A Healthy Suspicion

"There's no such thing as a fruit juice fast," the Emperor of the West Side told me. He waggled his finger. "If you drink anything but water, it's not a fast. You don't get the benefit."

The Emperor of the West Side is a bright-eyed, bristle-bearded geezer who favors double-knits and loafers. Anywhere you go on the West Side where it's possible to hang out, he's there: Beckman's Bakery, Kelly's, that forgettable coffee house next to the Safeway. It's all his turf.

I had made the mistake of asking, "What's new?" And before I knew it, I was hip deep in a world of circulatory system flexibility, ketosis, drying fresh apples at home, and the evils of hot peppers. The Emperor is into Health in a big, weird way. "I've done five one-month fasts myself," he told me proudly. "It does great things for you."

The Emperor comes off as something of a kook. He's most definitely a promoter, a lifelong salesman who, long into his old age, is still looking for the next big multi-level-marketing opportunity. Right now he's messing around with home cardiac scans.

That said, the Emperor is eighty years old and looks and acts a good 20 years younger. He has a much younger wife and a daughter in college. Whether it's just his optimistic disposition or 50 years of fasting and eating vegetables and minding his pH levels, some of the many alternative health regimes he follows seem to be working. So I give him a big hello whenever we meet, even though most of our conversations end up somewhere down the Yellow Brick Road.

Santa Cruz has a lot of citizens like the Emperor: alternative health is big here. If you knew what conventional medicine's like around here, you'd know a good part of the reason why.

But also, this is Santa Cruz, this is California, and people are wide open to any unusual form of therapy that drifts in from Asia or was mined from the Secret Knowledge of the Egyptians or whipped up in the lab by a rogue biochemist/nutritionist or herbalist. Reiki, acupuncture, rolfing, sensory deprivation tanks, shiatsu, veganism, aromatherapy, homeopathy, nudism for weight loss, a dozen different kinds of chiropractic and massage, naturopathy, osteopathy, raw foods -- the list goes on and on.

Of course, a lot of it is crap. It doesn't really work, or the practitioner took a three-week course in Las Vegas and is passing himself off as an expert who studied with the yogis. Where minds are wide open and credulous, rogues and fools can rush in.

And a lot of it isn't crap. At least, people feel helped by it. I know too many people who've been helped by acupuncture or herbalists or supplements or changes in diet to write off alternative health. The best doctor I ever had was a traditional M.D. who was also a homeopath; Dr. Dubya mixed and matched the two approaches with intelligence and wisdom. And it worked. This was in another city, many years ago; but I've heard of a few M.D./homeopaths in Santa Cruz, and if they're half as good as Dr. Dubya, they're okay by me.

And there was my old chiropractor, Dr. Neanderthal --hairy, low of brow, and prone to talking in grunts. He was a a broad-shouldered back-cracker of the old school. He could make my aching back straighten up and pay attention when it laughed at kinder, gentler approaches.

And he worked cheap and took on anyone who walked into his tiny office. He didn't try to keep patients coming back forever, either. Dr. Neanderthal was good people.

But Doc Neanderthal had dreams. He was always showing off some odd machine or instrument or supplement or orthotic from a trade show that he just knew would revolutionize his practice -- and maybe make him a few bucks. None of Doc's gimmicks ever amounted to much. I learned to ignore the sales pitches and just have him twist my back into a pretzel.

And yet -- one day in his office, one of those gimmicks really worked. Doc Neanderthal brought out a hand-held gadget that unkinked my back without him tying me into knots, and left me flying on endorphins besides. It really did revolutionize his practice. Happy patients, no more back-cracking -- well, not much.

But he had to go through a lot of crap to get there, and somebody who bought everything that Doc Neanderthal tried to sell along the way would have walked down a lot of blind alleys with him -- at the very least. Alternative medicine is like that -- it's alternative. Unregulated. Not tested in the lab. With best practices subject to the preferences of each practitioner.

