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Alternative medicine

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The co-author of this study, Gong-Soog Hong, professor of consumer sciences at Ohio State University, said she was quite surprised herself by how many people were turning to alternative medicine. Here is the really funny part: Hong said she is concerned about interactions, and that these alternative medicines are unproven and they could cause "any kind of side effect." She describes that as being "pretty scary." It must be frightening for doctors to think how risky it is for patients to engage in health-enhancing therapies and nutritional strategies that make drugs irrelevant.
And it is in relation to precisely these conditions that alternative medicine has returned to the forefront of medical culture. Ironically, biomedicine's initial victory over infectious disease cast into sharp relief its inability to cure the chronically ill and ageing.
Their dependence on intangible and invisible forces seems strongly counter to the prevailing materialist trends of medicine and science in the period, and today both are regarded as alternative medicine. However, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, homeopathy and mesmerism made strong claims to scientificity, were championed by medical elites, and were popular first with precisely those educated consumers who also avidly pursued the natural sciences.
Indeed, a recent study in the United States suggested that not only does the popularity of alternative medicine in general continue to rise, but that it is rising fastest for those therapies that are most distinct from biomedicine.9 By the time Chinese and other non-western immigrants were again thronging to northern Europe and North America in the middle of the twentieth century, practitioners of western medicine had finally achieved the levels of authority they had so envied their Chinese counterparts.
CONCLUSION: PRAGMATISM, PLURALISM, AND THE (IM)PATIENT-CONSUMER In this volume, I have considered the phenomena of cross-cultural and alternative medicine over the course of some three and a quarter centuries, looking at examples from three continents.
Thus to better understand the phenomena of cross-cultural and alternative medicine in a global context, we must see it also from a slightly different angle: from within colonized, as well as colonizing, cultures. This chapter interrogates responses to novel medical practices and systems in India.
To explore these aspects of cross-cultural and alternative medicine, we must look beyond Europe and North America.1 By studying responses to cross-cultural medical expertise in the West, I have inevitably also been studying western attitudes towards the non-western world. But of course, western medical systems have themselves been exported. In fact, western medicine was, from at least the nineteenth century (and is still today) widely regarded as the most effective and indeed humane 'tool of empire'.
Today, conventional doctors are finally admitting that people over 50 are turning to alternative medicine because conventional medicine isn't giving them answers. When people are in chronic pain because they have inflammation and joint pain, and when they find out that the drugs that were supposed to be safe are actually killing them at a truly terrifying rate, then of course they are going to turn to alternative medicine.
Thus when people sometimes say to me "Oh, yeah, I'm into alternative medicine, I once got acupuncture for my knee pain", I say to them "Well, that's not what alternative medicine is about -- it's not about covering up knee pain with some acupuncture needles." Herbal medicine has a much higher purpose than to be relegated to the limited worldview of conventional medicine. Herbs should be used holistically to support a healthy lifestyle.
When people are in chronic pain because they have inflammation and joint pain, and when they find out that the drugs that were supposed to be safe are actually killing them at a truly terrifying rate, then of course they are going to turn to alternative medicine. They find out that drugs cause dementia, skin disorders, low sex drive and all these other side effects and think maybe there is something better to be found in the world of alternative medicine.
To them it is not alternative medicine; it is advanced medicine. It is the new wave -- holistic, naturopathic, mind and body, nutrition -- all of which seems quite normal to many younger people. So it is very interesting that we are seeing people over 50 turning to alternative medicine, too. Organized medicine will soon become another sad chapter in the history of medical experimentation.
Exercise and structural imbalance A key tenet of alternative medicine is using an individualized approach and recognizing that each person's symptoms and health problems arise from a unique set of factors. Therefore, treatment approaches must be similarly individualized. As you read through this book, consider which of these factors may be involved in your sleep problem, and also be sensitive to the interconnections between them.
Primary disorders are unrelated to any existing medical conditions, whereas secondary disorders arise as the result of some other illness or hormonal change, such as menopause, pregnancy, depression, or fibromyalgia. alternative medicine practitioners may not make such distinctions, because in their view, both the underlying medical condition and the sleep disorder arise from the same underlying causes. Insomnia Insomnia is a broad term casually used to describe the inability either to fall asleep or to remain asleep during the course of the night.
In the alternative medicine view, sleep disorders result from multiple causes, many of them with a less-than-obvious connection to the disorder or not easily detectable. As you will discover in the rest of this book, a number of underlying imbalances, with accompanying physical, mental, and environmental factors, can contribute to sleep problems. It is essential to understand the factors that went into creating each individual's sleep disorder, because sleep disorders are rarely caused by one thing alone and no two people have exactly the same causal factors.
Removing toxins from the body has shown to be therapeutic for a wide variety of conditions, and alternative medicine offers a number of safe and effective detoxification strategies. Light therapy is especially helpful for people with disrupted circadian rhythms. Meditation, biofeedback, hypnotherapy, and other mind-body techniques can help reduce stress. Environmental imbalances can be regulated with magnet therapy and feng shui. If hormonal imbalance is a factor, addressing that imbalance can be a key strategy.
And while alternative medicine can be very effective for helping you sleep better, conventional medicine and intensive interventions may be necessary if you're involved in a serious accident. We won't harp on it, but we do want to be emphatic about it at least once: If you feel sleepy or drowsy, pull over and take a short nap. We will give you some basic background science on sleep. Having an understanding of sleep cycles could actually be therapeutic. For example, the nightly sleep pattern naturally involves several periods of lighter sleep during the night, when you're more easily awakened.
