Arlen Decorte: More and more these days.Nursing offers a whole certification tract in integrative medicine. My hospital has a whole department for integrative medical services that include therapeutic massage, accupuncture, reflexology, aromatherapy, herbs, yoga & tai chi, etc.Current science supports using both forms of medical practice for the best outcomes in patients....Show more
Rachal Osaki: The straightforward answer is "few if any.""Alternative medicine" is not really medicine at all, and it is based on cultural myths and plausible stories that are rooted in pseudoscience and that appeal to people who are looking for something better than reality.These alternative practitioners/marketers are in it for the money, and they couldn't care less about the sciences or other academic pursuits that only detract from their profit-making schemes....Show more
Barrett Zheng: Quite a few. I know several physicians (MD's) who are also homeopaths, acupuncturists herba! lists. Numerous nurses who practice healing touch, accu-pressure, reflexology. Please note that massage therapy is an "alternative medicine" Western medicine does not own all knowledge about healing. Many of the alternative methods have been around for thousands, yes thousands of years. Don't discount it because of a few con artist that try to rip people off.
Roselee Mczeal: none, it is all straight up placebo effect. Well, their is a hypothesis out there about accupuncture stimulating inhibitory neurons, but that didn't come from the accupuncture practitioners, it came from real medical doctors and physiologists.Anyone who does know science knows that stuff is mostly crap. There is a simple rule out there for medicine: if it is stong enough to help it is strong enough to hurt. Take reflexology, these quacks claim that they can heal headaches by gentle pressure on a certain area of the foot because of the interconnections of neurons in the body. Why don't I get a mass! ive headache when i step on a rock then? And don't even get me! started on Reiki that load of BS. Simple physics tells you that isn't true.And yes, studies have shown that they are effective, but then again so is the sugar pill. There haven't been any studies that I have seen that support the claims of why they work. Like I said, all the placebo effect, the result of the mind's control over the body...Show more
Giovanna Cramblit: Depends what you mean by alternative medicine? I don't know if I'd call myself an advocate but I have a fairly expansive knowledge of chemistry, biology and history.Homeopathy is silly but at the time was less harmful than conventional medicine (which was largely useless and often involved giving poisons to a patient or effectively and needlessly torturing them) since it is essentially just water.Acupuncture and acupressure are effective but we don't fully understand them (don't believe in the traditional chinese medicinal explanations but there is good evidence of results) enough to derive the best resu! lts from them. Alot comes down to exactly how pressure is applied to precise spots which can vary in location depending on the body structure of the individual in question - therefore a high level of skill is needed to be able to adapt to different people. It is probably not a mass marketable form of medicine as a result but in specific instances could prove useful.The bizarre belief that herbs are necessarily better than patent medicines is baseless and at times dangerous. Willow bark is far, far less effective than aspirin and contains more harmful alkaloids for example.Crazy diets and "detoxification therapies" are dangerous and have not one shred of objective evidence - although I note that many have at one time or another been endorsed by conventional medical wisdom as much as by alternative medicinal advocates.Hypnotism can have some useful (mainly for psychological purposes) effects but is poorly understood and probably not as useful as it's advocates claim. Also it ! is again not mass marketable since people's responses vary and even wit! h the best practictioner in the world some people are not going to get any real benefit from it.Then again drug companies seem to make alot of their cash off of disease mongering these days - anyone remember that whole bird flu panic? How much did pharmaceutical companies make off of the epidemic that never was? Or SARS? Or ADD and ADHD? Conventional medicine has a long, long history of disasters as well as successes and this shouldn't be forgotten. Of course alternative medicine has a slightly more dubious history still so that's not a basis for disregarding conventional medicine, merely a case for being skeptical of some of it's claims (just as one should equally be skeptical of alternative medicine's claims). There is after all a long history also of the medical community scoffing at and calling quackery anything that they didn't discover, regardless of it's efficacy. And for genuine damage done, conventional medicine has beaten alternative medicine hand's down - look in! to the Chelmsford hospital or lobotomies or clitordectomies or any of a thousand harmful procedures and treatments eagerly endorsed by the medical community at one time or another as effective remedies for oft times imaginary ailments such as spermatohorrea. There was a time when germ theory was considered quackery and because washing your hands couldn't possibly effect the chances of a disease causing miasma taking hold many patients died of purpureal fever and similar infections contracted from surgery performed under filthy and septic conditions. All in all I don't care whether medicine is considered alternative or conventional - so long as it works, is relatively safe (ie side effects minor compared to condition being treated and low chance of increased mortality) and is evidence based....Show more
Anibal Scheid: quit projecting your ignorance onto others
Soraya Coodey: None !
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