Alternative Systems of Medical Practice
Overview
Worldwide, only an estimated 10 to 30 percent of human healthcare is delivered by conventional, biomedically oriented practitioners. The remaining 70 to 90 percent ranges from self-care, according to folk principles, to care given in an organized healthcare system based on an alternative tradition or practice.
Popular healthcare is the kind most people practice and receive at home, such as giving herbal tea to someone who has a cold. Community-based healthcare, which reflects the health needs, beliefs, and natural environments of those who use it, refers to the nonprofessionalized but specialized healthcare practices of many rural and urban people. Professionalized healthcare is more formalized; practitioners undergo more standardized training and work in established locations.
Professionalized Healthcare Systems
The professionalized healthcare practitioners often have conducted scientific studies about the causes of illness and explanations and results of treatment. Each of the major professionalized systems has certain characteristics: a theory of health and disease; an educational scheme to teach its concepts; a delivery system involving practitioners; a material support system to produce medicines and therapeutic devices; a legal and economic mandate to regulate its practice; cultural expectations about the medical system's role; and a means to confer professional status on approved providers. These professionalized medical systems include traditional oriental medicine, acupuncture, ayurvedic medicine, homeopathy, anthroposophy, naturopathy, and environmental medicine.
Traditional Oriental Medicine
Traditional oriental medicine is a sophisticated set of many systematic techniques and methods, including acupuncture, herbal medicine, acupressure, qi gong, and oriental massage. The most striking characteristic of oriental medicine is its emphasis on diagnosing disturbances of qi, or vital energy, in health and disease. Diagnosis in oriental medicine involves the classical procedures of observation, listening, questioning, and palpation, including feeling pulse quality and sensitivity of body parts.
The professionalization of oriental medicine has taken diverse paths in both East Asia and the United States. Currently, the model in the People's Republic of China, which was established after the 1949 revolution, involves the organized training of practitioners in schools of traditional Chinese medicine. The curriculum of these schools includes acupuncture, oriental massage, herbal medicine, and pharmacology, though the clinical style of making a diagnosis and then designing a treatment plan is the one traditionally associated with herbal medicine. The graduates of these colleges are generally certified in one of the four specialty areas at a training level roughly equivalent to that of a Western country's bachelor's degree.
In the United States, the professional practitioner base for oriental medicine is organized around acupuncture and oriental massage. There are about 6,500 acupuncturist practitioners in the United States. The American Oriental Body Work Therapy Association has approximately 1,600 members representing practitioners of tuina, shiatsu, and related techniques. Many American schools of acupuncture are evolving into "colleges of oriental medicine" by adding courses in oriental massage, herbal medicine, and dietary interventions. They also are offering diplomas, master's degrees, and doctor's degrees in oriental medicine. The legal sanctioning of oriental medical practice is most extensive in New Mexico, where the acupuncture community has established an exclusive profession of oriental medicine. Their legal scope of practice is currently similar to that of primary care M.D.s and D.O.s (doctors of osteopathy), and their State statute restricts other licensed New Mexico health professionals' ability to advertise or bill for oriental medicine or acupuncture services.
Extensive research has been done in China through the institutions of traditional Chinese medicine, but only in the past quarter century have biomedical scientists in China characterized and identified active agents in much of traditional medical formulary. The use of traditional oriental herbal medicines and formulas in China and Japan has been studied for therapeutic value in the following areas: chronic hepatitis; rheumatoid arthritis; hypertension; atopic eczema; various immunologic disorders, including acquired immunodefiency syndrome (AIDS); and certain cancers. It would be useful to repeat these studies in the United States, assessing U.S. clinical populations according to high-quality research criteria.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture involves stimulating specific anatomic points in the body for theerapeutic purposes. Puncturin the skin with a needle is the usual method, but practitioners also use heat, pressure, friction, suction, or impulses of electromagnetic energy to stimulate the points. In the past 40 years, acupuncture has become a well-known, reasonably-available treatment in developed and developing countries. Acupuncture is used to regulate or correct the flow of qi to restore health.
Modern theories of acupuncture are based on laboratory research conducted in the past 40 years. Acupuncture points have certain electrical properties, and stimulating these points alters chemical neurotransmitters in the body. The physiological effects of acupuncture stimulation in experimental animals have been well documented, and in the past 20 years acupuncture has become an increasingly established healthcare practice. An estimated 3,000 conventionally trained U.S. physicians have taken courses to incorporate acupuncture in their medical practices.
Acupuncture is one of the most thoroughly researched and documented of the so-called alternative medical practices. A series of controlled studies has shown evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of a variety of conditions, including osteoarthritis, chemotherapy-induced nausea, asthma, back pain, painful menstrual cycles, bladder instability, and migraine headaches. Studies on acupuncture also have shown positive results in the areas of chronic pain management and in the management of drug addition, two areas where conventional Western medicine has had only a modicum of success.
Ayurveda
Ayurveda is India's traditional, natural system of medicine that has been practiced for more than 5,000 years. Ayurveda provides an integrated approach to preventing and treating illness through lifestyle states that all disease begins with an imbalance or stress in the individual's consciousness. Lifestyle interventions are a major ayurvedic preventive and therapeutic approach. There are ten ayurveda clinics in North America, including one hospital-based clinic that has served 25,000 patients since 1985.
