Alternative Care Health
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Alternative Care Health and MedicineAlternative Care Health and medicine describes practices used in place of conventional medical treatments. Complementary medicine describes alternative medicine used in conjunction with conventional medicine. The term complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is an umbrella term for both branches. Alternative medicine includes practices that incorporate spiritual, metaphysical, or religious underpinnings; non-European medical traditions, or newly developed approaches to healing.
There are almost 500 such systems. Contemporary use of alternative medicine. Edzard Ernstwrote in the Medical Journal of Australia that "about half the general population in developed countries use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)" (Ernst 2003). A survey(Barnes et al 2004) released in May 2004 by the , part of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, found that in 2002, 36% of Americans used some form of alternative therapy in the past 12 months - a category that included yoga, meditation, herbal treatments and the Atkins diet. If prayer was counted as an alternative therapy, the figure rose to 62.1%. Another study by Astin et al (1998) suggests a similar figure of 40%. A British telephone survey by the BBC of 1209 adults in 1998 shows that around 20% of adults in Britain had used alternative medicine in the past 12 months (Ernst & White 1999) The use of alternative medicine appears to be increasing. Eisenburg et al carried out a study in 1998 which showed that use of alternative medicine had risen from 33.8% in 1990 to 42.1% in 1997. In the United Kingdom, a 2000 report ordered by the House of Lords suggested that "limited data seem to support the idea that CAM use in the United Kingdom is high and is increasing". Medical education Increasing numbers of medical colleges have begun offering courses in alternative medicine. For example, the University of Arizona College of Medicine offers a program in Integrative Medicine under the leadership of Dr. Andrew Weilwhich trains physicians in various branches of alternative medicine which "neither rejects conventional medicine, nor embraces alternative practices uncritically." In three separate research surveys that surveyed the 125 medical schools offering an MD degree, the 19 medical schools offering a DO degree, and 585 schools of nursing in the United States: 60 percent of U.S. medical schools offering an MD degree teach CAM, 95% of Osteopathic medical school teach CAM, and 84.8% of US schools of nursing teach CAM. (Wetzel et al 1998, Saxon et al 2004, Fenton & Morris 2003) In the UK, no medical schools offer courses that teach the clinical practice of alternative medicine. However, alternative medicine is taught in several schools as part of the curriculum. Teaching is based mostly on theory and understanding alternative medicine, with emphasis on being able to communicate with alternative medicine specialists. To obtain competence in practicing clinical alternative medicine, qualifications must be obtained from individual medical societies. The student must have graduated and be a qualified doctor. The British Medical Acupuncture Society, which offers medical acupuncture certificates to doctors, is one such example, as is the College of Naturopathic Medicine UK and Ireland. However, the term is very debated within the scientific arena, since it has been mainly used in public health discourse (mostly among physicians and sociologists) only in US and UK during the last decades. Other continental European scientific communities -- with even a much longer history in traditional medicineor herbal medicine(such us Germany or France)-- do not know this term, neither they use it. The National Institute of Health in US defines "Complementary and Alternative Medicine" (CAM) as "a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not presently considered to be part of conventional medicine". Bioelectromagnetic-based therapies involve the unconventional use of electromagnetic fields, such as pulsed fields, magnetic fields, or alternating-current or direct-current fields. CAM is often erroneously confused in Western countries with traditional medicine. Cheers, For your pets: Visit PetAlive.com, by Native Remedies, for 100% Natural and Safe Herbal Remedies for Pets
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