Any range of medical therapies and treatments that are outside conventional Western health care are known as alternative medicine. Acupuncture, Yoga, Homeopathy, and Herbalism are just a few of the practices that fall under the category of alternative medicine. Although complementary and alternative medicines are frequently rendered as the same thing, complementary methods are used coupled with conventional methods while alternative methods are used in place of conventional practices. Alternative types of medicines are used across the globe in many different cultures, but some areas use it more specifically than others. Throughout history alternative medicine practitioners became popular around the early nineteenth century and started to challenge
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Surgeries and prescription drugs are readily available and oftentimes promoted to be a quick fix or a relief of symptoms, but does not necessarily cure the problem as a whole. Dr. Mercola states, “Drug "side effects", prescription errors, unnecessary surgeries, nosocomial infections, and hospital "errors" are a leading cause of death in the United States” (Mercola, par. 31). So if unnecessary surgeries and treatments are being performed and ultimately causing the most fatalities in the United States, would offering alternate forms of medicine be a logical solution to this problem? An issue with health care is that hospitals and health care professionals provide alternative practices, but in order to receive such treatments people would need to be informed about them because they have to ask for them since they are not recommended in place of conventional …show more content…
They were recommended a form of alternate medicine, acupuncture, to substitute their drug use to relieve their symptoms and every man involved was successful. Even a small-scale study such as this one should inspire people to recommend such treatments rather than unnecessary pharmaceuticals that cost a fortune. In an article in The New Yorker, a study was mentioned that stated that it was conducted to see how often people were given unnecessary high-cost tests or treatments such as doing an EEG for a headache, when EEG’s are in fact used for diagnosing seizure disorders, not headaches (Gawande, 2015, para. 2). The researchers deduced that in one year, twenty-five to forty-two percent of Medicare patients received at least one of the twenty-six useless tests and treatments (Gawande, 2015, para. 2). Unnecessary medical care is very widespread and is harming patients physically and financially. What could possibly be done about
Surgeries and prescription drugs are readily available and oftentimes promoted to be a quick fix or a relief of symptoms, but does not necessarily cure the problem as a whole. Dr. Mercola states, “Drug "side effects", prescription errors, unnecessary surgeries, nosocomial infections, and hospital "errors" are a leading cause of death in the United States” (Mercola, par. 31). So if unnecessary surgeries and treatments are being performed and ultimately causing the most fatalities in the United States, would offering alternate forms of medicine be a logical solution to this problem? An issue with health care is that hospitals and health care professionals provide alternative practices, but in order to receive such treatments people would need to be informed about them because they have to ask for them since they are not recommended in place of conventional …show more content…
They were recommended a form of alternate medicine, acupuncture, to substitute their drug use to relieve their symptoms and every man involved was successful. Even a small-scale study such as this one should inspire people to recommend such treatments rather than unnecessary pharmaceuticals that cost a fortune. In an article in The New Yorker, a study was mentioned that stated that it was conducted to see how often people were given unnecessary high-cost tests or treatments such as doing an EEG for a headache, when EEG’s are in fact used for diagnosing seizure disorders, not headaches (Gawande, 2015, para. 2). The researchers deduced that in one year, twenty-five to forty-two percent of Medicare patients received at least one of the twenty-six useless tests and treatments (Gawande, 2015, para. 2). Unnecessary medical care is very widespread and is harming patients physically and financially. What could possibly be done about