So here's the way I see Complementary and Alternative Medicine
versus Conventional Medicine with smatterings of my own opinion as
always.
Conventional medicine also sometimes called Western or Allopathic
medicine is medicine as practiced by medical doctors and by allied
health professionals, such as physical therapists, psychologists, and
registered nurses. It is the so called mainstream medicine practiced
most widely today, especially in situations, of trauma, diagnosis,
chronic illness, and emergency care.
The boundaries between Alternative
Medicine and conventional medicine are sometimes not so absolute, and
specific Alternative Medicine practices have become accepted in the
world of conventional medicine, and may hopefully over time, become
widely accepted.
Modern conventional medicine is a symptoms based approach. As modern
medicine has become more specialized and individualized, it has become
less and less effective, and less takes into consideration the
individual, but rather only the symptoms and specific areas of the body
involved in an illness.
Basically, modern medicine is losing sight of
the whole person in order to treat his parts. Conventional medicine is
impersonal, and relies on studies, technology, and scientific research
in an impersonal manner.
In a broad sense, Alternative Medicine denotes approaches to health
and healing that do not rely on conventional drugs, surgery, or medical
procedures for treating illness. Many people are now choosing
alternative medicine over conventional, because of the medical
establishment’s emphasis on diagnostic testing and treatment with drugs
that that do not focus on the patient as a whole.
The interrelationship of the body and all its systems., cannot be
separated. This is especially evident in embryology when we see how
layers of the human body develop, and how different seemingly unrelated
systems or body parts actually originate from the same embryological
layers.
There is an evident interconnectedness and interdependence of
the whole and its systems and functions; our skeleton, muscles,
connective tissues, blood vessels, glands, organs, brain, nervous
system, fluids, rhythm, pulse, and breath.
The field of Alternative Medicine is very wide and constantly
dynamic and changing. It is a group of diverse and varied medical and
health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of mainstream conventional medicine.
In general Alternative Medicine can be categorized into three areas
or ways of treating the individual; physical, mental / emotional
(social), and spiritual approaches. Each area is multifaceted within
itself and contains a multitude of disciplines.
The subject of
Alternative Medicine and the related disciplines is vast to say the
least, but these basic general categories allow for a simpler way under
which we categorize and then expound upon the various subjects.
Alternative practices as a result are also similarly often grouped into broad categories, such as natural products,
mind and body medicine, and manipulative and body-based practices,
energetic medicine, etc. Some practices may actually fit into more than
one of any of the categories mentioned.
Those are the basics and we will
state some of the more popular or well known as examples here so that
we can get a better understanding in order to make better educated
choices in our lives that will help influence our health.
