Health & Wellbeing: What is complementary and alternative medicine?

A buzz phrase in our current world is alternative therapy. An alternative therapy is part of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine category.

Complementary and Alternative medicine (CAM) is a healthcare treatment that usually happens outside of the conventional healthcare system.

Even if there is no universally agreed definition of CAM, one common thing is they are aften used as a single category.

There is a distinction made by The US National Centre for Complementary and Integrative Medicine that states:

*When a non-mainstream practice is used together with conventional medicine, it is considered “complementary”.

*When a non-mainstream practice is used instead of conventional medicine, it is considered “alternative”.

The questions that come naturally are simple and very justified: Are these therapies safe and effective and how do I know which one is going to suit me?

Let’s start with the first one.

Are the alternative and complementary therapies safe and effective?
It is estimated that two-thirds of the world’s population is using the alternative and complementary therapies. Although in Ireland we don’t have the evidence of a study to support this figure to date, The Irish Health repository together with HSE and The Dr Stevens Library published this month, in The Irish Medical Journal, a report of an investigation into the use of complementary and alternative medicine in an urban general practice.

It was detected a high CAM practitioner usage rate as 27% and the typical users are female middle-aged.

The number of patients seeking CAM is now growing exponentially. There are many reasons for this changing scenario. According to Eskinazi, alternative medicine can be defined as a broad set of health-care practices available to the public that are not readily integrated into the dominant health care model because they pose challenges to diverse societal beliefs and practices (cultural, scientific, medical, and educational).

While biomedicine does not necessarily reject spirituality, it does not routinely incorporate these aspects into diagnosis and treatment.

It is not unanimously accepted by the western biomedicine. If we look at the history of medicine as a science we can easily call CAM the traditional medicine as they were the first form of medicine applied on a very individual basis.

Traditional medicine teaches that the energy flows within, around and through all things in the universe. Healing, therefore, is the art of manipulating the flow of energy to re-establish balance in the whole person. As a result, the effectiveness of the alternative and complementary treatments are based on a very individual approach.

Although there is a great deal of knowledge regarding the body’s complex interactions, abnormalities are often diagnosed and treated as individual entities apart from patient. This is the place where the CAM can really make a difference and allow the healing to take place by simply having a holistic approach of the human body.

What are the alternative and complementary therapies available, and which one suits your body?
There are loads of alternative or complementary therapies available currently across the country and most of the practitioners have a certified qualification and their qualification is being regulated by national or international CAM boards.

To mention a few of them: acupuncture, chiropractic therapy, homeopathy, magnet therapy, meditation, massage therapy, naturopathy, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Reiki, Yoga.

This list is not exhaustive. There are so many other alternative therapies that can make a difference for our body health, but how do we know which one is suitable for us. Unlike prescription drugs, that work by targeting the affected organ alone with a lot of side effects on the whole body, the alternative therapies are targeting the whole body’s balance by using a bio-individual approach.

That translates to one therapy doesn’t work for all. Or what can be a good therapy for one person, can create of discomfort for another body. Based on that, the best way to decide is to have an open mindset and to try.

Usually there are therapists who will advise towards certain therapy based on your main complaint / dominant symptom but there is no guarantee that will work for you.

Limerick benefits from having a place where you can try what suits you best from a wide range of alternative therapies.

The Community Clinic in The Urban Co-Op is the ideal place where you can try two or three different therapies in an hour. This is a walk-in clinic so there is no need for appointment, and it’s based on a donation system.