Thus when people sometimes say to me "Oh, yeah, I'm into alternative medicine, I once got acupuncture for my knee pain", I say to them "Well, that's not what alternative medicine is about -- it's not about covering up knee pain with some acupuncture needles." Herbal medicine has a much higher purpose than to be relegated to the limited worldview of conventional medicine. Herbs should be used holistically to support a healthy lifestyle.
With that said, you may be surprised that much the same problem exists (although to a lesser degree) in the area of natural remedies and alternative medicine. Because far too many users of herbs, nutritional supplements and other complementary or alternative health solutions view those solutions in the same way they view conventional medicine. That is, they are asking for an herb to cure their symptom.
So it is very interesting that we are seeing people over 50 turning to alternative medicine, too. Organized medicine will soon become another sad chapter in the history of medical experimentation. Those who continue to follow organized medicine, take lots of drugs, undergo multiple surgical procedures and chemotherapy will themselves be part of that history, too, as conventional medicine is currently killing more than 750,000 Americans each year. That is supported by statistics found in the report Death by Medicine, available at Dr. Gary Null's website at www.GaryNull.com.
Conventional doctors refer to it as CAM, or Complementary and alternative medicine. "Alternative medicine" is a somewhat outdated term that refers to everything outside the realm of conventional medicine. It's outdated because alternative medicine is now mainstream medicine. Most people use it, and the only reason more people don't is because health-insurance refuses to cover most of the therapies in alternative medicine. This term will probably fade away as the use of natural healing therapies becomes even more popular with the general public.
They find out that drugs cause dementia, skin disorders, low sex drive and all these other side effects and think maybe there is something better to be found in the world of alternative medicine. Old school medicine is harmful and outdated If one school of thought on medicine is failing the people, then of course people are going to turn somewhere else for answers. Those answers are found in the universe of nutrition and natural health, which I like to call "advanced medicine." Organized medicine, or old school medicine, is really outdated. It is on its way out.
All this is extremely frustrating for practitioners of alternative medicine, holistic medicine, herbalists, nutritionists, etc. Because they want to help patients, but most patients really aren't looking for long-term solutions: they're looking for short-term masking of their symptoms, using products that they can call "natural." Frankly, this isn't natural medicine at all. This is just using herbs in a strictly allopathic manner to shift the responsibility of the patient's health outcome.
British and Canadian doctors are also facing growing pressure from alternative medicine, as C. Gray in the Canadian Medical Association Journal writes: "It is impossible to ignore the growing acceptance of alternative medicine in today's Britain." She predicts that in Canada the future promises a "similar change. alternative medicine is beginning to find a ready and healthy market. And our doctors as a group are feeling unloved and unrewarded." Nutrient therapy, using large doses of supplements when needed, is well on the way to becoming established medical practice.
Alternative Medicine There's a difference, then, between complementary medical techniques that can work alongside allopathic medicine even though they come from other traditions, and alternative medicine that turns its back on the traditional approach outright. Some examples would include the belief of some chiropractors that spinal manipulation can treat diseases such as asthma, or the idea of homeopathy that diluting a toxin a million-fold makes it able to relieve symptoms that are similar to those produced by the toxin. Some people believe there is an herb to treat every complaint.
One of her tasks was to formally study the treatments offered by the clinic, which consisted largely of alternative medicine. Often she seemed to be teetering between both camps ?wanting science to embrace and study the miraculous, and wanting alternative medicine to be more scientific. A number of different strands in her life began to converge. She'd received a phone call from a friend of hers, Hella Hammid, announcing that she had breast cancer.
It could very well be the case that such programs are on all the time everywhere, since 40% of us use some type of alternative medicine, often in concert with conventional treatments, and most of those who use alternative medicines never tell their doctors. Today, the alternative-medicine industry, which includes vitamins, supplements, homeopathic remedies, and herbs, is a $46-billion-per-year business, large enough to compete with pharmaceutical companies. Sales of vitamins alone are $17 billion a year and growing because a lot of us buy into the argument that vitamins are worth the money.
Its major suggested use in alternative medicine is as a treatment to clean out plugged arteries. A number of small controlled studies found no support for this hypothesis, but in 2002, the National Center for Complementary and alternative medicine (NCCAM) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)—both of are part of the National Institutes of Health—announced that they had launched the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy. This carefully designed double-blind placebo-controlled trial will tell us about the treatment's efficacy as well as its toxicities.
Complementary and alternative medicine describes a wide variety of medical practices and products, according to the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and alternative medicine (NCCAM). Complementary describes the techniques that are used in conjunction with conventional medicine; alternativedescribes the techniques that can be used in place of conventional medicine. STARTING THE CONVERSATION What is the best way to approach your doctor? First, understand that your doctor may not have much background or knowledge about these approaches, Bonakdar says.
The same interventions are described as alternative medicine when they are used in place q/conventional medicine (as when a person is using a special diet to treat cancer instead of undergoing surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy). Integrative medicine combines treatments from conventional medicine and CAM for which there is some high-quality evidence of safety and effectiveness. For more information on CAM, go to the website of the National Center for Complementary and alternative medicine of the National Institutes of Health at http://NCCAM.NIH.GOV.