Do you mostly use Mainstream Medicine or Alternative Medicine for your health? We put that question to members of our Underground Knowledge discussion group on Goodreads.com – and results to date show that many see merit in combining the two.
Interim poll results show that 36% of respondents mostly use mainstream medicine for their health; 35% use both mainstream and alternative; and 29% mostly use alternative medicine.
For clarity sake, we define mainstream medicine as a system in which medical doctors and other healthcare professionals (such as nurses, pharmacists, and therapists) treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation, or surgery. Also called allopathic medicine, orthodox medicine, and Western medicine.
We define alternative medicine, also known as Complementary Medicine, as natural or traditional or native remedies. We also list the following examples of well-known alternative therapies: Acupressure, Acupuncture, Ayurvedic Medicine (more than 5,000 years old), Biofeedback, Bach Flower Remedies, Colon Therapy/Colonics, Chinese (Oriental) Medicine, Chiropractic, Osteopathy, Cupping (ancient Chinese medical technique), Craniosacral Therapy, Ear Candling, Electropathy, Fasting Therapy, Herbalism (one of most popular health systems worldwide), Hydrotherapy, Iridology, Magnetotherapy, Massage Therapy, Naturopathic Medicine, Vitamin Therapy, Yoga.
A random selection of poll respondents’ comments follow:
I mostly use alternative medicine but use all medical systems (including Western medicine), although avoid Big Pharma’s drugs like the plague and would only agree to surgery as a last resort.
The confusion about alternative medicine is that this one is efficient in certain areas and problems, but it is hard to identify the real cause of the healing when the healing process involves many substances, rituals, dancings, or massages in certain areas combined. And when you do not know the causes or how the system works, it is easy to invent and believe that there are chakras, body energies, magnetism and all sort of crap.
I’m not quite sure why we have to be fully for one or the other… Can we really make a decision or judgment based on such a vague premise? Much of Western medicine is great and much is not… the same goes for alternative medicine. It is impossible to stand for the entire array of medicine produced by western medicine or by the alternative route.
Biofeedack (a medicine I’ve also used with success) is generally listed as “complimentary medicine” or alternative, not generally used in mainstream medicine. It’s also often mocked by skeptics, as per this and other similar listings for biofeedback on skeptics forums: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/med…
Ironically, when someone will explain exactly how certain alternative medicine methods work, these will no longer be “alternative”, but “mainstream” (scientific). Until then, those who use alternative medicine are nothing more than voluntary guinea pigs.
…need to include the fact that what is often being called “science” to support a fair percentage of Western medicine is of course biased research funded by Big Pharma that aims for a specific outcome. And some of it is even anti-science in that it is not open to all possibilities (e.g. research that reveals this patented drug is not the best way to treat a specific illness will often be thrown out).
I wouldn’t personally say all elements of mainstream medicine must be scientifically proven. There’s lots of evidence of peer reviewed medical journals throwing out some studies and favoring others that fit their agenda. Pharma funds studies and makes sure the methods of testing and collecting evidence are biased. So sometimes science is proven and other times it’s fake science propping up medicines and practices.
Each time in my life that I have been laid low and very ill it has been the alternative medicines / therapies which have given me back my life. I have gone to them out of frustration about our standard treatments.
Poll ends March 1.
To view all comments, or better still to have YOUR say, go to: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/list/142309-underground-knowledge—a-discussion-group?type=group
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