Over the past week, I’ve come across three stories about alternative health topics in the mainstream media. On March 10, the New York Times Sunday Magazine published a substantial article on behavioral optometry, a field centered around the theory that children with attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities can be helped with eye exercises. This past Sunday, March 21, the magazine ran an interview with Dr. Michael Holick, who advocates getting a certain amount of sun exposure so that your body can make the right amount of Vitamin D. Also on March 10, Parade Magazine featured a story called “How Safe Are Cellphones?” The doctor who wrote it concluded that although the link between cell-phone usage and brain cancer has still not been definitively proven, people—and children in particular—should limit their mobile-phone use.
Usually, the general press does not take a favorable view of alternative treatment methods. But overall, these stories were well-balanced and fair, except for a few snarky comments here and there.
Many of us who follow holistic health protocols have known for years about behavioral optometry, the sunshine-Vitamin D link, and the possibility of cell-phone radiation. But the general public tends to dismiss those ideas when they appear in nontraditional media or are espoused by someone who is not an accepted member of the medical establishment. When the same ideas appear in a mainstream publication, people are more likely to pay attention, even if the story isn’t entirely positive. The behavioral optometry article was very clear in stating that many physicians think the theory is bunk. But I’d bet that some parents with learning-disabled kids will read it and decide to try it because nothing else is working.
Although it’s annoying that we have to wait for a mass-market magazine or newspaper to validate something we already know, it’s still an encouraging sign that these publications are finally starting to recognize some of the issues in the holistic arena. I hope these aren’t isolated incidents and that we’ll see a lot more health coverage that challenges the conventional “wisdom.”
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