What's The Deal With Conventional And Alternative Medicine?: The Very Bare Basics

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.