Alternative Medicine and Naturopathy – A Medical Option Today?

In today’s hectic world, where new "diseases" spring up just as you heave a sigh of relief that another has been eradicated, people are not always satisfied with conventional forms of treatment. There have always been practitioners of different forms of medicine but perhaps these forms have never been explored as they are today.

Here’s an outline of the options before you...

Alternative Medicine, simply put, is any form of medicine that is practised outside the pale of traditional, present day medicine. Unlike traditional medicine, these practices don’t form a part of the medical school curriculum. Treatment through homeopathy, naturopathy acupuncture, chiropractic, aromatherapy, apitherapy, ayurveda, bach flower remedies and the the 12 tissue remedies are a few of the practices that fall into the alternative medicine category. Their philosophy, therapy and their approach differs from what we know as modern medicine.

Complementary Medicine as the name suggests, is often made use of in conjunction with conventional medicine, to complement the treatment of the latter. In China, for example, acupuncture is successfully used in the reduction of pain when a person undergoes surgery rather than having him anaesthetised. Cancer patients are often treated with sesame oil to speed up the healing process. Dean Ornish advocates changes in one’s lifestyle to help stave off heart disease. All these fall under the category of Complementary Medicine. If the same treatment is meted out independently and in the absence of any help from conventional medicine, it falls under the ambit of Alternative medicine.

Holistic Medicine treats the whole person – body, mind, soul and emotion. It is an alternative form of medicine. Practitioners of this form use visualization and hypnosis, as they believe that the bodily manifested disease can be cured by treating the mind. They see the body as being able to heal itself with a little external help. That would be the case with alomost all therapies, especially with Traditional Chinese Medicine, Osteopathy, Homoeopathy and Ayurveda.

While a conventional practitioner looks at the infected organ of the body and tries to set that right, a holistic healer looks beyond that particular organ to the condition of the body and mind to determine the reason for the disease. Holistic healers lay stress on prevention and care of self.

Natural Medicine allows the body to heal on its own. Therapies that incorporate herbs (herbal medicine), water (hydrotherapy), diet and exercises (i.e. even therapies like Yoga, Qi Gong or the Alexander-Technique), are popular in this form of medicine.