CAM Perceptions and Realities

I've always been a believer in the power of pharmaceuticals and science-driven healthcare. While I don't know enough about CAM to justify my apprehensions with alternative forms of medicine, I have been guilty of assuming that it is less efficacious than standard forms of medicine.

Many people I know have mentioned great personal experiences with therapies such as acupuncture, I often feel that if the healing potential of these therapies was truly as great as certain alternative practitioners posit that they would be mainstream practices.

When reading this week's articles I was surprised to learn that in the early 90s, the time that most of the articles were written, that more Americans had seen CAM practitioners than primary care physicians and had been willing to pay more. I was also surprised that the main cohort of people interviewed who used these therapies were well-educated, middle-aged, white people. This defied many of the assumptions surrounding "alternative" medicine, suggesting that this therapy might be far more main-stream than expected. While most of the people studied who used this therapy admitted that they used CAM in conjunction with a medical doctor, it still speaks to a great following and belief that a more holistic, less biomedical approach may be what patients prefer.

Based on this trend for healthcare, it seems sensible that doctors should place a higher premium on learning about the medical habits of their patients. Even void of possible dangers (ie drug interactions) it is important to understand where patients derive hope and comfort.

One of my major qualms with the articles is the inclusion of self prayer or group prayer as a form of CAM. I think that some of the therapies considered part of alternative medicine, are not truly medically related. There is no way to prescribe optimism or hope, granted neuropharmaceuticals attempt a very obtuse form of this. I think that the lose definitions of medicine aren't truly adequate and under this standard almost anything that confers good health can be considered medicine or in this case CAM, a rather glorious attribution to a field.