Choosing a Complementary Therapy: Part 1
Description
This article is from the Health Articles series.
Choosing a Complementary Therapy: Part 1
Most mainstream physicians are of little assistance when it comes to providing guidance to patients in the area of complementary medicine. At the same time, there is an explosion of media "hype" and commercial ventures touting non-toxic cures for illnesses ranging from acne to cancer. How does a consumer of health services interested in exploring complementary therapies make sense of it all?
Obtain a Medical Diagnosis
Always begin by obtaining a medical diagnosis for your condition from a physician. If you decide to stop using mainstream medicine, do so only because you have weighed the benefits and side effects of the treatment and determined that there is no longer a sufficient reason to continue. Never abandon a promising mainstream therapy in favor of an unproven complementary therapy.
Educate Yourself
Once you have a diagnosis and comprehensive information on mainstream treatments for the condition, it is well worth your time to educate yourself thoroughly about the field of complementary medicine for your condition so that you will have a context for comparing therapies and making decisions.
It is very common for a patient to hear about a complementary therapy that has been helpful for someone else and to expend considerable effort to locate that therapy for themselves. While it's useful to hear from individuals who feel they have been helped by a given therapy, keep in mind that people who were not helped are less likely to talk about it than those who experienced dramatic positive results. The person you heard about may be one out of a hundred who actually benefited from the treatment!
Most medical conditions are self-limiting -- they get better eventually even without treatment. Other conditions, including some serious diseases like multiple sclerosis, can wax and wane regardless of treatment. In these cases knowing that someone improved when using an alternative remedy tells you nothing, because it could have happened even without the remedy. Also remember that people who use these therapies often use a number of them at once in addition to Western medicine. Therefore, it is often impossible to know exactly which therapy or combination of therapies actually helped.
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