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Alternative medicine

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Alternative medicine is a broad term for any method that seeks to prevent or heal disease through methods that have not been proven to work by peer-reviewed scientific studies. Any method that claims to provide healing without a literature of such studies is considered to be outside of the practices of mainstream conventional medical practice.

Those forms of alternative medicine that have been accepted by some parts of mainstream medicine are those that have undergone some level of peer-reviewed study, or those that are currently undergoing such study. These forms sometimes go by the term of "complementary medicine", in order to highlight the desire to offer alternative treatment methods that complement, rather than replace, mainstream medical practices.

Alternative medicine covers a very broad area. It is about the entire area of alternative medicine rather than being about only one or two branches of alternative health treatments. Some branches may be legally practiced in your locality, while others may not be. Some branches offer self-care methods of treatments while others may be professionally organized. In many cases, alternative health treatments are provided by a conventional physician, in which case they are considered complementary medicine. The most often used forms of alternative medicine in the United States are as follows : chiropractic, acupuncture, chinese medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy, massage therapy, and hypnosis.

Psychologists can provide medical services under the branches of biofeedback and hypnotherapy. Each branch of alternative medicine should be explored individually in the links to other articles provided below.

It should be noted that the term alternative medicine itself implies that all these methods see themselves as alternatives to conventional medicine. In fact some see themselves as promoting wellness, rather than treating disease, and refuse to be categorized within the conventional medical system's framework. Alternative practitioners are said to heal people because they work with the body's innate ability to heal itself, called vitalism.

Skepticism towards alternative medicine

Practitioners of alternative medicine generally believe in the efficacy of their techniques, despite a lack of randomized controlled trials or double-blind experimenta validationin their techniques.

Proponents of conventional medicine often seize on this lack of experimental validation to dismiss alternative medicine as justified only by placebo effects. This in turn has led some proponents of alternative medicine to attempt to justify it by criticizing traditional medicine; some of the arguments used are reproduced below.

"About half the general population in developed countries uses complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).1 Yet many conventional healthcare professionals refuse to take CAM seriously — one often-voiced argument is “there is no research in CAM”.2 Certainly, for some modalities there is no compelling evidence base,3 and some of the research into CAM has methodological flaws and biases.4,5 On the other hand, many doctors and medical educators are uninformed about the quality evidence that does exist.6"
Searching on the web site called PubMed using their alternative medicine information selector (cam ) reveals that there are over 370,000 research papers published on alternative medicine since 1966 in the National Library of Medicine database. However, nearly none of these are double-blind peer-reviewed experiments.

The question of the effectiveness of various techniques used by practitioners of alternative medicine has to be considered independently for each method. Some methods have been proven effective, while others have not. While, for example, the use of drugs in homeopathy that have been diluted to the point that not a single molecule of the original drug remains, appear to depend on physical principles that are unsupported by our current understanding of chemistry and physics; a meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal and another published in Lancet could not prove that homeopathy was ineffective. 


The lack of scientifically credible explanations or experimental justifications for some alternative medical practices often leads outsiders to dismiss them. However, it may be that some such practices are effective for reasons not well understood by either outside observers or practitioners, and it is arguably the case that practices that do no harm—either by directly causing injury or preventing the use of more effective treatments—can at minimum provide hope and reassurance to patients.  For such reasons alternative medicine continues to be popular with many patients whose illnesses cannot be cured—or, in some cases, even detected—by conventional medical techniques.

Public interest in alternative medicine is significant. Since traditional medicine is not yet able to treat many diseases and injuries, some turn to alternative medicine in the hope that cures which cannot be found through conventional medicine might somehow be found with an alternative method of treatment. Others are coming from the new movement of patient empowerment where users of the health care system are viewed as consumers capable of deciding where they want to spend their own money.

Comparing the clinical methods of alternative medicine to those of conventional medicine

Practitioners of mainstream conventional medicine often claim that they rely on the scientific method for results. They argue that it is impossible to make and interpret claims based upon testimonials, hearsay and mystical arguments. This is part of a general bias in conventional medicine in which clinical experience is considered to have lower evidentiary value than published research studies about population evidence. Proponents of alternative medicine counter that the correct application of population evidence to a specific patient requires a great deal of clinical experience. Eclectic branches of alternative medicine place greater value upon the clinical experience of the practitioner than on their science. This hardly seems to be a defect of alternative medicine, as experienced, older, and successful conventional practitioners likewise are in greater demand by the consuming public and thereby command higher fees for their services.

