On a sunny day last week, a group of Helfgotters took a road trip to Seattle to check out a conference hosted by our colleagues at Bastyr University. This conference, titled Collaborative Research in CAM: Making Studies Relevant to Clinical Practice, highlighted a number of research efforts between Bastyr, the University of Washington, and other institutions, and illustrated the complexities of studying CAM therapies. The two main speakers for the conference demonstrated the diversity and possibilities inherent in CAM and helped to facilitate a healthy discussion of potential next steps in natural medicine research.
Lynne Shinto, ND, MPH, from Oregon Health and Science University, described her work in evaluating a naturopathic whole practice approach to multiple sclerosis. In naturopathic medicine, treatment plans are usually highly individualized and typically consist of multiple therapies, including botanicals, diet changes, stress reduction techniques and so forth. These qualities make the medicine complicated to study, and nearly impossible to accurately test the efficacy of each separate component on its own. Dr. Shinto’s study is one of the first clinical trials that evaluated naturopathic treatment for MS as a whole, rather than a single naturopathic therapy.
Bill Lafferty, MD, from the University of Washington, and Leanna Standish, PhD, ND, LAc, from Bastyr University, presented a study they completed on CAM care at the end of life. In this trial, they randomized patients in hospice care to one of three treatments: massage, meditation, or having a friendly visitor twice a week. This study brought up an interesting notion about patient choice of treatment and the corresponding efficacy of that treatment. In this study, patients were surveyed about what group they preferred to be randomized to, with meditation being the least popular. While statistically, patient choice did not have an effect in this study’s results, we realized that for our future trials, it will be important to survey participants to see if being randomized to a preferred group can change outcomes.
In our effort to avoid I-5 traffic snarls heading back to Portland, we weren’t able to catch the post doctoral presentations or a plenary session focusing on herbal medicine research challenges. However, we left full of ideas and plans for possible future Bastyr/Helfgott collaborations. Not only did we have a good time visiting with our friends up north, but we acquired a lot of valuable information that we can use in our own work.