[This article, from Brie Zeltner, the Plain Dealer, on Cleveland.Com, speaks to the increase in popularity in using alternative therapists including Chiropractic, Therapeutic Massage and nutritional supplements. At Live Well Holistic Health Center, patients typically see powerful results from all three of these therapies for a wide variety of conditions. Following is the article.]
Alternative therapies have hit the mainstream, if Consumer Reports readers are any indication. A recent survey, released July 21, showed that about 75 percent of the more than 45,000 people the magazine polled were currently using some form of alternative or complementary medical therapy.
That included vitamins, with 71 percent of respondents taking them, or mind-body therapies like yoga and massage, which about 20 percent reported using.
As a 2009 Consumer Reports survey also indicated, most people felt that hands-on therapies were the most effective alternative methods of treating their ailments, but rated prescription medication more effective than alternative remedies for most conditions.
Back pain and neck pain, notoriously difficult to treat, were two conditions for which an alternative remedy, chiropractic, won out over prescription drugs. Of the 36 percent of people who used the technique for back pain, 65 percent said it “helped a lot” for their pain, whereas only 53 percent said the same for prescription drugs.
Readers with fibromyalgia, a complex chronic-pain syndrome, said that deep-tissue massage was the most effective treatment for them, rating it just slightly higher than prescription drugs.
The magazine asked about several other ailments that are often hard to diagnose or treat, and lead many to complementary and alternative medicine, or CAM,therapies for relief. While prescription medication was the most helpful therapy for these — irritable bowel syndrome, digestive problems, depression, anxiety, headache and migraine, insomnia, cold and flu, and allergy — alternative therapies weren’t too far behind in some cases.
A total of 47 percent of people used multivitamins or supplements like fish oil or vitamin B complex to treat depression. More than 40 percent of people with anxiety used deep breathing exercises, and 34 percent of them said this helped them a lot.
Many of the most popular CAM therapies are also the most effective — probiotics for irritable bowel;meditation for insomnia, anxiety and migraine; and chiropractic and massage for back pain. This is borne out by the results of the high-quality but sadly very small body of scientific research being funded by institutions like the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health.
If three out of four of us are really using these therapies at any given time, let’s hope that body of research continues to grow.