In India, ayurvedic practitioners receive state-recognized, institutionalized training in parallel to their physician counterparts in India's state-supported systems for conventional Western biomedicine and homeopathic medicine. The research base is growing concerning the physiological effects of meditative techniques and yoga postures in Indian medical literature and Western psychological literature. Published studies have documented reductions in cardiovascular disease risk factors, including blood pressure, cholesterol, and reaction to stress, in individuals who practice Ayurvedic methods.
Laboratory and clinical studies on ayurvedic herbal preparations and other therapies have shown them to have a range of potentially beneficial effects for preventing and treating certain cancers, treating infectious disease, promoting health, and treating aging. Mechanisms underlying these effects may include free-radical scavenging effects, immune system modulation, brain neurotransmitter modulation, and hormonal effects.
Homeopathic Medicine
Homeopathic medicine is practiced worldwide, especially in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. However, even in the United States the homeopathic drug market is a multimillion-dollar industry. Homeopathic remedies, which are made from naturally occurring plant, animal, or mineral substances, are recognized and regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are manufactured by established pharmaceutical companies under strict guidelines. Homeopathy is used to treat acute and chronic health problems as well as for disease prevention and health promotion. Recent clinical trials suggest that homeopathic medicines have a positive effect on allergic rhinitis, fibrositis, and influenza.
Basic research in homeopathy has involved investigations into the chemical and biological activity of highly diluted substances. Some homeopathic medicines are diluted to concentrations as low as 10-30 to 10-20,000. This particular aspect of homeopathic theory and practice has caused many modern scientists to reject homeopathic medicine. Critics of homeopathy contend that such extreme dilutions of the medicines are beyond the point at which any active molecules of the medicine can theoretically still be found in the solution. On the other hand, scientists who accept the potential benefits of homeopathic theory suggest several theories to explain how highly diluted homeopathic medicines may act. Using recent developments in quantum physics, they have proposed that electromagnetic energy in the medicines may interact with the body on some level. Researchers in physical chemistry have proposed the "memory of water" theory, whereby the structure of the water-alcohol solution is altered by the medicine during the process of dilution and retains this structure even after none of the actual substance remains.
Anthroposophically Extended Medicine
Anthroposophically extended medicine is an extension of Western biomedicine and also incorporates approaches and therapeutics from two alternative medicine movements: naturopathy and homeopathy. Anthroposophically extended medicine is most prominent in Europe, but there are an estimated 30 to 100 M.D.s in the United States who practice it also. Hundreds of uniquely formulated medications are used in anthroposophical practice, each seeking to match the key dynamic forces in plants, animals, and minerals with disease processes in humans to stimulate healing. Much research in anthroposophically extended medicine has been connected with attempts to understand the nature of disease, assess treatments qualitatively, and understand how the essential properties of the objects under investigation could be applied in therapy.
Naturopathic Medicine
Naturopathic medicine, as a distinct American healthcare profession, is almost 100 years old. It was founded as a formal healthcare system at the turn of the century by medical practitioners from various natural therapeutic disciplines. By the early 1900s, more than 20 naturopathic medical schools existed, and naturopathic physicians were licensed in most States. Today there are more than 1,000 licensed naturopathic doctors in the United States.
As practiced today, naturopathic medicine integrates traditional natural therapeutics - including botanical medicine, clinical nutrition, homeopathy, acupuncture, traditional oriental medicine, hydrotherapy, and naturopathic manipulative therapy - with modern scientific medical diagnostic science and standards of care. The medical research base of naturopathic practice consists of empirical documentation of treatments using case history observations, medical records, and summaries of practitioners' clinical experiences.
At present, the two accredited naturopathic medical schools in the United States have active research departments. Naturopathic researchers have investigated the pharmacology and physiological effects of nutritional and natural therapeutic agents, and naturopathic physicians have been active in the investigation of new homeopathic remedies and in the natural treatment of women's health problems. The most recently completed naturopathic study in women's health tested the clinical and endocrine effects of a botanical formula as an alternative to estrogen replacement therapy.
Environmental Medicine
Environmental medicine, like anthroposophically extended medicine, also can be viewed as an extension of modern biomedicine. Environmental medicine traces its roots to the practice of allergy treatment and the work of Dr. Theron Randolph, in the 1940s, who identified a variety of common foods and chemicals that were able to trigger the onset of acute and chronic illness even when exposure was at relatively low levels.
Environmental medicine recognizes that illness in individuals can be caused by a broad range of incitant substances, including foods, chemicals found at home and in the workplace, and chemicals in the air, water, and food. Today there are 3,000 physicians worldwide practicing environmental medicine, and there are several environmental control units in the United States and one in Canada, where patients' sensitivities are unmasked through fasting and complete avoidance of potentially incitant chemicals.
Research, in this field, has been directed at clinical treatment of patients and at evaluation of the diagnostic and treatment techniques used by practitioners. Other studies have supported the use of the approaches of environmental medicine in treating arthritis, asthma, chemical sensitivity, colitis, depression, eczema, fatigue, and hyperactivity.
The belief that humans can get sick from cumulative low-level environmental exposure to certain incitants is not well accepted by the conventional medical community. However, because "sick building syndrome" and other chronic conditions that cannot be explained by other phenomena are being seen with greater frequency, environmental medicine offers a theoretical groundwork for dealing with such phenomena. Indeed, environmental medicine is in a position to be a leading force in the investigation of ways to reduce the incidence of these and other disorders.
