Definition
- Complementary or alternative medicine (CAM)
- Medical practices that are not accepted by the mainstream medical establishment as having efficacy adequately proven by standard methodology
- The term is often used to refer to any nonstandard pharmacologic therapy, efficacy proven or not.
- Also called integrative medicine
- CAM entails adjuncts to, or substitutes for, more generally accepted practices.
- Includes surprisingly pervasive approaches, many of which can claim at least some evidentiary support
- CAM does not encompass:
- Practices that have yet to be translated from the laboratory into the clinic
- Practices that were well studied and disproved, but which persist in some fashion
- Practices and products fall into 5 domains.
- The first 3 have well-accepted analogues in conventional medicine.
- Biologically based
- Special diets
- High doses of vitamins and minerals
- Extracts of animal or botanical products
- Manipulative and body-based
- Massage
- Osteopathic and chiropractic manipulation
- Cranial-sacral therapies
- Mind-body based
- Diverse forms of meditation
- Uses of biofeedback
- Hypnosis
- Energy medicine
- Exploitation of putative energy fields
- Use of magnets or magnetic fields
- Acupuncture
- Goal is to correct energies that flow through special meridians, or channels.
- Reiki, a Japanese approach, and healing touch, a modern variant
- Goal is to diagnose and correct energy by passing the hands of a therapist over the patient.
- Alternative systems of medicine
- Combine elements of the 4 other domains to provide primary approaches to all health needs, rather than just adjunctive solutions
- Western variants include:
- Practices developed by Native Americans
- Homeopathy
- Naturopathy
- Eastern variants use meditative exercises and herbal products.
- Ayurvedic medicine of India
- Traditional Chinese medicine
- Tibetan medicine
- See Techniques for list of specific practices and products.
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