The Emperor of the West Side told me that a blood panel was an absolute must before a long fast, to make sure that your body was healthy enough for it. But is there some healer out there recommending fasts without blood panels first? You can almost bet on it. And who's right? Who knows? Is the herb that did wonders for your friend going to affect you differently, or clash with your heart medication? Nobody's paid to do the studies, because you can't patent an herb and there's no money in it. What studies there are, often disagree.

And here's the biggie: when you swallow an herbal cure, or rub it on your skin, do you really know everything important about the herb, its preparation, its quality? And the answer is, you don't. And if you did know, you might think twice about putting that stuff in your mouth. I found that out, the hard way.

A few weeks ago, I started taking the supplement glucosamine to fight the arthritis that's taking hold in one of my knees. I did research online, and found out that pills combining the supplements glucosamine and chronditrin were a good bet and not known to be harmful in any way. I bought a bottle of house-brand glucosamine/chonditrin pills from the local New Leaf natural food store and started taking them. And after a few days, my knee began to feel better.

One day, I found myself looking at the bottle. It told me that the glucosamine was extracted from seashells, and the chronditrin derived from cartilage. What cartilage, I wondered? From what animal? Carefully harvested from an animal, or swept up off a slaughterhouse floor? And from what country? The bottle showed no country of origin. I had heard a lot lately about contaminated food ingredients from China going into food products produced elsewhere, and I was worried.

So I emailed New Leaf and asked what they could tell me about the origin of their house-brand glucosamine. And to their credit, someone answered me promptly. But I was not reassured by what she had to say:

"Hello! Here is what the company that produces the vitamins for us has to say:

“The official answer is China. There is some positive news about raw material from China though. The NPA (Natural Products Association) has a new office in Beijing that is teaching and reviewing companies for GMPs. It has been very successful according to David Seckman NPA’s CEO, in fact so successful that the drug companies have come to the Natural Product Association and requested help with their program.”

Glucosamine and Chondroitin are usually derived from either shellfish, or bovine sources, but vegetarian versions are also available. I think you’ll find that most “value” lines source from China to keep costs down."

"Value lines:" the cheap stuff. The house brand. Nearly everybody I know buys the house brand vitamins and supplements from places like New Leaf. Why not, we ask? It's all good, isn't it? A natural food store wouldn't sell stuff that was suspect -- would it?

But China isn't a trustworthy source. You've read the news. You know why. If you would think twice about buying food imported from China -- wouldn't you feel the same about vitamins, supplements? And yet, you'll find no sign on the bottle that tells you who made the raw material.

I went to another natural foods store, Staff of Life, and attempted to find a glucosamine product that would tell me on the bottle that that its ingredients came from the U.S.
I couldn't. A few bottles said that the supplements were formulated in the U.S., but didn't say where the ingredients came from.

Eventually, a Staff of Life employee thought it odd that I dithered so long in front of the same shelf, and came to offer assistance. I explained what I was looking for.

"Most of the raw material used for supplements comes from China or elsewhere in Asia., " she told me. She shook her head. "Even if you find a supplement that was formulated in the U.S., the material itself probably came from Asia."

She didn't understand at first why I was upset about this. But when I made the connection between Chinese-produced food products and Chinese produced herbs, it finally sank in. She promised to research the glucosamine products and try to find something that was purely first-world created.

And then she upped the ante. "Most raw materials for vitamins now come from Asia, too. It's not just the herbal supplements."

Wonderful. The active ingredient in that cap of Vitamin E you pop without a thought may well have come from a country with no enforced standards for food or herb processing -- at all.
I'm still looking for a glucosamine product that I can trust. I've stopped taking the cheap pills. I've laid off the vitamins, too. Again: if you wouldn't eat processed Chinese food, why would you swallow their mass-produced vitamins and herbs?

Am I putting down supplements and alternative medicine? No. But if western medicine is General Motors, bureaucratic and barely competent, alternative medicine is like a flea market. It's full of unfamiliar goods from south of the border, bargain hand tools made of mystery metal, and eight-packs of white tube socks that might or might not last a few months.

You have to be careful, no matter how many diplomas the kindly practioner has on the wall, or no matter what good things you've heard about this supplement or that one.

Because you're on your own. And there are important things that you don't know and that no one has an obligation to tell you.