Community-Based Healthcare Practices
Community-based healthcare practices are varied and are found throughout the United States. Like other healthcare specialists, community-based healers may emphasize naturalistic, personalistic, energetic explanatory models or a combination. Traditional midwives and herbalists and, at the present time, pragmatic weight loss specialists are probably the best known of community-based practitioners who follow the naturalistic model. In addition, the Native American medicine man or medicine woman is a community-based traditional healer with primarily naturalistic skills, that is, the skills of an herbalist in particular. Some medicine people are also shamans, in which case they are often distinguished as holy men and women.
In contrast to professionalized practitioners, community-based healers often do not have set locations
such as offices or clinics for delivering care but do so in homes, at ceremonial sites, or even right where they stand. Community-based healing of the personalistic variety can also be "distant," that is, it does not require that practitioner and patient be in each other's presence. Prayers or shamanic journeys, for example, can be requested and "administered" at any time, and charm cures are sometimes delivered by telephone.
Meanwhile, community-based systems also thrive in urban areas. These systems include the popular weight loss programs and other 12-step programs. Often the practitioners rent office space and emphasize contact between client and practitioner, and they may charge considerable fees. Since these practitioners depend on their healing practice for their livelihood, they advertise and so may be easier to identify and contact for study purposes.
Native American
Native American Indian community-based medical systems have a number of rituals and practices: sweating and purging, usually done in a "sweat lodge"; the use of herbal remedies gathered from the surrounding environment and sometimes traded over long distances; and shamanic healing involving naturalistic or personalistic healing. Tribes such as the Lakota and Dineh (Navajo) also use practices such as the medicine wheel, sacred hoop, and the "sing," which is a healing ceremony rite that lasts from two to nine days and nights and is guided by a highly skilled specialist called a "singer."
Formal research into the healing ceremonies and herbal medicines conducted and used by bona fide Native American Indian healers or holy people is almost nonexistent, even though Native American Indians believe they positively cure both the mind and body. Ailments and diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, thyroid conditions, cancer, skin rashes, and asthma reportedly have been cured by Native American Indian doctors who are knowledgeable about the complex ceremonies.
Latin American
Latin American community-based practices include curanderismo, which is a folk system of medicine that includes two distinct components: a humoral model for classifying activity, food, drugs, and illness; and a series of folk illnesses.
In the humoral component of curanderismo, things could be classified as having qualitative (not literal) characteristics of hot or cold, dry or moist. According to this theory, good health is preserved by maintaining a balance of hot and cold. Thus, a good meal will contain both hot and cold foods, and a person with a hot disease must be given cold remedies and vice versa. Again, a person who is exposed to cold when excessively hot may "take cold" and become ill.
The second component, the folk illnesses, is actively in use in much of Mexico and among less educated Hispanic U.S. citizens. Studies have found that as many as 96 percent of Mexican-American households (more frequent in the less Americanized communities) treated members for Hispanic folk illnesses. Similarly, high use patterns among Mexican migrant workers have been found in Florida and Mexico.
Although no formal effectiveness studies seem to have been done on this system, its wide popularity and the research suggesting the relevance of the folk diagnoses, for biomedical practice, indicate the need for further demographic and effectiveness studies.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an example of an urban community-based healing system for helping people, whose lives are damaged by the consumption of alcohol, to stop drinking. Founded in 1935 by Bob Smith, M.D. and Bill Wilson, two alcoholics, it is a patient-centered self-help fellowship of men and women. AA has burgeoned and today is widely considered the most successful existing method for supporting sobriety.
In contrast to most community-based systems, a very large literature exists analyzing AA. Several models attempt to explain its success. One popular psychometric model interprets AA as a "cult" and the achievement of sobriety as a "conversion experience." Another model, however, asserts that members recover by integrating their own experiences with alcohol with those of others in the group and by learning and practicing some new ways to behave. Through these new ways, AA members feel as if they are living apart from the urban materialist norm; that the cause of alcoholism is not at issue; that people should share, not compete; and that the individual need not rise above the rest (spiritual anonymity).
Studies have concluded that active AA membership allows up to 68 percent of alcoholics to drink less or not at all for up to a year, and 40 to 50 percent to achieve sobriety for many years. More active or dedicated members (those who attend meetings more often) remain sober longer.
Bioelectromagnetic Applications
Electromagnetic Fields
Bioeletromagnetics (BEM) is an emerging science that studies how living organisms interact with electromagnetic (EM) fields. Electrical phenomena are found in all living organisms, and electrical currents in the body can produce magnetic fields that extend outside the body. Those that extend outside the body can be influenced by external magnetic and EM fields. Changes in the body's natural fields may produce physical and behavioral changes.
Endogenous (internal) fields are distinguished from exogenous (external) fields. The latter can be natural, such as the earth's geomagnetic field, or artificial, such as power lines, transformers, appliances, radio transmitters, or medical devices. Oscillating nonionizing EM fields in the extremely low frequency (ELF) range can have vigorous biological effects that may be beneficial. Changes in the field configuration and exposure pattern of low-level EM fields can produce specific biological responses, and certain frequencies have specific effects on body tissues.
Electromagnetic Research & Studies
The mechanism by which EM fields produce biological effects is under increasing study. At the cutting edge of BEM research is the question of how endogenous EM fields change with consciousness. Nonionizing BEM medical applications are classified according to whether they are thermal or nonthermal in biological tissue. Thermal applications of nonionizing radiation include radio frequency (RF) hyperthermia, laser and RF surgery, and RF diathermy.
