More than 37 percent of U.S. households now use complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM) for therapeutic or preventative health care, according to a recent Thomson Medstat consumer health care survey of 23,000 adults. Alternative medicine practices include acupuncture, massage therapy, herbal medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy, and chiropractic, among others.
Key points about complementary and alternative medicine:
• Complementary and alternative medicine is a group of health care systems and practices that are not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine.
• Patients should inform their health care providers about any therapies they are currently using or considering. This is to help ensure a coordinated course of care.
• Individuals respond differently to treatments, whether conventional or CAM. How a person responds to a CAM therapy depends on many things, including state of health and how the therapy is used.
Complementary and alternative health remedies are increasingly important in the health care marketplace. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research explores how consumers choose among the many available remedies.
“Examples of the wide array of conventional and complementary and alternative health remedy options available to consumers include drugs, supplements, acupuncture, massage therapy, ayurveda, and traditional Chinese medicine, to name a few, write authors Wenbo Wang (New York University), Hean Tat Keh (Beijing University) and Lisa E. Bolton (Pennsylvania State University).
“Such medical pluralism is common in both developed and developing countries and raises the questions: How do consumers choose among health remedies, and what are the consequences for a healthy lifestyle?”
The authors assess how consumers choose between Western medicine and its Eastern counterparts, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and ayurvedic medicine.
“Western Medicine is primarily concerned with the material aspect of the body and views all medical phenomena as cause-effect sequences, relying on rigorous scientific studies and research that seeks empirical proof to all phenomena,” write the authors. “On the other hand, TCM and ayurvedic medicine favor a holistic approach, view the mind and body as a whole system, and rely upon inductive tools and methods for treatment.”
Based on a series of experiments and surveys in the United States, China and India, the authors found that consumers prefer TCM over Western medicine when uncertain about the cause of an illness, because a holistic medicine tolerates diagnosis uncertainty better than Western medicine.
Similarly, consumers prefer TCM over Western medicine because of beliefs that TCM offers an underlying cure versus symptom alleviation by Western medicine.
The most commonly used complementary and alternative therapies among adults are acupuncture, massage, natural supplements, deep breathing exercises, meditation, yoga, and chiropractic. Individuals with holistic lifestyles are also more likely to seek alternative medicine therapies.
For information about Acupuncture & Massage College’s Oriental Medicine and Massage Therapy programs call Joe Calareso, Admissions Director, at (305) 595-9500. Nov 29.
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Now is not a good time to doubt the existence of alternative medicine; now is the time to embrace it and even indulge if you must.
In addition to massage therapy at Much Kneaded Massage the practice incorporates a holistic approach by offering clients nutritional guidance (food sensitivity and pain) along with emotional self-care (Emotional Freedom Technique aka EFT). The clients which use all approaches (plus adequate exercise & rest) fare the best.
This is good to hear that more and more people are starting too go for alternative medicine. I think these options should be used more because most of the alternative medicine has very little side effects compared to the pharmaceutical approach. I find it sad that the pharmaceutical way is pushed on people more than the more natural approaches. I think it all has to do with the money they are getting from those drugs. But to me that approach seems dangerous because a lot of those medicines cause side effects that then another medicine has to be proscribe to handle the side effects and so on.
I think the alternative approach is going to start rising more and more rapidly as more and more ideas are slowing getting mixed between western medicine and eastern medicine of the world.
Here in holland there are more people going to alternative healer than to the GP. I really hope this trend keeps on going. The main reasson is that the GP and specialist don’t have the time to really talk about the problems people are facing. They are reallt good if you got physical problems but if you got emotional/mental problems your better of at an alternative healer. Because they have the time to really listen to you.
I think the economic problem from last year made people think to start looking for alternative medicine for their health problem, even though it’s not cover by the insurance company
Perhaps it is time to popularize a different phrase. Rather than referring to chiropractic, massage and the like as “alternative medicine”, I advocate the use of the phrase “natural health care” or “wholistic health care”. 1) most of the so-called “alternative” modalities are natural and take into account the whole person. 2) HEALTH care – most of the modalities actively promote health rather than merely mask symptoms.
Using the word “alternative” keeps our minds tied into the allopathic mode while the phrases “natural health care” and “wholistic health care” stand on their own merits without deferring to an allopathic/symptom based mentality. This may seem like a minor semantic change but it represents a larger paradigm shift. The next shift to strive for would be one of proactive health rather than reactive health care, In other words health optimization versus symptom remediation.
ayurvedic medicines really work and it is cheaper than conventional medicines too.*.`
i tried ayurvedic medicines and chinese medicines and both are great,”.
So called “alternative medicine” has a negative connotation, no doubt perpetrated by the “traditional medicine” practitioners!
The problem with traditional medicine is a) it’s relatively new, b) it’s still just “practice” and c) doctors really aren’t trained to treat root causes but rather symptoms.
It’s kind of like a mechanic inflating a flat tire without plugging the hole that is causing the leak. An “alternative mechanic” might actually fix the hole and then air up the tire.
It’s a silly analogy, but I often feel like I’m in more capable hands when dealing with my neighborhood mechanic than with a doctor.
my grandfather is fond of ayurvedic medicines coz he know that it works well,..
This is certainly one of the better sources of information I have stumbled across on this topic. Have you looked into the other side of the argument of natural health? Personally, I think a decent argument could be made either way, but please let me know if you have found more sites on the Internet that back up what you are discussing.