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I attended a workshop today on Health Care and one point that was brought out surprised me. Hopefully I’m remembering this correctly…but in 2006, Americans spent 48 billion dollars on alternative medicine (vitamins, herbal supplements, accupuncture, chiropractic medicine services etc)
The person that was doing the presentation was a physician and he talked about what leads consumers to go down that road (a road he clearly didn’t approve of…
My friend and I (sitting in the last row) just smiled. We’ve both had chiropractic appointments in the past week and my daughter has been seeing a physician for accupuncture. The crazy thing was not so many years ago I wouldn’t have considered going to a chiropractor. But then I started having trouble with my neck and all the doctor wanted to do was to give me muscle relaxers. I started going to the chiro and immediately saw the value. They treat the cause of the pain, not just the symptom.
Accupuncture?? Well, my daughter swears by it….but I’m not yet sold. But hey, give me a couple years and I’ll probably be going on a regular basis. 
How ’bout you? Have you ventured over to the alternative medicine side?
Filed in: Jaunty Post
Nov 3rd
2007
9:09 am
Kathryn Said:
Yes, I have, cautiously. I have a high resistance to drugs… they don’t make me drowsy, and it takes more than the usual dose of cold remedies, etc. to see any effect. Same with painkillers, sleeping pills (this discovered after a major car accident). I don’t freeze well at the dentist and epidurals weren’t a huge success.
One of my daughter’s friend’s father is a GP and he also uses natural remedies. I was tired of taking what seemed to be a 1/4 bottle of Dimetapp/Triaminic/Benylin as a dose when I had a cold and I went to get some advice from this doctor. He prescribed me large doses of Vitamin C and A, and 4 times a day doses of olive leaf and golden seal and echinacea to be taken over a five day period. It worked! Most symptons were relieved and I didn’t feel like I was chugging back drugs.
The only reason I considered using the natural products was because they were advised by a doctor.
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Nov 3rd
2007
1:37 pm
Shana Said:
I’m fortunate to be pretty healthy, so I’ve never needed to try alternative medicine. But I know when people are in pain, they’re going to do what works and who cares about whether it’s labeled “alternative?”
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Nov 3rd
2007
8:32 pm
Shirley Karr Said:
He thought chiro was “alternative”?
I ventured into alternative territory a long time ago after spending the better part of two years wearing wrist braces for a painful case of tendonitis and getting nowhere with conventional therapy, i.e. drugs and icepacks. I had no preconceptions about magnets and figured I had nothing to lose when my mom suggested slipping them inside my braces. Within two weeks the pain was considerably less, and a couple months later I only needed to wear the braces at night. Say what you will about magnets, if it’s pychosomatic or whatever, bottom line is I can type twice as long pain-free while wearing magnetic bracelets than I can without them.
I’m currently getting weekly accupuncture for my sore thumbs. A friend went for her chronic bronchitis, believe it or not, and got relief.
Rather than just treating the symptoms, as much of modern/western medicine does, most alternative treatments address the root cause — a much smarter approach, imho.
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