The most important BEM modalities in alternative medicine are nonthermal applications of nonionizing radiation. Major new applications of nonthermal, nonionizing EM fields are bone repair, nerve stimulation, wound healing, treatment of osteoarthritis, electroacupuncture, tissue regeneration, and immune system stimulation.
In the study of other alternative medical treatments, BEM offers a unified conceptual framework that may help explain how diagnostic and therapeutic techniques such as acupuncture and homeopathy may produce results that are hard to understand from a more conventional viewpoint.
Diet, Nutrition, Lifestyle Changes
Preventing & Treating Chronic Disease
Throughout evolution, human beings adapted to a wide range of naturally occurring foods, but the types of food and the mix of nutrients (in terms of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) remained relatively constant. Food supplies were often precarious, and the threat of death from starvation was a constant preoccupation for most early humans.
However, about 10,000 years ago the agricultural revolution began making profound dietary changes in many human populations. The ability to produce and store large quantities of dried foods led to preferential cultivation of some foods, such as grains, which constituted new challenges to the human digestive system. Then, about 200 years ago, the Industrial Revolution introduced advances in food production, processing, storage, and distribution. Recent technological innovations, along with increased material well-being and lifestyles that have allowed people more freedom in deciding what and when they wish to eat, have led to even further major dietary changes in developed countries. Because changes in the dietary patterns of the more technologically developed countries, such as the United States, have been so dramatic and rapid, the people consuming these affluent diets have had little time to adapt biologically to the types and quantities of food that are available to them today. The longer term adverse health effects of the diet prevailing in these countries - characterized by an excess of energy-dense foods rich in animal fat, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, and refined carbohydrates but lacking in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables - have become apparent only in recent decades.
Because of the recent, rapid rise in chronic illness related directly or indirectly to diet, the focus of nutrition research has shifted away from eliminating nutritional deficiency to dealing with chronic diseases caused by nutritional excess. Another concern among nutrition researchers is the accumulation of evidence indicating that a less-than-adequate intake of some micronutrients, over a long period, may increase the risks of developing coronary heart disease, cancers, cataracts, and birth defects. In recent decades, the data on the relationship between certain dietary habits and nutritional intake have been growing exponentially. Designing interventions based on this wealth of research has become increasingly more difficult and complex.
Dietary Supplements
The Federal Government's approach to dietary intervention, formulated by boards composed of nutrition scientist, generally does not recommend supplementing the typical American diet with vitamins or nutrients beyond the recommended daily allowances (RDAs), nor does it suggest that some foods never be eaten. In contrast, many alternative dietary approaches contend that no amount of manipulation of the typical American diet is enough to promote optimum health or prevent eventual chronic illness. These alternative approaches represent a continuum of philosophies ranging from the concept that supplementing the typical American diet somewhat beyond the RDAs is necessary to promote optimum health, to the idea that supplementation well beyond the RDAs is often required to reverse the effects of long-term deficiencies. Other approaches advocate drastic dietary modification, either eliminating or adding certain types of foods or macronutrients, to treat specific types of conditions such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Finally, there is the view that certain major staples of typical American diet, such as meat and dairy products, are basically unhealthy and should be generally avoided.
There is a growing body of data supporting the notion that the RDAs for mineral, such as calcium and magnesium, may be too low and that supplementation may be necessary to prevent the onset of chronic diseases. In addition, the RDAs for a number of vitamins and micronutrients, such as vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, folate, and beta-carotene, may not be adequate to prevent chronic illness. For example, recent studies have found that the RDA for folate may need to be doubled for women as well as men.
Orthomolecular Medicine
Orthomolecular medicine-the therapeutic use of high-dose vitamins to treat chronic disease-promotes improving health and treating disease by using the optimum concentration of substances normally present in the body. Increasing the intake of such nutrients to levels well above those usually associated with preventing overt deficiency disease may have health benefits for some people. There is at least preliminary evidence that orthomolecular remedies may be effective in treating AIDS; brochial asthma; cancer; cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and stroke; lymphedema; and mental and neurological disorders.
Alternative Diets
A variety of alternative diets are offered for treating cancer, cardiovascular disease, and food allergies. Virtually all of these interventions focus on eating more fresh and freshly prepared vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes. Allergy to food has become a major area of research. Food intolerance is being studied as a causal or contributing factor in rheumatoid arthritis, and there is evidence that food-elimination diets may help many hyperactive children.
Some alternate dietary lifestyles are believed to offer a greater resistance to illness. These include several variations of the vegetarian diet, such as those consumed by Seventh-Day Adventists and proponents of the macrobiotic diet. Studies have found a significant lowering of risk factors for heart disease and certain forms of cancer in these two groups. Recent studies have also reported that certain cultural eating styles, such as the Asian and Mediterranean diets, appear to lower risk factors for heart disease and certain forms of cancer as well. Although there have been few controlled studies of the benefits of many traditional diets, such as those originally consumed by Native American Indians, diseases such as diabetes and cancer were not a problem for these populations until their diets became more Western, or affluent.
Because dietary and nutritional therapy interventions affect an array of biochemical and physiological processes in the body, evaluating their effectiveness may require equally complex methods. Furthermore, developing a comprehensive healthcare policy that incorporates diet and nutritional interventions may require taking into account Federal feeding programs and dissemination strategies that might present barriers to the effective propagation of adequate nutritional knowledge.
