Complementary Medicine:
What is its role in the 21st century?

The terms "alternative medicine" and "complementary medicine" have been tossed about in a good light and a bad light. Just exactly what are they, and what can we reasonably hope they can do for our health? We hope this short article will at least pique your curiosity.

While there are some other methods of healing, we feel the most useful can be placed into the categories of chiropractic medicine, Oriental medicine, herbal and dietary medicine, and body work therapies. Western medicine seeks to eradicate symptoms through the use of drugs and surgeries. In some cases, this approach is effective and preferred. For example, we would not recommend treating a ruptured appendix with herbal therapy! In the case of chronic illness, drug therapy offers little and creates many problems. Did you know the 4th leading cause of death in the United States is pharmaceutical drugs? These are properly prescribed, properly administered, properly taken drugs. The forms of natural healing that we have mentioned above have very few side effects, if any, when administered by properly trained professionals.

Here are some examples of what these therapies can do for you. A compressed spinal nerve will cause more than local pain in your back. It can cause internal dysfunctions as well as pain along the entire spine, not just in the area of the misaligned vertebrae. Were you aware that Chinese medicine has exactly the same success in treating peptic ulcer disease, but they use no drugs? A combination of acupuncture, dietary changes, and herbs are prescribed according to the exact imbalance diagnosed using the symptoms, pulses, and tongue appearance. Chinese medicine has been recognized by the National Institute of Health to be effective in the treatment of menopause, asthma, pain, Bell's palsy, and some forms of hearing loss, to name just a few. Soft tissue tension and pain cannot be relieved with drugs for very long. Dosage tolerance (needing more and more to suppress the pain), addiction, side effects, and other disorders requiring more drugs usually occur. Did you know non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Motrin, Advil, aspirin, and others cause 30,000 hospitalizations and 1500 deaths per year due primarily to bleeding ulcers? Were you aware that stress is the number one killer of Americans- not heart disease, not diabetes, not cancer? Stress causes these diseases in the first place. Massage therapy is one excellent way to reduce stress. When we are touched in a caring way, chemicals are released in our brain, producing profound relaxation. Massage techniques have been developed over several millennia, reducing pain, producing relaxation and a feeling of inner peace. There are many kinds of massage and touch therapies, lumped here under the category of "body work".