- including nutrition, supplements, herbs, natural hormones, and mind-body techniques -- in conjunction with mainstream diagnosis and treatment. But his work embodies the famous passage in the Hippocratic Oath, "first do no harm," as natural therapies take precedence over potentially toxic drugs in his therapeutic schema.

What appears to set Kaiser apart from most alternative AIDS healers is that his approach is both more systematic and nuanced. He embraces natural medicines as primary therapies, but he does use antiviral drugs, when needed, in an exquisitely judicious fashion. The payoff has also set Kaiser apart from his colleagues in AIDS medicine: data compiled from his case files reveal an astonishing degree of clinical success.

As of March, 1994, Dr. Kaiser had for seven years tracked the progress of 300 of his HIV and AIDS patients. Only 20 of them had died. And Kaiser believes that improvements in both natural and mainstream AIDS therapies are yielding even better results today. "At this point, paitents in my practice whose disease is progressing are the rare exceptions," says Kaiser. "It is clear now that many of my patients are reversing damage caused by HIV and actually rebuilding their immune systems."

Dr. Kaiser's work is gaining ground, not only because he has a following among patients in San Francisco or those who've have read his book, Immune Power (St. Martin's Press, 1993). It is also drawing attention from leading lights in complementary medicine, including Dean Ornish himself, who has personally encouraged Kaiser in the development of his clinical programs and research endeavors. "Jon Kaiser is doing important work in examining the roles of diet, nutrition, and psychosocial support in the treatment of HIV-positive patients," says Ornish.

http://www.thebody.com/dreher/kaiser.html

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