Alternative Medicine, also called unconventional medicine, is therapeutic practices, techniques, and beliefs that are outside the realm of mainstream Western health care. Alternative medicine emphasizes therapies that improve quality of life, prevent disease, and address conditions that conventional medicine has limited success in curing, such as chronic back pain and certain cancers. Proponents of alternative medicine believe that these approaches to healing are safer and more natural and have been shown through experience to work (Neil, 2003). In certain countries, alternative medical practices are the most widely used methods of health care. However, many practitioners of modern conventional medicine believe these practices are unorthodox and unproven.
By some estimates 83 million United States residents use alternative medicine, spending more than $27 million a year. Reports from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia also indicate a widespread interest in alternative therapies.
A special report prepared for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Alternative Medicine: Expanding Medical Horizons categorizes alternative medicine practices into six fields. The first field, mind-body intervention, explores the mind’s capacity to affect, and perhaps heal, the body (Burton, 2002). Studies have shown that the mental state has a profound effect on the immune system, and these studies have provoked interest in the mind’s role in the cause and course of disease. Specific mind-body interventions include meditation, hypnosis, art therapy, biofeedback, and mental healing.
Bio-electromagnetic applications, the second field of alternative medicine, make use of the body’s response to non-thermal, non-ionizing radiation. Current uses involve bone repair, nerve stimulation, wound healing, treatment of osteoarthritis, and immune system stimulation.
The third field is alternative systems of medical practice. Each of these systems is characterized by a specific theory of health and disease, an educational program to teach its concepts to new practitioners, and often a legal mandate to regulate its practice (Neil, 2003)...............
