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Alternative Therapies
Alternative therapies refer to non-medical therapies used by patients for health benefits. The currently acceptable politically correct term is "CAM" or complementary and alternative medicine" that opens the door for physicians to use or prescribe these therapies.
Most of these therapies have relatively poor study quality of efficacy of the treatments with the CAM therapists claiming it is impossible to use a placebo with these therapies. Therefore the quality of the studies to demonstrate safety and effectiveness are very low. Nonetheless, CAM is increasingly used in the US with a perceived (but not actually tested) safety benefit that exceeds that of traditional medicine.
The latest fad in medicine is physicians who embrace these often poorly documented therapies into their own daily medical practice. Formerly, this was called "Holistic Medicine" and now is termed "Integrative Medicine". They are frequently used by doctors who are jaded with traditional medicine or are tired of dealing with insurance companies, and open a cash practice with "Integrative Medicine" as a schtick. However, there is growing evidence that some of these therapies work, and moderate level evidence is accumulating demonstrating efficacy. On the other hand, some of the therapies are also being disproven by the increasing number of scientific studies. Click on the links below to explore these alternative therapies.