Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) is becoming increasingly popular in the United States. Americans are starting to seek a more holistic approach to health, and are supplementing conventional Western Medicine with natural products and services that are considered to help promote wellness and prevent diseases. CAM can be defined as “a set of medical and healthcare systems, practices, and products that are not part of that country’s own tradition and are not integrated into the dominant healthcare system” (NCCAM 2002).

The kind of people in the United States that are most likely to use CAM are women (Barnes et al. 2004), people with higher household income ethnic minorities (Barnes et al. 2004), and people with chronic health problems such as anxiety, back pain, and headaches (Astin 1998). Studies have shown that people aren’t necessarily dissatisfied with US medicine, but are starting to use CAM as a means to take control of their own health, increase their options for treatment, and not rely solely on conventional medical care (Eisenberg et al 2001).

The top 10 CAM treatments in the United States are (Barnes et al. 2004):

 1) Prayer for one’s own health 

2) Prayer for someone else’s health

3) Non-vitamin, nonmineral, natural products

4) Deep Breathing Exercises

5) Prayer Group

6) Meditation

7) Chiropractic Care

8) Yoga

9) Massage

10) Diet-based therapies.

What is interesting about CAM, and how it is used and perceived in the United States, is that in many developing countries, CAM practices and treatments are considered traditional medicine that have been used for hundreds of years. Any given practice can simultaneously be traditional or alternative depending on the location of its use. Some countries (China, North and South Korea, and Vietnam) have also fully integrated traditional medicine into their healthcare systems (WHO 2003). For example, in China, traditional herbs constitute 30-50% of total medicinal consumption. About 80% of the world’s population uses traditional systems of medicine for health care with plants as the dominant component (Mukherjee & Wahile 2006).

Certain diseases and conditions have also sparked a disproportionate use of complementary and alternative treatments. Cancer, for example, due to its expensive and extensive treatment regime, has caused the afflicted individuals to resort to other methods of treatment as well such as prayer, diet, and meditation. In Brazil, up to 89% of cancer patients use CAM (Holtz 2008). Current research efforts are also trying to evaluate the effectiveness of immune modulation or enhancement, which if successful, could help enhance or inhibit the immune system’s responses (NCCAM 2002). This could be particularly helpful to those afflicted with HIV/AIDS in countries all over the world.

As CAM increases in popularity, and more evidence-based research emerges on different treatments, public health officials should consider implementing certain CAM techniques into policy and interventions. Based on a nation’s resources (natural and economic), it might be a more viable option to integrate alternative medicine into the traditional mode of healthcare delivery. Overall, people are finding different methods that they believe will help benefit their health, and I think this is a good opportunity to bridge the gap in cultural differences in the practice of medicine.

Astin, J. A. 1998. “Why patients use alternative medicine.” JAMA 279:1548-1553.

Barnes et al. 2004. CAM use among adults: United States, 2002. Advance data from vital and health statistics. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad343.pdf.

Eisenberg D.M. et al. 2001. “Perceptions about complementary therapies relative to conventional therapies among adults who use both: results from a national survey.” Annuals of Internal Medicine 135:344-351.

Holtz, Carol. 2008. Global Health Care: Issues and Policies Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Mukherjee, P.K, & Wahile, A. 2006. Integrated approaches toward drug development from Ayurveda and other Indian system of medicines. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 103:25-35.

NCCAM. 2002. Get The Facts: What is Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)? Retrieved December 4, 2013 from http://nccam.nih.gov/health/whatiscam/

WHO. 2003. Traditional Medicine. Retrieved December 3, 2013 from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs134.pdf .