Herbal Medicine
Folk Medicine Traditions
All cultures have long folk medicine traditions that include the use of plants and plant products. Even in ancient cultures, people methodically collected information on herbs and developed well-defined herbal pharmacopoeias. Indeed, well into the twentieth century, much of the pharmacopoeia of scientific medicine was derived from the herbal lore of native peoples. Many drugs commonly used today are of herbal origin. Indeed, about one-quarter of the prescription drugs dispensed by community pharmacies in the United States contain at least one active ingredient derived from plant material.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 4 billion people, 80 percent of the world population, presently use herbal medicine for some aspect of primary healthcare. Herbal medicine is a major component in all indigenous peoples' traditional medicine and a common element in Ayurvedic, homeopathic, naturopathic, traditional oriental, and Native American Indian medicine.
Drug Regulation
Although, the discovery of useful therapeutics from plants has changed the face of medicine and the course of civilization, many people, especially some in the Federal Government, evaluate herbal remedies as though they were either worthless or dangerous. Today in the United States, herbal products can be marketed only as food supplements. An herb manufacturer or distributor can make no specific health claims without FDA approval. A growing number of Americans are interested in herbal preparations.
Two features of European drug regulation make that market more hospitable to natural remedies. First, it costs less and takes less time in Europe to approve medicines as safe and effective. This is especially true of substances that have a long use history and can be approved under the "doctrine of reasonable certainty." European guidelines for the assessment of herbal remedies follow up on WHO's Guidelines for the Assessment of Herbal Medicines, which state that a substance's historical use is a valid way to document safety and efficacy in the absence of scientific evidence to the contrary.
France, where traditional medicines can be sold with labeling based on traditional use, requires licensing by the French Licensing Committee and approval by the French Pharmacopoeia Committee. Germany considers whole herbal products one active ingredient; this makes it simpler to define and approve the product. The German Federal Health Office regulates products such as ginkgo and milk thistle extracts so that potency and manufacturing processes are standardized. England generally follows the rule of prior use; that is, years of use with apparent positive effects and no evidence of detrimental side effects constitute enough evidence - in lieu of other scientific data - that the product is safe.
In Japan, China, and India, patent herbal remedies composed of dried and powdered whole herbs or herb extracts, often in tablet form, are the rule. Traditional herbals are the backbone of China's medicine. Japan's traditional medicine, kampo, is similar to and historically derived from Chinese medicine but includes traditional medicines from Japanese folklore. Herbal medicines are the staple of medical treatment in many developing countries and are used for many types of ailments.
European Phytomedicines
European phytomedicines are among the world's best studied medicines, researched in leading European universities and hospitals. Some have been in clinical use, under medical supervision, for more than ten years, with tens of millions of documented cases. This form of botanical medicine most closely resembles American medicine. In Europe there have been credible research studies reporting positive effects on a variety of chronic illnesses for herbs such as Silybum marianum (milk thistle), Ginkgo biloba (ginkgo) Vaccinium myrtillus (bilberry extract), and Ilex guayusa. Many herbs in China have been studied extensively by methods that are acceptable from the Western perspective; among these herbs are ginseng, fresh ginger rhizome, Chinese foxglove root, baical skullcap root, wild chrysanthemum flower, and licorice root. A number of Ayurvedic herbs also have recently been studied in India under modern scientific conditions, including Eclipta alba, Indian gooseberry, neem, turmeric, and trikatu.
Reports of positive effects of herbal preparations in developing countries and Native American Indian herbs are primarily anecdotal. However, since much modern-day medicine is directly or indirectly derived from such folklore sources, it seems illogical to conclude that there are no more significant treatments or cures for major diseases to be found, in the world, from plant sources.
Manual Healing
Overview
Touch and manipulation, with the hands, have been in use in health and medical practice since the beginning of medical care. Physicians' hands were once their most important diagnostic and therapeutic tool. Today, however, many medical and health practitioners tend to retreat from physical contact with the patient, distanced by diagnostic equipment and legal and time constraints.
Manual healing methods are based on the understanding that dysfunction of a part of the body often affects secondarily the function of other discreet, not necessarily directly connected, body parts. Consequently, theories and processes have been developed for correcting secondary dysfunctions by manipulating soft tissues or realigning body parts. Overcoming misalignments and manipulating soft tissues bring the parts back to optimal function, and the body returns to health.
Osteopathic Medicine
One of the earliest U.S. healthcare systems to use manual healing methods was osteopathic medicine. In 1993 more than 32,000 American-educated and -licensed D.O.s were practicing in the United States. More than 60 percent of osteopathic physicians are involved in primary care - family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, and obstetrics-gynecology. An extensive body of work supports the use of osteopathic techniques for musculoskeletal and nonmusculoskeletal problems. Nearly all osteopathically oriented research has been funded from the private sector.
Chiropractic Science
Chiropractic science is concerned with investigating the relationship between structure (primarily of the spine) and function (primarily of the nervous system) of the human body to restore and preserve health. Chiropractic medicine applies such knowledge to diagnosing and treating structural dysfunctions that can affect the nervous system. Chiropractic physicians use manual procedures and interventions, not surgical or chemotherapeutic ones. In 1993, more than 45,000 licensed chiropractors were practicing in the United States.
