Alternative Medicine

Alternative Medicine

Origin

The alternative medicine is relatively new, complex, and evolving. According to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Alternative Medicine), Alternative Medicine is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not presently considered to be part of conventional, mainstream medicine. Terms that are important to distinguish within this definition include conventional medicine—practiced by doctors of allopathic (MD) or osteopathic (DO) medicine and other health professionals, including nurses and physical therapists; complementary medicine—used together with conventional medicine; and alternative medicine—used in place of conventional medicine (Kligler, & Lee, 2004).

Although Alternative Medicine encompasses an extremely broad group of practices, it is usually divided into four major domains, as described by Alternative Medicine: (1) biologically based practices, (2) manipulative and body-based practices, (3) mind-body medicine, and (4) energy medicine. In addition, Alternative Medicine recognizes whole medical systems that cut across all four domains, such as traditional Chinese medicine (Melchart, 1994). Other terms often used to describe this wide range of health and healing practices include unconventional, natural, holistic, whole-person, integrative, and integral medicine. Many of these terms imply the combined use of both Alternative Medicine and conventional medicine, using the best of both to create an integrative approach to health care delivery. They often embody concepts of treating the whole person: mind, body, and spirit. Currently the term integrative medicine has emerged as the most commonly used term to describe this blended approach and is defined by Alternative Medicine as that which combines mainstream medical therapies and Alternative Medicine therapies for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.

History

The use of diverse health interventions and health practices is not necessarily new to health care in the United States. Indeed medical pluralism has always existed in that the healthy as well as the ill have traditionally used a variety of therapies, from chicken soup and spices to herbal teas and baths, to care for themselves and their families. In addition to such home remedies, practitioners from the fields of homeopathy and osteopathy were more commonly consulted in the past. An arrest in the growth of medical pluralism and corresponding professional societies and organizations is cited to have occurred with the publication of the Flexner report in 1910(Larkin, 1992). The report established a gold standard for the training of medical professionals, and its charge to focus on a biomedical, scientific curriculum closed down many “alternative” schools of healing. The standardization of medical education allowed allopathic medicine to emerge as the dominant paradigm for the county's health care delivery system (Hewer, 1993).

From the 1960s to 1980s, a growing interest in more “natural” and “holistic” lifestyles and health approaches, as well as the opening of international relations with Eastern countries, such as the China delegation journalist reports on acupuncture, increased the public's awareness and curiosity regarding Alternative Medicine. With more public exposure and growing interest in Alternative Medicine, modalities such as yoga, meditation, and herbal remedies experienced accelerated growth through the ...