Why Is Alternative Medicine So Popular?

Sale of herbs and dietary supplements are soaring, and visits to acupuncturists, chiropractors, osteopaths, and yoga or biofeedback experts are also rising rapidly.  All these non-conventional medical therapies are grouped under the title Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).  The most likely conditions for the use of CAM by US consumers are musculoskeletal problems such as back, neck, or joint pain. Its use for head or chest colds has declined slightly in recent years. 

Obvious reasons for choosing CAM over conventional medicine therapy are based on cost, convenience, and failure of conventional treatment.  However, there are probably other reasons that may be more important.

The Journal of Consumer Research is posting an article online in the near future that analyses the reasons for consumers choosing between Western Medicine and its Eastern counterparts – Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayuverdic medicine.  Their conclusions are summarized in a press release from the journal.  The researchers state:  “Western Medicine is primarily concerned with the material aspect of the body and views all medical phenomena as cause-effect sequences, relying on rigorous scientific studies and research that seeks empirical proof to all phenomena.  On the other hand, TCM and Ayurvedic Medicine favor a holistic approach, view the mind and body as a whole system, and rely upon inductive tools and methods for treatment.”

Surveys in the USA, China, and India have shown that consumers prefer TCM when there’s diagnostic uncertainty; a holistic medicine tolerates uncertainty better than Western Medicine.  Moreover, they prefer TCM because of their (lay) belief that TCM offers a basic cure of the condition, while Western medicine only tackles the symptoms. 

With my training, I obviously prefer Western medicine, and I feel it is my calling to use this blog to promote evidence-based medicine, at the expense of treatments that cannot be proved to work in well-conducted clinical studies.  But I’m more than happy to report overlap between CAM and conventional medicine, when a particular CAM is shown to be safe and effective in such studies.