Chiropractic specialty areas are extremely pertinent to other medical specialties, such as radiology, orthopedics, neurology, and sports medicine. Current chiropractic research interests include back and other pain, somatovisceral disorders, and reliability studies.
Massage Therapy
Massage therapy, one of the oldest methods in healthcare practice, is the scientific manipulation of the soft body tissues to return those tissues to their normal state. Massage consists of a group of manual techniques that include applying fixed or movable pressure and holding and causing the body to move. Primarily the hands are used, but sometimes forearms, elbows, and feet are used also. These techniques can affect the musculoskeletal, circulatory-lymphatic, and nervous systems. Massage therapy encompasses the concept of vis medicatrix naturae - helping the body heal itself - and is aimed at achieving or increasing health and well-being. Touch is the fundamental medium of massage therapy.
Massage therapists are licensed by 25 States, the District of Columbia, and several localities. Most States require 500 or more hours of education from a recognized school program and a licensing examination. Massage therapy techniques include Swedish massage, deep-tissue massage, sports massage, neuromuscular massage, and manual lymph drainage. Other physical healing methods include reflexology, zone therapy, tuina, acupressure, Rolfing, Trager, Feldenkrais method and Alexander technique.
Biofield Therapeutics
Biofield therapeutics - laying on of hands - is also a very old form of healing. The earliest Eastern references are in the Huang Ti Nei Ching Su Wen (The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine), dated between 2,500 and 5,000 years ago. The underlying rationales cluster around two views: first, that the healing force comes from a source other than the practitioner - God, the cosmos, or another supernatural entity - and second, that a human biofield directed, modified, or amplified in some way by the practitioner is the operative mechanism.
During biofield treatment, the practitioner places hands directly on or near the patient's body to improve general health or treat a specific dysfunction. Treatment sessions may take from 20 minutes to an hour or more; a series of sessions is often needed to treat some disorders. There is consensus among practitioners that the biofield permeates the physical body and extends outward for several inches. Extension of the external biofield depends on the person's emotional state and health. Biofield practitioners have a holistic focus. About 50,000 practitioners provide 18 million sessions annually in the United States.
At least three forms of biofield therapeutics are used in medical care inpatient and outpatient settings: healing touch, therapeutic touch, and SHEN therapy. No generally accepted theory accounts for the effect of these therapies.
Mind-Body Control
Overview
Most traditional medical systems make use of the interconnectedness of mind and body and the power of each to affect the other. During the past 30 years there has been a growing scientific movement to explore the mind's capacity to affect the body. The clinical aspect of this enterprise is called mind-body medicine. Mind and body are so integrally related that it makes little sense to refer to therapies as having impact just on the mind or the body.
Mind-body interventions often help patients experience and express their illness in new, clearer ways. Distinctions between curing and healing have little place in contemporary medical practice but are important to patients. Perceived meaning has direct consequences to health. The placebo response is one of the most widely known examples of mind-body interactions in contemporary, scientific medicine, yet it is also one of the most undervalued, neglected assets in medical practice. That the placebo response relies heavily on the relationship between doctor and patient says a great deal about the importance of the doctor-patient relationship and the need to provide further medical training on understanding and using this relationship. The therapeutic potential of spirituality, as well as religion, also has been neglected in the teaching and practice of medicine.
Interest in the mind's role in the cause and course of cancer has been substantially stimulated by the discovery of the complex interactions between the mind and the neurological and immune systems, the subject of the rapidly expanding discipline of psychoneuroimmunology. The profound differences in the psychological stances taken by people who survive cancer suggest that there is extreme variation both among cultures and within cultures.
Specific mind-body interventions include psychotherapy, support groups, meditation, imagery, hypnosis, biofeedback, yoga, dance therapy, music therapy, art therapy, and prayer and mental healing.
Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy directly addresses a person's emotional and mental health, which is, in turn, closely interwoven with his or her physical health. It encompasses a wide range of specific treatments from combining medication with discussion, to simply listening to the concerns of a patient, to using more active behavioral and emotive approaches. It also should be understood more generally as the matrix of interaction in which all the helping professions operate. Conventional psychotherapy is conducted primarily by means of psychologic methods such as suggestion, persuasion, psychoanalysis, and reeducation. It can be divided into general categories. All of the therapies can be undertaken either individually or in groups.
Research indicates that psychotherapeutic treatment can hasten a recovery from a medical crisis and is in some cases the best treatment for it. Psychotherapy also appears to be valuable in the treatment of somatic illnesses in which physical symptoms appear to have no medical cause. These symptoms are often improved markedly with psychotherapy. In addition, psychotherapy has been shown to speed patients' recovery time from illness. This, in turn, leads to smaller medical bills and fewer return visits to medical practitioners.
Support Groups
Support groups, as the research literature demonstrates, can have a powerful positive effect in a wide variety of physical illnesses, from heart disease to cancer, from asthma to strokes. Indeed, one study found that women with breast cancer who took part in a support group lived an average of 18 months longer (a doubling of the survival time following diagnosis) than those who did not participate. In addition, all the long-term survivors belonged to the therapy group.
Support groups have two other major benefits:
they help members form bonds with each other, an experience that may empower the rest of their lives; and


they are low cost or even "no cost" (for example, Alcoholics Anonymous). 

