Complemantary medicine

There are a lots of alternative medicine out there, ranging from traditional Chinese medicine, Naturopathy, Homeopathy and Ayurveda, mind-body medicine, chiropractic, osteopathic and etc. All these practices have their own system and they are totally different from western medicine. Recently, more and more researches have been carried out to find out how were all these practices been benefit to the people around the world.

In today's medicine practice, complementary medicine and conventional medicine have been integrated especially in the acceptance of the general public. It is undeniable that conventional medicine is effective. The problem with conventional medicine is the fact that it uses more of the synthetic drugs made in the laboratories. Thus, it is undeniable that it carries also a variety of side effects and adverse reactions with it despite its healing efficacy. Another advantage of the complementary medicine over the conventional medicine is the nature of the procedures. There are a number of procedures in conventional medicine practice that are very much invasive, that patients even have to issue an informed consent for them to be legally performed.

Complimentary medicine is known on the other hand for its minimally invasive procedures. Traditional Chinese medicine is among the popular branches of complementary medicine. Acupuncture and massage are the very popular practices in traditional Chinese medicine. Massage on the other hand is the manipulation of the superficial layers to promote relaxation. Both are very much accepted in the current practice of health promotion and maintenance.

As we know that, people nowadays were getting upset with the current practice of conventional medicine. This is not only due to the limitation of the conventional medicine, some of the diseases just can’t cure rather than symptomatic relieve. Thus, all these factors had indirectly contributed to the emergence of the popularity of complementary medicine. People started to believe everything under the sun, as they believed some of the complementary medicine was better than the conventional medicine. Some of the patients even place a higher hope for the conventional medicine to cure their underlying diseases. No doubt some of them were right, at least they felt better either physically or mentally, and I was told by my lecturer that it might be a placebo effect causing them to feel better due to the release of endogenous endorphin. I don’t want to criticize on that as long as it did no harm to the patients, and some the patients were actually rely on the complimentary medicine as their final hope and they just can’t live without it.

Since the complementary medicine is getting more attention and become more popular nowadays, doctors were facing a lot of challenge not only in term of getting the patients to believe the conventional medicine as well as getting their patients to comply to the prescribed medicine. For me, I think counseling and educating a patient about their underlying disease is more important than treating them solely without explaining to them. These include how far and to what extent a conventional medicine could really help. On top of that, a medical profession should always offer different options for the patients so that they can choose what they want. For example, patients with chronic osteoarthritis can be offered for acupuncture as an adjuvant therapy apart from the conventional pain control. Doctors should always keep themselves updated by reading more journal and practice evidence-based medicine rather than empirical based. Besides, doctor should always attend more conferences in order to be more competent in treating the patients.