22 Facts About Complementary medicine

Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials.

Alternative Complementary medicine is distinct from scientific Complementary medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect.

Terms alternative medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine, holistic medicine, natural medicine, unorthodox medicine, fringe medicine, unconventional medicine, and new age medicine are used interchangeably as having the same meaning and are almost synonymous in most contexts.

However, these descriptive definitions are inadequate in the present-day when some conventional doctors offer alternative medical treatments and introductory courses or modules can be offered as part of standard undergraduate medical training; alternative Complementary medicine is taught in more than half of US medical schools and US health insurers are increasingly willing to provide reimbursement for alternative therapies.

Traditional Complementary medicine refers to the pre-scientific practices of a certain culture, in contrast to what is typically practiced in cultures where medical science dominates.

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Alternative Complementary medicine practices are diverse in their foundations and methodologies.

Traditional Complementary medicine is considered alternative when it is used outside its home region; or when it is used together with or instead of known functional treatment; or when it can be reasonably expected that the patient or practitioner knows or should know that it will not work – such as knowing that the practice is based on superstition.

Until the 1970s, irregular practice became increasingly marginalized as quackery and fraud, as western Complementary medicine increasingly incorporated scientific methods and discoveries, and had a corresponding increase in success of its treatments.

Practitioners of complementary medicine usually discuss and advise patients as to available alternative therapies.

Alternative Complementary medicine is a profitable industry with large media advertising expenditures.

Alternative Complementary medicine is criticized for taking advantage of the least fortunate members of society.

Testing alternative Complementary medicine that has no scientific basis has been called a waste of scarce research resources.

Alternative Complementary medicine has been on the rise "in countries where Western science and scientific method generally are accepted as the major foundations for healthcare, and 'evidence-based' practice is the dominant paradigm" was described as an "enigma" in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Ayurvedic Complementary medicine remedies are mainly plant based with some use of animal materials.

Complementary medicine therapies are often used in palliative care or by practitioners attempting to manage chronic pain in patients.

Integrative Complementary medicine is considered more acceptable in the interdisciplinary approach used in palliative care than in other areas of Complementary medicine.

Alternative Complementary medicine lobby has successfully pushed for alternative therapies to be subject to far less regulation than conventional Complementary medicine.

Forms of alternative Complementary medicine that are biologically active can be dangerous even when used in conjunction with conventional Complementary medicine.

Complementary and alternative medicine is not as well researched as conventional medicine, which undergoes intense research before release to the public.

Practitioners of science-based Complementary medicine discard practices and treatments when they are shown ineffective, while alternative practitioners do not.

Some critics of alternative Complementary medicine are focused upon health fraud, misinformation, and quackery as public health problems, notably Wallace Sampson and Paul Kurtz founders of Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and Stephen Barrett, co-founder of The National Council Against Health Fraud and webmaster of Quackwatch.

Edzard Ernst has said that most researchers into alternative Complementary medicine are at risk of "unidirectional bias" because of a generally uncritical belief in their chosen subject.