Whether they're miracle cures or just plain strange, the alternative health industry is rapidly growing. Some patients swear by their naturopaths and holistic treatments, sometimes condemning conventional medicine. From fish that are purported to aid skin ailments to rocks said to be infused with healing powers, we have the low-down on some of the more unusual, emerging alternative health treatments promising big benefits – for a price, of course.

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Question: I've been reading about the use of 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide as an additive to maintaining healthy living. Is this something you would recommend?

Answer: Definitely not. Hydrogen peroxide has long been promoted as a treatment for various diseases, including some types of cancer, asthma, emphysema, AIDS, arthritis, heart and vascular diseases, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer's disease. The flawed rationale for its use is that the chemically active oxygen provided by hydrogen peroxide boosts the body's ability to destroy cells that cause disease. However, this is not true.

The idea that oxygen might destroy cancer cells goes back at least to the 1930s when Otto Warburg, M.D., a Nobel Prize winner, discovered that compared to normal cells, cancer cells have a low rate of respiration (i.e. oxygen-based metabolism) and seem to thrive in low-oxygen environments. He proposed that higher levels of oxygen should be toxic to cancer cells and might kill them. Unfortunately, Dr. Warburg was wrong. Oxygen doesn't slow cancer growth – in fact, tumors grow rapidly in tissues well supplied with oxygenated blood. According to the American Cancer Society, attempts to treat cancer patients by injecting hydrogen peroxide directly into solid tumors or into the blood system have generally been ineffective.

Diluted hydrogen peroxide has legitimate medical uses – to cleanse wounds, for example. But taking it by mouth, as some proponents suggest, or injecting it into veins can be dangerous. Food grade hydrogen peroxide is more than 10 times stronger than the solution approved for use on the skin. The higher strength solution is approved by the FDA to clean food surfaces and for use in certain phases of commercial food production. However, the FDA also requires that any peroxide added to food must be broken down into oxygen and water before the product reaches consumers. Drinking food grade hydrogen peroxide can cause vomiting, severe burns of the throat and stomach, and even death. What's more, it can burn your skin, and if it gets into your eyes, can damage the corneas, causing loss of vision.

Diluted hydrogen peroxide administered intravenously as some promoters recommend, is particularly dangerous. It can cause gas embolism, a condition that can lead to permanent lung damage, embolic stroke, and, sometimes, death.

Andrew Weil, M.D.

published 7/22/10

Acupuncture has been — how shall we say? — one of the less ridiculed techniques of alternative medicine, at least in recent years. A body of evidence shows that it does indeed relieve pain, for many conditions. But a study released today suggests that acupuncture probably only works because patients believe that it will — and it's the belief, not the procedure, that makes the difference.

Read more on Time.com

Also read: Acupuncture, Real or Fake, Eases Pain

In the United States, more patients are turning to alternative and complementary medicine as part of their health care.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health say that nearly 40 percent of adults have used some type therapy that isn't taught in medical schools. But more than 40 U.S. universities, including Stanford, UCLA, Duke and The George Washington University have integrative medicine centers.

Jean Ayers is not a regular patient. She is studying to be a physician assistant at George Washington University, which includes taking an elective course in integrative medicine. Participating in treatments is strongly encouraged.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health say that nearly 40 percent of adults have used some type therapy that isn't taught in medical schools. But more than 40 U.S. universities, including Stanford, UCLA, Duke and The George Washington University have integrative medicine centers.

Jean Ayers is not a regular patient. She is studying to be a physician assistant at George Washington University, which includes taking an elective course in integrative medicine. Participating in treatments is strongly encouraged.

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The ancient Chinese practice of tai chi may be effective as a therapy for fibromyalgia, according to a study published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

A clinical trial at Tufts Medical Center found that after 12 weeks of tai chi, patients with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition, did significantly better in measurements of pain, fatigue, physical functioning, sleeplessness and depression than a comparable group given stretching exercises and wellness education. Tai chi patients were also more likely to sustain improvement three months later.

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New evidence-based guidelines from the American Academy of Neurology, which will be published soon in the journal Neurology, indicate that several nutritional and alternative remedies may be effective for the treatment of migraines. The guidelines state that Petasites, the purified extract from the butterbur plant, is effective at a dosage of 75 milligrams twice daily and should be offered for migraine prevention.

The guidelines also say that several other remedies are "probably" effective and should be considered for migraine prevention. These remedies are magnesium (at a daily dose of 300 milligrams), MIG-99 (an extract of the herb feverfew) and riboflavin (400 milligrams daily). They say that coenzyme Q10, or CoQ10 (300 milligrams daily), is "possibly" effective and may be considered for migraine prevention.

Read more on NYTimes.com

Are any complementary or alternative medicine (CAM) treatments effective against major depressive disorder?

Perhaps a few of them, APA's Task Force on Complementary and Alternative Medicine reported in the June Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

Read more on PsychiatryOnline.org

Question: I recently read an article that warns that soy milk is a rip-off and contains a lot of bad stuff. It advises making your own soy milk using soy beans, water and a soy milk machine. Is commercially available soy milk unsafe? If so, what do you recommend?

Answer: I've seen many articles warning that soy foods in general, including soy milk, aren't healthy and contain hidden substances that are dangerous. Critics of soy allege that it is bad for the thyroid, can cause cancer, Alzheimer's disease and mineral deficiencies.

None of these sensational claims has ever been proven. Read the rest of this entry »

Working with experts from the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database, an independent research group, we identified a group of ingredients (out of nearly 1,100 in the database) linked to serious adverse events by clinical research or case reports. To come up with our dozen finalists, we also considered factors such as whether the ingredients were effective for their purported uses and how readily available they were to consumers. We then shopped for them online and in stores near our Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters and easily found all of them for sale in June 2010.

The dozen are aconite, bitter orange, chaparral, colloidal silver, coltsfoot, comfrey, country mallow, germanium, greater celandine, kava, lobelia, and yohimbe. The FDA has warned about at least eight of them, some as long ago as 1993.

Read more on Yahoo! Health

Read also: U.S. dietary supplements often contaminated: report

We live in a toxic world. Whether you live next to an oil refinery or on a pristine mountaintop in the Rockies, you carry environmental toxins in your tissues. From heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury, and cadmium, emitted from smokestacks and vehicle exhaust, to pesticides, fertilizers, and PCB's released into rivers and soil, and phthalates that off-gas from household plastic products, we are all swimming in a soup of toxic chemicals.

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