Neural Therapy

Dear Colleagues:

Last month's newsletter was about planning an introductory neural therapy course for North American physicians. I mentioned that training programs are already established in other countries, especially Europe, Latin America (and I should have also mentioned Turkey). Each training program has to take into account local conditions and that includes the medical-political environment.

For example, in the German speaking countries of Europe, neural therapy leaders have endeavoured to make neural therapy acceptable to the mainstream medical authorities, i.e. make it part of "schulmedizin" (conventional medicine). The strategy has been two‐fold: (1) Publish high‐quality research papers in the peer‐reviewed literature, (2) Dissociate neural therapy from "alternative medicine".

This has been successful to a degree with neural therapy now taught at the undergraduate level in at least one Swiss medical school and accepted (in Switzerland) as an insurance-reimbursed medical service.

In Colombia, neural therapy has taken a different course.The medical environment is more accepting of "alternative medicine" and neural therapy has happily fallen into this category. In fact, at the National University Medical School it is one of four categories, (the others being Homeopathy, Chinese medicine and Osteopathy) leading to a diploma (Masters degree) ‐ and specialist recognition ‐ in Alternative medicine. The following is an outline of the neural therapy program, kindly provided by my colleague and friend Professor Laura Pinilla:

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Masters Program in Neural Therapy
National University
Bogota
Colombia

First Semester:

General principles of alternative and complementary medicine (overview of different approaches and therapies),
basic concepts (complex medical systems and complex thought)
scientific basis (quantum theory, thermodynamic systems).
Philosophical basis of NT
International history of NT, procaine and Russian School.
National and Latin American history of NT including Colombian School of Payán.

Second Semester:

Anatomy (taught by the Department of Morphology) with laboratory cadaver work and practice of neural therapy injection techniques.
Synthetic physiology (Russian school of Nervism: Sechenov, Pavlov, Bykov, Speransky, Vishnevsky, Ukhtomsky, Wedensky): Dr Pinilla is the primary teacher.
Pharmacology of Local Anaesthetics (taught by Pharmacology Department).

Third Semester:

Segmental physiology (according to embryology) with review of original manuscripts of selected authors: Henry Head (British neurologist and semiologist), James Mackenzie (Scottish Semiologist) and Wancura-Kampik (from Vienna): taught by Dr. Pinilla
Electromagnetic concepts: with an electric engineer
Dissipative structures and Information Theory: with a theoretical biologist.
Non-linear dynamical systems and chaos theory applied to medicine: taught by Dr. Pinilla
New concepts in Neurophysiology: recent publications in the research literature.

Fourth Semester:

Public and social health
EMDR and other alternative psychological approaches: with a psychiatrist expert in this area.
Master thesis: research project (mandatory to get the diploma in the Master program)

The four semesters also include intersecting subjects such as nutrition, public health and policies, phytotherapy, evidence-based medicine, etc. The program is taught over two years and is 3600 hours long.

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Clearly this is an ambitious and comprehensive neural therapy training program. Apparently, it is being well-received in Colombia, and clinics are making use of graduates' expertise. However, it is hard to envision anything like this happening in the North American medical environment at present. In both Canada and the USA, economic and regulatory pressures to conform to guidelines and regulatory control is increasing and it is becoming ever harder to "think outside the box" and practise medicine in a thoughtful, creative way.

However, it is encouraging to see progress made in other countries. They are an inspiration to those of us trying to promote neural therapy in the English‐speaking world of medicine.

Sincerely,

Robert F. Kidd, MD, CM