Proponents of alternative medicine also dispute the degree to which conventional medical practices are scientifically justified. Conventional medicine once strongly advocated the use of blood letting, and much of 19th century medical practice consisted of applying a bewildering variety of poisons in seemingly arbitrary doses with the hope of finding one that worked. Although many aspects of conventional medicine such as antibiotics, asepsis, and the use of clinical trials to evaluate new medications and surgical techniques are explicitly science-based, many conventional medical practices persist from pre-scientific medical traditions. Many of these practices were never evaluated scientifically before the rise of evidence-based medicine (EBM), which did not actually appear until the 1970s with the McMaster Medical School in Canada that used a clinical learning strategy that would eventually develop, via further work at Harvard University in the 1980s and the establishment of the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University in 1995, into modern evidence-based medicine. Researchers in this area have shown that such practices as yearly physical examinations provide no measurable benefit to many patients. Some proponents of alternative medicine argue that the lack of evaluation of such practices prior to the 1990s means that it cannot be truly claimed that conventional medicine practitioners relied upon the scientific method for their results.

Science and alternative medicine

As previously stated, alternative medicine is simply about using an alternative method of treatment. There is nothing innately anti-scientific or anti-intellectual about using some method of treatment other than medicine or surgery to achieve measurable results. Proponents argue that alternative medicine was yesterday's quackery, is today's complementary medicine, and will be tomorrow's new branch of medicine. For example, osteopathy developed in America at the turn of the twentieth century. It was originally attacked as quackery by conventional medicine, but with the subsequent incorporation of modern medical techniques it is today considered completely mainstream and just as scientific as Western medicine is.

Published health research is continually publishing evidence that some alternative treatments might indeed be effective.,, Many practitioners of alternative medicine, do in fact believe in the scientific method. Many eclectic branches of alternative medicine explore scientifically valid alternatives to current medical treatments. Most commonly, a patient seeks alternative treatment only after conventional medical care has already been tried, but was found to be ineffective, too brutal, or their practitioners lacking in proper bedside manners.

The boundary lines between alternative and mainstream medicine changes over time. Methods considered alternative at one time may later be adopted by conventional medicine. It may be that alternative methods of treatment that achieve scientific support and are offered by mainstream medical practitioners eventually will end up being claimed by conventional medicine as having been developed by them directly from pure science.


Medical Journals dedicated to Alternative Medicine Research

References to recently published alternative medicine research

  1. "The results showed a positive trend regardless of the quality of the trial or the variety of homeopathy used." Kleijnen J, Knipschild P, ter Riet G. Clinical trials of homoeopathy. BMJ. 1991 Feb 9;302(6772):316-23. Erratum in: BMJ 1991 Apr 6;302(6780):818. PMID: 1825800 Abstract
  2. "The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo." Linde K, Clausius N, Ramirez G. Are the clinical effects of homeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials. Lancet. 1997 Sep 20;350(9081):834-43. Erratum in: Lancet 1998 Jan 17;351(9097):220. PMID: 9310601 Abstract
  3. The Water Cure/hydrotherapy was proven effective on Heart Failure patients. Michalsen A, Ludtke R, Buhring M. Thermal hydrotherapy improves quality of life and hemodynamic function in patients with chronic heart failure. Am Heart J. 2003 Oct;146(4):E11. PMID: 14564334 Abstract
  4. Hypnotherapy was proven to be a therapeutic option for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome. Gonsalkorale WM, Miller V, Afzal A, Whorwell PJ. Long term benefits of hypnotherapy for irritable bowel syndrome. Gut. 2003 Nov;52(11):1623-9. PMID: 14570733 Abstract
  5. Cognitive behavior therapy, as well as hypnotherapy, was shown to be an effective alternative treatment option to Hormone Replacement Therapy. Berga SL, Marcus MD, Loucks TL. Recovery of ovarian activity in women with functional hypothalamic amenorrhea who were treated with cognitive behavior therapy. Fertility and Sterility , Volume 80, Issue 4, Pages 976-981 (October 2003) Abstract
  6. Eisenberg DM, Davis RB, Ettner SL. Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States, 1990-1997. JAMA. 1998; 280:1569-1575. PMID: 9820257 Abstract
  7. Ernst E. Obstacles to research in complementary and alternative medicine. Med J Aust. 2003 Sep 15;179(6):279-80. PMID: 12964907 MJA online

Branches of Alternative Medicine

References

  • Provides detailed and well referenced information on the actual usage of alternative health services in America, from an academic perspective. WHERE DO AMERICANS GO FOR HEALTHCARE? by Anna Rosenfeld, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
  • Planer, Felix E. 1988 Superstition Revised ed. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books
  • Hand, Wayland D. 1980 Folk Magical Medicine and Symbolism in the West in Magical Medicine Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 305-319.
  • Phillips Stevens Jr. Nov./Dec. 2001 Magical Thinking in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Skeptical Inquier Magazine, Nov.Dec/2001

External links