ALTERNATIVE COMPLEMENTARY
MEDICINE'S FUTURE

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Tibetan medicine

4 in 10 Americans Trying Alternative Health Treatments

The number of Americans who are using "alternative" treatments like herbal supplements, massage therapy and megavitamins is increasing dramatically, and visits to alternative practitioners have become more common than visits to the family doctor, according to a new survey.

At the same time, scientific attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of such therapies are starting to separate those that work from those that don't. A half-dozen scientific studies were published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assoc. (JAMA) in a special issue dedicated to alternative medicine. It marked the FIRST such effort by a mainstream US medical journal and was an attempt to meet doctors' need for high-quality scientific information on treatments that more and more patients are trying, the journal's editor said.

"It is the beginning of acceptance of some forms of 1998 alternative medicine into mainstream medicine in the US," said George Lundberg. "Acceptance the good, old-fashioned way - by merit."

An estimated 83 million American adults - more than four out of ten - used some form of alternative medical treatment last year, according to the new survey by a Harvard research team.

They reported that visits to practitioners and alternative therapies, ranging from herbal medicines to energy healing, have increased 47% since 1990, propelled chiefly by middle age, health-conscious baby boomers.

Half of people ages 35-49 reported using at least one of the surveyed treatments last year.

The majority of users said they were turning to therapies to prevent future illnesses rather than to treat current ones. The researchers found that Americans' use of alternative therapies increased by 255% DURING THE SEVEN-YEAR PERIOD and that expenditures for practitioners' services increased by 45%.

They estimated that Americans spent $27 billion, most of it not reimbursed by insurance, on alternative treatments last year. Among the fastest-growing therapies were herbal remedies, massage, megavitamins, relaxation techniques and spiritual healing.

The 6 studies tested various alternative therapies using a classic research design, the randomized clinical trial, in which one group of patients receives a treatment and another group receives a placebo. In most, doctors and patients didn't know who was receiving what. Some of the results were surprising.

By Susan Oki, Washington Post, November 7, 1998