As we learn more about the potential side effects medications can cause, Americans are embracing alternative therapies wholeheartedly -- so much so that certain health alternatives, such as chiropractic care and herbal remedies, are filtering into the mainstream of health care. In fact, it's estimated that 80 million Americans used some form of alternative health care in the last decade, and that number is steadily increasing.
A recent survey in "Consumer Reports" magazine reflected the view of its respondents on everything from acupuncture to massage therapy to nutritional supplements. The survey found that:
Alternative practices often seem to provide benefits to the users, especially when used in conjunction with approaches like improved exercise and nutrition. Many people are integrating alternative and conventional practices. (About 9 percent rely entirely on alternative medicines.) More than half of those who try alternative remedies find them somewhat or very helpful.
Many of us are sold on natural alternatives, in part, because of their long history of use. Homeopathy, one of the most widespread forms of natural health alternatives in the United States, dates back to the late 18th century. It is based on the belief that "like cures like"; that is, if you are given a substance that causes certain symptoms, the same substance can alleviate the problem, if it's given in small enough doses. This isn't so different from modern medicine's common approach to treating allergies -- immunotherapy -- in which patients receive repeated injections of an allergy-causing substance to become desensitized to it. In the practice of homeopathy, the original agent (usually derived from plants or minerals) is diluted to the appropriate levels based on Homeopathic Pharmacopia of the United States.
"Nature" Health is as old as mankind and for thousands of years it was the only kind of health around. In the East, such as in India and China, it has never stopped being the fundamental basis of health. Even in the West, it was in the old days the conventional health care. A bit of imagination and the origin of Alternative Health becomes clear. Virtually every account of the History of Mankind suggests that for a very long time humans were hunters and gatherers. There was a definite allocation of tasks for the men, women, and children of those early societies. Because men were normally bigger and stronger than women and children, the men had the formidable task of bringing fresh meat back to the campfire. They were the hunters.
The women and children were responsible for the less dangerous work of finding fruits, vegetables, and any other edible flora that could be gathered. Women, of course, along with children and injured or disabled men, became the gatherers.
Over the millennia it became obvious to some women that certain particular vegetation had curative properties for some of the ailments that beset humans. The knowledge they acquired was passed down from one generation to another and a huge cultural base of medical information was established, all based on the curative properties of what we now know as herbs. That cultural knowledge base is what we now call Alternative Health and it was then the standard. Certain women who were accomplished at tapping into this knowledge became known by various names that all basically mean "Healer".
The typical Healer would be adept at identifying the herbs that were effective treatments for the common illnesses and processing those herbs so that they could be used most effectively against those illnesses. Most of the processing would involve using the herbs to make a soup or broth. Because of their important role, the women Healers were highly respected members of their societies.
During the religious hysteria of the Middle Ages rumors started that the Healers were consorts of the devil. The Healers were portrayed as witches or hags stirring their brew. The brew was explained as being made up of as evil potions and not health giving herbs.
The first "drugs" were, of course, processed herbs. As medical knowledge became more sophisticated, techniques were refined and we had Aspirin, derived from the bark of the willow tree and penicillin which was discovered on moldy bread. Then along came companies, the pharmaceuticals, which employed chemists who were able to replicate many plant based medicines in a laboratory. They became huge profit makers and began to donate large sums of money to medical schools. Then they began to, and still do, dictate that which should be taught in those medical schools. Laboratory-produced medicine was deemed to be "in" and Alternative Medicine, herbal medicine, was "out".
Today we have the majority of mainstream, "conventional", medical practitioners who have graduated from those pharmaceutical-sponsored medical schools believing that laboratory produced medicines are "good" and plant based, herbal medicines are "bad".
Health Care is a multi-billion dollar industry. Alternative Health accounts for only a small percentage of that amount. Those billions of dollars mean a lot of political clout and advertising money to perpetuate the smoke and mirrors illusion that treating the symptoms of a disease is better methodology than treating the whole body.
When only symptoms are treated there will be residual disease. When the whole body is treated the immune system is strengthened and then the immune system eliminates the disease.
Our mission at NaturalHealthBase.com is to bring you as much information as is possible so that you can take advantage of this rejuvenated Western interest in natural methods to treat health problems.
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