What is it?
Alternative medicine refers to a technique where we move from the conventional practices or the once that we know of, to something that is found to be true but not being established or seen as an authenticated medicine or a cure. The term ‘alternative medicine’ has come to mean and include any practice that is thought to be a cure, but is not proven to be true, or accepted as established norm of dealing with. Nevertheless, experiences may have shown theses practices to be successful or more effective cure, but more often it is more from the word of the mouth that we know of such practices.
What does it include?
Every way of treatment that the rural people have, that do not have a
well established procedure but are effective in curing, and some other techniques
like acupuncture, where pressure is applied in selective regions of the
body, Tibetan practices of medicine etc come under this category called
‘alternative’ medicine. Though they lack theoretical proof, their effectiveness
is more known by past experiences.
Why they are not seen as a standard care
The practices have their own procedures and they are effective in cure,
but the mere uncertainty and the lack of clarity as to what actually happens
and what are to be made available in order to avoid side effects … etc make
the doctors to keep the procedures at bay. The alternative medicine is only
seen as a tool that a person can use at his own risk. For example, it is
not clearly known as to how energy treatment or the massage therapy works,
and obviously in a health care sector that operates on standards, it is
not possible to recommend such therapies, let alone practice it.
Many of it we know!
Many of the therapeutic styles we see as alternative medicine and not proven, are known to us. The homeopathy, naturopathy… etc is well known to us and we do know that the results are pretty good under treatments of these therapies. But these also come under the ‘alternative’ medicines. The homeopathic medicines surely have lot to be proud of as they have a non painful way of dealing with many diseases that the chemotherapy deals with surgery and operations. Again, acupuncture is one technique that is widely used in Chinese practices, but it is not that prevalent because of the lack of proof.
Not a replacement
Though the alternative medicine has power of cure, it does not act as a substitute for the conventional medicines. The therapies should act together to get best results. Or we have to deal with appropriate disorders with apt medicine. There are effective cures in acupuncture for many diseases, which we can take into consideration, but at the same time there are more effective cures than in acupuncture in modern medicines for more advanced diseases. So it likes taking the appropriate leaf to suit our need and meet the need of the hour, the perfect cure for our malfunctioning body!