2011/09/18

Alternative Medicine in America Meets the Rigor of Western Medicine

 
When half of the adults in a country says yes to a certain style of “cure philosophy”, can you still call it “alternative”? That is just how it really is in America, a place where 80 million grown-ups annually turn to some sort of alternative treatment; herbs, mega-vitamins, yoga exercises, acupuncture or anything else. Like George says in Seinfeld, everyone wants to go holistic nowadays. As amazing as the promises are for alternative healthcare, there isn’t any sound scientific evidence to back them up, at least insufficient. Most people enjoy to dislike huge Pharma, yet next to the scientific studies that big Pharma sets up for its medications, studies about alternative treatment can seem really medieval, and unscientific in the way they are designed and conducted. But there is hope.
The government, conscious that fifty percent of the country is incredibly in love with alternative healthcare, is hard at work trying to bring to this type of medicine the scientific requirements which popular medicine takes for granted. Soon, the government hopes that there will be standards which segregate the wheat from the chaff, the science from the snake oil. To somebody originating from mainstream scientific research, the specifications in research used to examine alternative healthcare techniques like yoga exercises can seem laughable. For instance, there was a Harvard study done 6 years ago on more than 100 existing research documents on yoga which stated that yoga can combat everything from heart problems to cancer and psychological issues. Once they looked closely at these documents they realized that fewer than half of them employed the universal research standard of randomized controlled trials. In regular research, this standard is a mainstay a way that makes sure (by utilizing chance and randomness to allocate a researcher to a patient)that no scientist involved in a study is able to bring his personal hopes and tendencies into play.

The government body, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine expects to put an end to all this, equipped with a financial budget of more than $100 million. They plan to undertake all the alternative medicine study on their own, to try to bring more rigor in these circles. One of the most popular statements made for alternative treatment today may be the one in which they say that ginkgo biloba may arrest Alzheimer’s. The National Center is now taking up a large-scale study of 3000 patients to find out if this is accurate. The Center is likewise involved in a large-scale study to find out if acupuncture can sort out arthritis. That study is performed right now, and they have found that acupuncture does indeed help with osteoarthritis of the knee.
As for the ginkgo research, they feel the active component inside the plant isn’t constantly present in sufficient concentration in immediate extracts. They wish to see if artificially improving its active ingredients might help. There has never been this type of rigor in alternative treatment, and it is great to see that the mainstream is embracing and recognizing the value you will find in alternative treatment. These research can be very pricey, and the $100 million is not going to go very far. If only they might discover the financing for this now, a wouldn’t be far away.
Are you in need of marketing yourself as a Doctor? Don’t hesitate to have a doctor video marketing expert do the job for you. Find out more what these doctor videos can do for your career and look it up in the internet to get their services.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Melanie_Oca

No comments:

Post a Comment