Meditation
Mediation is a self-directed practice for relaxing the body and calming the mind. Most meditative techniques have come to the West from Eastern religious practices, particularly India, China, and Japan, but can be found in all cultures of the world. Until recently, the primary purpose of meditation has been religious, although its health benefits have long been recognized. During the past 15 years, it has been explored as a way of reducing stress on both mind and body. It is often recommend it as a way of reducing high blood pressure.
Some studies have found that regular meditation can reduce healthcare use; increases longevity and quality of life; reduces chronic pain; reduces anxiety; reduces high blood pressure; reduces serum cholesterol level; reduces substance abuse; increases intelligence-related measures; reduces post-traumatic stress syndrome in Vietnam veterans; reduces blood pressure; and lowers blood cortisol levels initially brought on by stress.
Imagery
Imagery is both a mental process (as in imagining) and a wide variety of procedures used in therapy to encourage changes in attitudes, behavior, or physiological reactions. As a mental process, it is often defined as "any thought representing a sensory quality." It includes, as well as the visual, all the senses - aural, tactile, olfactory, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic.
Imagery has been successfully tested as a strategy for alleviating nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy in cancer patients, to relieve stress, and to facilitate weight gain in cancer patients. It has been successfully used and tested for pain control in a variety of settings; as adjunctive therapy for several diseases, including diabetes; and with geriatric patients to enhance immunity.
Imagery is usually combined with other behavioral approaches. It is best known in the treatment of cancer as a means to help patients mobilize their immune systems, but it also is used as part of a multidisciplinary approach to cardiac rehabilitation and in many settings that specialize in treating chronic pain.
Hypnosis
Hypnosis and hypnotic suggestion have been a part of healing from ancient times. The induction of trance states and the use of therapeutic suggestion were a central feature of the early Greek healing temples, and variations of these techniques were practiced throughout the ancient world.
Modern hypnosis began in the eighteenth century with Franz Anton Mesmer, who used what he called "magnetic healing" to treat a variety of psychological and psychophysiological disorders, such as hysterical blindness, paralysis, headaches, and joint pains. Since then, the fortunes of hypnosis have ebbed and flowed. Freud, at first, found it extremely effective in treating hysteria and then, troubled by the sudden emergence of powerful emotions in his patients and his own difficulty with its use, abandoned it.
In the past 50 years, however, hypnosis has experienced a resurgence, first with physicians and dentists and more recently with psychologists and other mental health professionals. Today, it is widely used for addictions, such as smoking and drug use, for pain controls, and for phobias, such as the fear of flying.
One of the most dramatic uses of hypnosis is the treatment of congenital ichthyosis (fish skin disease), a genetic skin disorder that covers the surface of the skin with grotesque hard, wartlike, layered crust. Hypnosis is, however, most frequently used in more common ailments, either independently or in concert with other treatment, including the management of pain in a variety of settings, reduction of bleeding in hemophiliacs, stabilization of blood sugar in diabetics, reduction in severity of attacks of hay fever and asthma, increased breast size, the cure of warts, the production of skin blisters and bruises, and control of reaction to allergies such as poison ivy and certain foods.
Biofeedback
Biofeedback is a treatment method that uses monitoring instruments to feed back to patients physiological information of which they are normally unaware. By watching the monitoring device, patients can learn, by trial and error, to adjust their thinking and other mental processes in order to control bodily processes heretofore thought to be involuntary--such as blood pressure, temperature, gastrointestinal functioning, and brain wave activity.
Biofeedback is used to treat a very wide variety of conditions and diseases, ranging from stress, alcohol and other addictions, sleep disorders, epilepsy, respiratory problems, and fecal and urinary incontinence to muscle spasms, partial paralysis, or muscle dysfunction caused by injury, migraine headaches, hypertension, and a variety of vascular disorders. More applications are being developed yearly.
Yoga
Yoga is a way of life that includes ethical precepts, dietary prescriptions, and physical exercise. Its practitioners have long known that their discipline has the capacity to alter mental and bodily responses normally thought to be far beyond a person's ability to modulate them. During the past 80 years, health professionals in India and the West have begun to investigate the therapeutic potential of yoga. To date, thousands of research studies have been undertaken and have shown that with the practice of yoga a person can, indeed, learn to control such physiologic parameters as blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory function, metabolic rate, skin resistance, brain waves, body temperature, and many other bodily functions.
Regular yogic meditation also has been shown to reduce anxiety levels; cause the heart to work more efficiently and decrease respiratory rate; lower blood pressure and alter brain waves; increase communication between the right and left brain; reduce cholesterol levels (when used with diet and exercise); help people stop smoking; and successfully treat arthritis.
Dance Therapy
Dance therapy began formally in the United States in 1942, and in 1956 dance therapists from across the country founded the American Dance Therapy Association, which has now grown to over 1,100 members. It publishes a journal, the American Journal of Dance Therapy, fosters research, monitors standards for professional practice, and develops guidelines for graduate education.
Dance/movement therapy has been demonstrated to be clinically effective in the following: developing body image, improving self-concept and increasing self-esteem; facilitating attention; ameliorating depression, decreasing fears and anxieties, expressing anger; decreasing isolation, increasing communication skills and fostering solidarity; decreasing bodily tension, reducing chronic pain, and enhancing circulatory and respiratory functions; reducing suicidal ideas, increasing feelings of well-being, and promoting healing; and increasing verbalization.
