1-What is Complementary and Alternative Health? Flashcards
Within all health models, medicine can be classified as ?
- safe and effective
- not safe, nor effective
CAM
complementary and alternative medicine
How do most CAM therapies envision the body?
- The body is an entity with its own self-healing energy reservoir
- Emphasize “wellness” and engage the individual as an active participant in his or her own health
- Individual will achieve optimal health not because of a CAM therapy, but with the aid of the therapy (and by extension the practitioner)
What are the forms of patient participation in their treatment?
- Mind-body-spirit practice (meditation)
- Use of atural products (herbology)
- Use of manipulative or body-based practices (osteopathy, chiropractic)
- Use of movement therapies (Feldenkrais)
- Use of energy manipulation (reiki)
According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2013), ____% of the population depend on traditional medicine for primary health care in some Asian and African countries.
80%
*“traditional” medicine in Asian and African countries would be considered CAM in North America
According to the World Health Organization (WHO, 2013), up to ___% of the population has used some form of alternative or complementary medicine
80%
T&CM
Traditional Medicine’ and ‘Complimentary Medicine -WHO
Merges the terms TM and CM, encompassing products, practices and practitioners.
What is the importance of the WHO strategy document?
This document is a huge undertaking which will shape the accessibility of T&CM worldwide over the next 10 years
TM
Traditional medicine -WHO
The sum total of the knowledge, skill, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness
CM
Complementary medicine -WHO
Or “alternative medicine”
Refer to a broad set of health care practices that are not part of that country’s own tradition or conventional medicine and are not fully integrated into the dominant health-care system. They are used interchangeably with traditional medicine in some countries
In North America CAM is divided into what 2 categorizations of practice?
- Centuries-old practices; well-developed clinical knowledge; embedded within the cultural society; large numbers of practitioners (ex: traditional medicine in China)
- Therapies only recently developed by a small number of practitioners and have not been validated by scientific testing (ex: mind-body medicine, natural product nutrition)
Allopathic medicine
- Considered the “scientific” healing art of disease care and prevention
- Used to describe modern conventional medical methods derived from “Western” thinking
- Also referred to as conventional medicine and is the dominant form of medicine used in North America
- ex: a surgeon working in cardiology
Alternative/complementary medicine
- Refers to practices used for the purpose of medical intervention, health promotion, or disease prevention not routinely taught at Western medical schools
- Used in conjunction with or as an adjunct to, but not a replacement for, conventional allopathic forms of medicine
- May or may not be considered ‘unscientific’ in nature
- Indicates a compatibility between the utilization of such practices and allopathic medicine
- ex: naturopathy
Biomedical model/Biomedicine
- Same as allopathy, however, the focus is on reductive biology and science including the study of tissue cells, components, and chemicals to understand life processes and to combat disease
- Conceptionally, this model used Newtonian physics (ex: nuclear medicine) and pre-evolutionary biology (ex: oncology)
Integrated medicine
- Implies an active, conscious effort by the health professions to seek evidence for using various CAM modalities in order to appropriately incorporate them into the continuum of the current health care system
- This meaning has been rarely achieved
Unconventional medicine
Any health care practice that is not considered conventional nor allopathic, (ex: reiki)
What are the 5 important characteristics common to both types of CAM?
- A wellness orientation
- A reliance on self-healing
- An inference that bioenergetic mechanisms play a role in healing
- The use of nutrition and natural products
- An emphasis on individuality including humility
Describe the wellness orientation characteristic common to both types of CAM
- Goal of preventing disease
- More than the prevention of disease
- Focus on engaging inner resources of individual as an active and conscious participant in the maintenance of their own health
- Healthy = balance of internal resources with external natural and social environment
- For the “mainstream”, it is the use of drugs and surgery to prevent disease in those at risk (not for treating disease) - medicalization of prevention
Describe the reliance on self-healing characteristic common to both types of CAM
- Body heals itself
- External manipulations mobilize the body’s inner healing resources
Describe the bioenergetic mechanisms characteristic common to both types of CAM
- Body has energy
- Body is an energetic system
- Disruptions in balance and flow of energy cause illness
- Body can make itself sick (ex: fever)
Describe the use of nutrition and natural products characteristic common to both types of CAM
- Fundamental
- nutrients and plant products are taken into the body and incorporated
- Provide energy in calories witht eh material resources to stay healthy and get well
- Basic plan of the body evolves and exists in an ecological context, what the body needs it obtains from the environment in which it grew
- Best to obtain nutrients from their natural forms
Describe the individuality and humility characteristic common to both types of CAM
- The whole person as a unique individual with own inner resources
- Normalization, standardization, generalization difficult to apply to research and clinical practice
- may be better than standardization (nothing lost in translation)
- focus on the healed (not the healer)
- humbling to the role of practitioner as heroic healer
- healer is not sole source of healing
Why is CAM generally considered holistic and vitalist in nature?
CAM is also based on the concept that “the body heals itself, has its own [vital] energy, and is uniquely individual
Holism
- Refers to the totality of a living system
- This system cannot be reduced, observed, or measured at a level below that of the whole organism
Vitalism
- Refers to the nonmaterial “energy” of a living organism
- Across cultures, numerous names given to define these energies
- Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) uses the term Qi (“chi”)
In comparison to alternative helath, allopathic medicine is considered ________ and _______.
materialist and reductionist