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Alternative Medicine
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Alternative medicine is a comprehensive approach to healing that uses natural methods to bring physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual harmony. It does not rely on drugs, surgery and other conventional medical procedures.
History of Alternative Medicine
Alternative medicine dates back as far as 5,000 B.C.E. with Traditional Chinese Medicine in China and Ayurvedic Medicine in India. Healing traditions also exist in most cultures, from African to South American. These forms of medicine are based on the harmony between mind, body, and spirit and a belief in the vital energy of the body. True health is achieved when there is balance in the whole person and harmony with the environment.
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Whether yesterday's fad or tomorrow's paradigm, alternative medical therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy and herbal medicine are part of today's American health care. First, the number of devotees is staggering; David Eisenberg, MD, noted in his landmark 1993 article1 that an estimated 60 million Americans tried at least one of several alternative medical therapies-and more than 70 percent of them never told their physician they had or were doing so. Alternative therapies can affect medical care, by delaying or interacting with prescribed treatments and by introducing new personnel and belief systems not typically a part of the doctor-patient relationship. Further, legal issues surround physicians who recommend or monitor-or, arguably, who fail to inquire about-their patients' participation in alternative care. Academicians within the medical establishment are responding to the popularity of these therapies: The NIH Office of Alternative Medicine is now well established and funding clinical trials at institutions such as Harvard, UCSF, Stanford and Bastyr University.
Complementary or integrative medicine are terms coined to describe the integration of all healing therapies within a holistic care framework either overseen or provided by an MD or DO Supporters insist that many of these therapies have already proved their safety and effectiveness by serving humankind long before public health, high-technology, and molecular biology "revolutionized" medical care. Others believe incorporating alternative medicine has a negligible effect physically but helps our profession reclaim the art and humanism within the science of medicine.
Whether yesterday's fad or tomorrow's paradigm, alternative medical therapies such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy and herbal medicine are part of today's American health care. First, the number of devotees is staggering; David Eisenberg, MD, noted in his landmark 1993 article1 that an estimated 60 million Americans tried at least one of several alternative medical therapies-and more than 70 percent of them never told their physician they had or were doing so. Alternative therapies can affect medical care, by delaying or interacting with prescribed treatments and by introducing new personnel and belief systems not typically a part of the doctor-patient relationship. Further, legal issues surround physicians who recommend or monitor-or, arguably, who fail to inquire about-their patients' participation in alternative care. Academicians within the medical establishment are responding to the popularity of these therapies: The NIH Office of Alternative Medicine is now well established and funding clinical trials at institutions such as Harvard, UCSF, Stanford and Bastyr University.
Complementary or integrative medicine are terms coined to describe the integration of all healing therapies within a holistic care framework either overseen or provided by an MD or DO Supporters insist that many of these therapies have already proved their safety and effectiveness by serving humankind long before public health, high-technology, and molecular biology "revolutionized" medical care. Others believe incorporating alternative medicine has a negligible effect physically but helps our profession reclaim the art and humanism within the science of medicine.
In today's evidence-based, medically managed universe one might assume any therapy without strictly proven efficacy would wither. Yet centers for alternative medicine created or supported by hospitals and HMOs are flourishing, and health insurance coverage for alternative therapies, with its emphasis on low cost preventive medicine, is becoming commonplace. If we believe the alternative medicine skeptics, it is the $13.7 billion alternative medical industry, together with the political correctness and antiscience sentiments of the 1990s, that are driving the U.S. government and mainstream American medicine to embrace, if not respect, these health care practices. |
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