Music Therapy
Music therapy is used in psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, general hospitals, outpatient clinics, day-care treatment centers, residences for people with developmental disabilities, community mental health centers, drug and alcohol programs, senior centers, nursing homes, hospice programs, correctional facilities, halfway houses, schools, and private practice.
Studies have found music therapy effective as an analgesic, as a relaxant and anxiety reducer for infants and children, and as an adjunctive treatment with burn patients, cancer patients, cerebral palsy patients, and stroke, brain injury, or Parkinson's disease patients.
Art Therapy
Art therapy is a means for the patient to reconcile emotional conflicts, foster self-awareness, and express unspoken and frequently unconscious concerns about his/her disease. In addition to its use in treatment, it can be used to assess individuals, couples, families, and groups. It is particularly valuable with children who often cannot talk about their real concerns.
Research on art therapy has been conducted in clinical, educational, physiological, forensic, and sociological arenas. Studies on art therapy have been conducted in many areas including with burn recovery in adolescent and young patients, with eating disorders; with emotional impairment in young children, with reading performance, with chemical addiction, and with sexual abuse in adolescents.
Prayer and Mental Healing
Prayer and mental healing techniques fall into two main types. In Type I healing, the healer enters a prayerful, altered state of consciousness in which he views himself and the patient as a single entity. There need be no physical contact and there is no attempt to "do anything" or "give something" to the person in need, only the desire to unite and "become one" with him or her and with the Universe, God, or Cosmos. Type II healers, on the other hand, do touch the healee and describe some "flow of energy" through their hands to the patient's areas of pathology. Feelings of heat are common in both healer and healee. These healing techniques are offered only as generalities. Some healers use both methodologies, even in the same healing session, and other healing methods could be described.
Many published reports exist, of experiments, in which persons apparently were able to influence a variety of cellular and other biological systems through mental means. The target systems for these investigations have included bacteria, yeast, fungi, mobile algae, plants, protozoa, larvae, insects, chicks, mice, rats, gerbils, cats, and dogs, as well as cellular preparations (blood cells, neurons, cancer cells) and enzyme activities. In human "target persons," eye movements, muscular movements, electrodermal activity, plethysmographic activity, respiration, and brain rhythms have been apparently affected through direct mental influence.
These studies assess the ability of humans to affect physiological functions of a variety of living systems at a distance, including studies where the "receiver" or "target" is unaware that such an effort is being made. The fact that these studies commonly involve nonhuman targets is important; lower organisms are presumably not subject to suggestion and placebo effects, a frequent criticism when human subjects are involved.
Many of these studies do not describe the psychological strategy of the influencer as actual "prayer," in which one directs entreaties to a Supreme Being, a Universal Power, or God. But almost all of them involve a state of prayerfulness - a feeling of genuine caring, compassion, love, or empathy with the target system, or a feeling that the influencer is "one" with the target.
Conclusion
In addition to preventing or curing illnesses, these therapies by and large provide people the chance to be involved in their own care, to make vital decisions about their own health, to be touched emotionally, and to be changed psychologically in the process. Many patients today believe their The mind-body approach is potentially a corrective to this tendency, a reminder of the importance of human connection that opens up the power of patients acting on their own behalf.
More work needs to be done, but there is already a growing amount of evidence that many of the mind-body therapies discussed in this report, if appropriately selected and wisely applied, can be clinically as well as economically cost-effective, that they work, and that they are safe.
Pharmacological and Biological Treatments
Pharmacological and biological treatments are an assortment of drugs and vaccines not yet accepted by mainstream medicine. A sampling of biological and pharmacological treatments currently being offered by alternative and medical practitioners includes the following:
Antineoplastons
Peptide fractions originally derived from normal human blood and urine, presently being used to treat certain kinds of tumors as well as AIDS.
Cartilage Products
Derived from cattle, sheep, sharks, and chickens, which are being used to treat cancer and arthritis.
Ethylene Diamine Tetraacetic Acid (EDTA) Chelation Therapy
Used to treat heart disease, circulatory problems, and rheumatoid arthritis and to prevent cancer.
Immunoaugmentive Therapy
An experimental form of cancer immunotherapy consisting of daily injections of processed blood products.
714-X
A nitrogen-providing compound injected into the lymph system near the abdomen to treat cancer and AIDS.
Coley's Toxins
A mixture of killed cultures of bacteria from Streptococcus pyogenes and Serratia marcescens, used for treating cancer.
MTH-68
A vaccine that uses an attenuated strain of the Newcastle disease virus of chickens (paramyxovirus), which may interfere with cancer-related viruses.
Neural Therapy
A therapy that involves injecting local anesthetics into nerve cell bodies, peripheral nerves, scars, and elsewhere to treat chronic pain.
Apitherapy
The medicinal use of various products of the common honeybee to treat a variety of diseases: rheumatic diseases such as arthritis; neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis, low back pain, and migraine; dermatological conditions (for example, eczema, psoriasis, herpesvirus infections); chronic pain; and cancer.
Iscador
A liquid extract from mistletoe plants used to treat tumors.
Biologically Guided Chemotherapy
A major impediment to full investigation of alternative pharmacological and biological treatments is the high expense of conducting the trials. Most alternative treatments lack sponsors and funding for clinical trials of safety and effectiveness. Many potentially useful alternative drugs or vaccines are supported by data indicating they may be useful in treating cancer, AIDS, heart disease, hepatitis, and other major health problems. 
Source: National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine
For More Information
Visit the National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine
Visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration