Alternative healthcare is all-too-often stigmatized, by the medical profession. It’s often viewed as magic rocks and herbs, with no medical basis. But the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine reports approximately 38 percent of adults use complementary or alternative healthcare, while nearly 42 percent of hospitals offer some type of alternative healthcare. Despite the large numbers, the treatments are often viewed as science fiction. Why?
“Ignorance, mainly,” says Beth Rosenthal, PhD and assistant director of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC). “People don’t realize how much education and training and credentialing goes on.” Put simply, people are used to their own ways of doing things. If a natural, alternative remedy is found to work, it’s often chocked-up to a placebo effect. Medical doctors are not trained to consider alternatives to drugs and surgery.
That’s why groups like the ACCAHC are trying to reinvent the education process. “We’re trying to change education for students so that they get used to working as a team,” says Rosenthal, noting it would broaden problem-solving ideas.
“Doctors come out of a scientific and biomolecular model, meaning that if they cannot explain something at the molecular or biochemical level, they will remain skeptical,” says Jonathan Engel, associate dean of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College and author of Doctors and Reformers, agrees this assertion.
Traditional and alternative health care can go hand-in-hand, these doctors say. “I believe in good health care, and that includes allopathic, conventional, and alternative,” says Rosenthal. “It just makes good sense to me to start with the least invasive one first.”
She adds that the health care system encourages just giving patients a pill and sending them on their merry way, not spending any time with them. “Obviously, that’s not always in the best interest of the patient,” says Rosenthal.
Engel also places some of the blame on our current health care system. “Doctors have to get paid, and they tend to get paid for healing the sick rather than for keeping people well,” says Engel. “Doctors skew their practice to tests, procedures, and prescriptions, because that is what patients are willing to pay for.”
So the questions remains, will alternative and conventional medicine ever marry? There is a broad movement to push medicine toward a more patient-centered model, which involves preventive care and better organic management of stress. We also see people turning to yoga, massage, acupuncture, meditation, chanting, running, Pilates, and isometrics. “But, there will always be a limit to how much orthodox embraces any of this for several reasons,” says Engel.
“Ignorance, mainly,” says Beth Rosenthal, PhD and assistant director of the Academic Consortium for Complementary and Alternative Health Care (ACCAHC). “People don’t realize how much education and training and credentialing goes on.” Put simply, people are used to their own ways of doing things. If a natural, alternative remedy is found to work, it’s often chocked-up to a placebo effect. Medical doctors are not trained to consider alternatives to drugs and surgery.
That’s why groups like the ACCAHC are trying to reinvent the education process. “We’re trying to change education for students so that they get used to working as a team,” says Rosenthal, noting it would broaden problem-solving ideas.
“Doctors come out of a scientific and biomolecular model, meaning that if they cannot explain something at the molecular or biochemical level, they will remain skeptical,” says Jonathan Engel, associate dean of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College and author of Doctors and Reformers, agrees this assertion.
Traditional and alternative health care can go hand-in-hand, these doctors say. “I believe in good health care, and that includes allopathic, conventional, and alternative,” says Rosenthal. “It just makes good sense to me to start with the least invasive one first.”
She adds that the health care system encourages just giving patients a pill and sending them on their merry way, not spending any time with them. “Obviously, that’s not always in the best interest of the patient,” says Rosenthal.
Engel also places some of the blame on our current health care system. “Doctors have to get paid, and they tend to get paid for healing the sick rather than for keeping people well,” says Engel. “Doctors skew their practice to tests, procedures, and prescriptions, because that is what patients are willing to pay for.”
So the questions remains, will alternative and conventional medicine ever marry? There is a broad movement to push medicine toward a more patient-centered model, which involves preventive care and better organic management of stress. We also see people turning to yoga, massage, acupuncture, meditation, chanting, running, Pilates, and isometrics. “But, there will always be a limit to how much orthodox embraces any of this for several reasons,” says Engel.
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