health services article

Alternatives Health Care

Today, most people face a life that is fast paced to the point of frenzy, causing incredibly stress. And that stress cause serious problems. It’s no wonder that drug companies are such a profitable industry, as rely on more and more medications. Of course, some of the new medications are life saving. But there are other options besides drug therapy. Alternative medicine is rarely recommended over drug therapy -- the debate between traditional medicine and alternative medicine is often contentious.

One of the main elements of traditional medical approach is a reliance on drug therapy. Although the medicines are of high quality, they usually are used to treat specific conditions or symptoms. But, merely treating the symptoms doesn’t result in treating the entire body. Sometimes the conventional medicine approach is invasive causing reoccurring treatments. The approach of conventional medicine is to treats the human body as a set of parts, not as a whole body.

Another approach to medical treatment is to try an alternative medicine. Alternative medicine is different from conventional medicine because the approach is to treat the whole condition, not merely the symptoms. Not only is this approach

more effective and easier to the body, but it’s frequently more cost effective. Because alternative treatments target the whole body instead of specific parts, the treatment doesn’t isolate one set of symptoms and require lots of future treatments. The alternative diagnosis is for the whole body and mind, not just the parts.

There is an increasing variety of alternative medical therapies that gaining in popularity especially in the United States, one last centers of traditional medical approaches.

Think about these statistics:

- One-third of all Americans participate in some kind of alternative medicine.
- Alternative medical practices have seen an enormous increase in patients in the period between 1990 and 1997, with an increase of as much as 47 percent, from 427 million to 629 million. This number is even higher than the average total of visits to traditional primary care doctors in 1997.
- According to the same 1997 statistics, Americans spent a total of $27 billion on alternative medicine and therapies, and the total number seeking alternative care was 83 million (31% of all Americans).

Alternative medicine is not only becoming increasingly popular in the United States. It’s estimated that Australians spend more than $100 million (Australian dollars) yearly on alternative therapies. In Taiwan, the majority of the population, more than 80%, seek alternative therapies, plus the huge amount of Chinese herbal stores.

These statistics support the claim that alternative therapies are increasing in popularity throughout the world. Of course, the conventional medicine practitioners continue to try to minimize the effect of alternative medicine, but it’s clear that this medical practice is becoming a the preferred option to traditional drug therapy.