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Thursday 18 August 2011

Alternative Medicine

Alternative medicine describes practices used in place of conventional medical treatments. Some patients seek these practices along with conventional medicine. They include practices that incorporate spiritual, metaphysical, or religious belief; non-evidence based practices, non-European medical traditions, or newly developed approaches to healing. 

The phrase 'alternative medicine' first appeared in the late 1960s favoring such procedures and remedies as acupuncture, chiropractic and homeopathy

Later the term 'complementary medicine' began to supersede 'alternative medicine,' the connotation being that techniques such as acupuncture, homeopathy and reflexology compliment rather than replace orthodox medical practice.

Acupuncture involves insertion of needles in the body.

Emily Rosa in 1998 became the youngest person to publish in a medical journal (at 9-years-old) when her school science project was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998. It demonstrated that Reiki (a type of alternative medicine) practitioners could not detect the alleged "life force" under experimental conditions.

A study published in the November 11, 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 42% of Americans had used complementary and alternative therapies, up from 34% in 1990.

By 2001 some form of complementary and alternative medicine training was being offered by at least 75 out of 125 medical schools in the US.

1 comment:

  1. you forget to mention the ganoderma lucidum.
    you had generallized the alternative medicine.

    ReplyDelete