The growth of alternative medicine over the past few decades has been rapid and the number of alternative medicine practitioners grows by the day. With thousands of private complementary health practitioners and an increase in GPs offering alternative therapies there is no doubting its popularity and continued movement toward professional healthcare validation. However the question about alternative medicine remains – does it work? Acupuncture, reflexology and therapeutic touch are now non-conventional therapies people will consider having when thinking beyond conventional medical practices.
Certainly if you posed the question of whether alternative medicine works to people in the Far East the answer would be a resounding ‘yes’. Many alternative medicine techniques and therapies began in places like China and India centuries ago and are integral to their healthcare systems. With that degree of use and such a rich history there must be a high level of confidence in its effectiveness.
If you speak to many physicians the argument against alternative medicine is that it is not proven to work. This is a somewhat blinkered opinion as it is based on a comparison with traditional pharmaceutical drug testing. Before drugs can be prescribed they must go through rigorous clinical trials using a broad cross-section of society and performed over a period of years under the supervision of trained research teams. The industry goes to great lengths to highlight this clinical process and show that the evidence is scientific fact. But alternative medicine has been put through equally rigorous tests by research teams around the world; it’s just not as well documented.
Only now are we beginning to see the outcomes of these tests as demand for alternative medicine increases. And as demand increases, so the clinical trials into complementary and alternative therapies will increase. We should also be careful to dismiss practices that have been used successfully for thousands of years in other countries.
Another argument against alternative medicine is that evidence is anecdotal and based purely on personal experience of a therapy. But then the same argument could be true of conventional drug treatment. It is only because a clinical trial has taken place that the drug is deemed to work for everyone. That’s not always the case. How often has someone told you to take a certain drug for an ailment as it worked for them only to find that it didn’t work for you? It’s true that certain conditions require traditional treatment but that’s not to say that alternative medicine cannot be used alongside it. A popular benefit with alternative medicine is that it doesn’t have the nasty side-effects or discomfort that pharmaceutical drugs can have.
Alternative medicine is effective and can work for you
Alternative medicine is matter of choice. There are many therapies and techniques to choose from that can fit in with your ideas about health and well-being. Alternative medicine can help with a variety of conditions illnesses and approaches health in a holistic way. Concern for the body as a whole and the use of natural herbal remedies really can target a specific illness. So to answer the question – yes, alternative medicine does work if you find the therapy that works for you.
Watch the video related to alternative medicine
Nearly half the US populations turns to complementary, alternative and integrative practices to maintain or improve their health. Join Dr. Donald Abrams as he explores how integrative medicine can optimize health. Series: “UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public” [11/2007] [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 13011]
Help answer the question about alternative medicine
How can I use Alternative medicine to help with Migraines?I have horrible migraines. I have taken every type of presription medicine possible- none have worked. Usually when I get a headache, we resort to using steroids (which I hate). Is there any way I can use alternative medicine to help prevent or ease the pain of a migraine?
About Author
Medical expert Thomas Pretty looks into arguments surrounding the viability of alternative medicine and the testing that is used to prove its worth.
Herbs and herbal treatments don't cause as great a percentage of death and serious injury as conventional medicine in the western world, however there certainly is room for improvement and the system is potentially dangerous. Proper regulation giving guarentees of the quality and safety of the product would certainly be very welcome and give quodos and legitimacy to the profession.
It is indeed a multibillion dollar industry.
In the UK there is a move toward proper regulation so that only registered herbalists do consultations and administer the herbs (currently anyone can buy them in a health food store and ask advice on how to take them from a 16 year old shop assistant on the minimum wage).
In New Zealand big pharma have lobied the government and is in the process of stoping any altmed therapists or therapies advertising what they can treat unless there are substantial randomised controlled trials confirming the efficacy of the therapy or claims.
In short this means that herbalists can still sell creams and lotions which people can use to treat _________ but they are not allowed to put on the label what it can be used to treat.
A patient can still have a chat with the herbalist, homeopath, whatever and ask them what remedy would be good and can buy it on their advice but the practitioner would not be allowed to advertise it as being suitable for that.
I'm not sure how this would affect the practice I work in as we have very little advertising and most of our business is from word of mouth. If we had a website (which we don't) we may just have to register it on a domain not using an NZ address.
If this ever goes live it would be interesting to see some test cases going through the courts.
Many conventional medicines haven't had the extensive testing that some of them have and of any drug administered if it was given to a big enough group of people it is likely that a number of them would not find the drug effective for their symptoms. So by the same rational would pharma be allowed to advertise a drug as being an effective treatment for _____ if it didn't work for some of the poeple that used it?
The rats are jumping ship.
CHEMRISK – a research company hired by the Corn Refiners Association has recently taken down it’s YouTube channel.
The removal was in response to negative public perception resulting from the discovery of dangerous levels of MERCURY in HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. Apparently it has become a liability to defend the sweetener.
See one of the last remaining ChemRisk videos at CornRefinersAssoc on YouTube.