the value of CAM
As a Nutrition Counselor and Herbalist my focus is holistic care and complementary and alternative medicine. The value of complementary and alternative medicine (or CAM) cannot be understated in today’s medical infrastructure; so vastly dominated by conventional medicine. Pharmaceuticals have long been known to be addictive, riddled with side-effects and even deadly; while there is a wide array of safe, effective, natural alternatives to these that the public may not even know about. Things such as herbal medicine can act as an alternative to certain medications and as an adjuvant to the treatment of certain conditions, illnesses, or surgeries. Additional CAM therapies can include: nutritional counselling, acupuncture, ayurveda, yoga, massage therapy, the Alexander Technique, aromatherapy, homeopathy, Qi gong, etc.
CAM, and its benefits have been researched for decades regarding treatment or co-treatment of everything from back-pain to cancer. In an article for the Journal of American Board of Family Medicine written nearly 20 years ago a group of doctors and professionals reviewed the data found in 2002 in the National Health Interview Survey to examine the associates between perceived helpfulness of carrying CAM therapies for backpain; they concluded that in the majority of those who used CAM did perceive a benefit (2010). It can be discouraging to know that nearly 20 years ago we were recognizing the benefits of CAM and yet it is still not considered a mainstream option here in the United States.
This is a conservative look as I am seeing articles as early as 1990, 30 years ago, on alternative and complementary therapies. In 1990 a questionnaire for nearly 600 practitioners in the Netherlands found that almost have of those surveyed (47%) used alternative health care methods. (Visser & Peters, 1990) So why are these safe, researched, alternative and complementary therapies still sitting on the back burner in the US? That’s a question I’d like to answer.
References:
Kanodia, A. K., Legedza, A. T., Davis, R. B., Eisenberg, D. M., & Phillips, R. S. (2010). Perceived Benefit of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) for Back Pain: A National Survey. The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine,23(3), 354-362. doi:10.3122/jabfm.2010.03.080252
Visser, G. J., & Peters, L. (1990). Alternative Medicine and General Practitioners in The Netherlands: Towards Acceptance and Integration. Family Practice,7(3), 227-232. doi:10.1093/fampra/7.3.227