Alternative, Complementary/Integrative, and Traditional Medicine: Home

Using This Guide

This LibGuide serves as an entry point for investigating the scientific legitimacy, socio-historical context, and medicinal value of alternative, complementary/integrative, and traditional medicines with particular focus on herbs, spices, and plants.

The Home page provides an overview of available resources. Individual tabbed pages focus on specific herbs and spices, combining concise overviews of the plant in question with links to the latest scientific research.

This guide serves exclusively as an informational resource. It does not contain or purport to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

What are alternative, complementary/integrative, and traditional medicine?

According the the NIH: National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health:

Many Americans use medical treatments that are not part of mainstream medicine. When you are using these types of care, it may be called complementary, integrative, or alternative medicine.

Complementary medicine is used together with mainstream medical care. An example is using acupuncture to help with side effects of cancer treatment. When health care providers and facilities offer both types of care, it is called integrative medicine. Alternative medicine is used instead of mainstream medical care.

The claims that non-mainstream practitioners make can sound promising. However, researchers do not know how safe many of these treatments are or how well they work. Studies are underway to determine the safety and usefulness of many of these practices.

Photo by Christian Burri on Unsplash

Alternative Medicine

Alternative medicine includes medical and therapeutic techniques, practices, and cultural systems for healing that have not yet been proven effective by the scientific method. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) classifies alternative medicine as an unrelated group of nonorthodox therapeutic practices, often with explanatory systems that do not follow conventional biomedical systems. Overall, it covers a broad range of philosophies, approaches, and therapies for healing. It is usually defined as treatments and practices used instead of conventional, evidence-based Western medicine. Alternative medicine is not taught widely in most medical schools, and is often not reimbursed by insurance companies.

Alternative medicine considers health as a balancing of mind, body, and spirit. This holistic approach takes into consideration the whole person, including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects. Many alternative practices are designed to prevent health problems rather than attempting to treat symptoms later. Growing evidence for the effectiveness of some therapies formerly classified as alternative, including acupuncture, massage, and music therapy has resulted in the inclusion of these in treatment plans on a complementary basis to conventional medical therapies. Complementary medicine works in conjunction with evidence-based medicine.

Alternative therapies include, but are not limited to the following disciplines: folk medicine, herbal medicine, Reiki, homeopathy, faith healing, aromatherapy, Ayurveda, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, massage, and music therapy. Chiropractic medicine contains aspects of several types of medicine, employing conventional, alternative, and complementary strategies. Studies suggest that individuals with a variety of chronic medical problems are likely to seek out these therapies. Evidence-based medicine that includes appropriate complementary or alternative therapies to treat the person on a holistic basis is termed integrative medicine.

Source: Blaser, Larry. "Alternative Medicine." The Gale Encyclopedia of Science, edited by Katherine H. Nemeh and Jacqueline L. Longe, 6th ed., vol. 1, Gale, 2021, pp. 161-166. Gale In Context: Science, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX8124400092/SCIC?u=west77775&sid=bookmark-SCIC&xid=ebbbfaaf. Accessed 31 Oct. 2023.

Integrative Medicine

Integrative medicine is a patient-centered, evidence-based approach to health care and wellness that addresses or “integrates” the full range of physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual, and environmental influences that affect a person's health. The National Institutes of Health uses the term “integrative medicine” to refer to incorporating complementary approaches into mainstream health care. Whereas the term “alternative medicine” is generally used to refer to a non-mainstream treatment used in place of an accepted and conventional medical treatment.

In general, integrative medicine is used to manage chronic health complaints rather than traumatic injuries or acute emergencies. Chronic health complaints include such things as sleep disorders, anxiety, stress-related illnesses, chronic fatigue, menopausal symptoms, arthritis and other musculoskeletal disorders, and lifestyle issues encompass smoking, obesity, and other issues and often involves a team approach to health care.

The following eight principles are cited by many integrative medicine practitioners and clinics as a summary of their practice and ideals:

• The patient and the physician are partners in healing.

• All the factors that influence the patient's wellbeing are taken into account. These include body, mind, spirit, and the patient's community.

• The physician uses all relevant evidence-based methods of treatment to assist the body's innate healing abilities.

• Natural and noninvasive, evidence-based interventions that have been shown to be effective are used whenever possible.

• Good medicine is based on good science: It continues to ask questions and is open to new discoveries and paradigms.

• Health promotion and prevention of illness are just as important as the treatment of existing health issues.

• Integrative health care is personalized in order to address the individual's unique needs, health issues, and circumstances.

• Physicians who practice integrative medicine exemplify its principles and commit themselves to ongoing self-exploration and self-development.

Source: Frey, Rebecca J., and Deborah L. Nurmi. "Integrative Medicine." The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 6th ed., vol. 5, Gale, 2020, pp. 2799-2801. Gale In Context: Science, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX7986601021/SCIC?u=west77775&sid=bookmark-SCIC&xid=6411b908. Accessed 31 Oct. 2023.

Herbal Medicine

Modern medicine has provided many breakthrough treatments for serious diseases. Some conditions, however, have eluded the healing grasp of contemporary western medicine, which emphasizes rigorous scientific investigation of therapies. In addition, rising costs of some treatments have placed modern healthcare beyond the reach of many people. The drugs that routinely fill pharmacy shelves of post-industrialized nations remain inaccessible to the majority of the people in the world. Instead, populations in many areas of the globe use herbal medicine, also called botanical medicine or phytotherapy, as the principal means of healthcare. Herbal medicine is the use of natural plant substances to treat illness. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations estimates that as much as 80 percent of the world population relies on the use of various forms of traditional (herbal) medicine for its primary healthcare.

Based upon hundreds, even thousands, of years of experience, herbal medicine provides an alternative to modern medicine, making healthcare more available. In fact, the majority of the world’s population uses herb products as a primary source of medicine. While some regulating authorities fear the consequences of unrestricted herbal remedy use, herbal medicine offers a degree of hope to some patients whose disease states do not respond favorably to modern pharmaceuticals. More often, however, herbal remedies are used to treat the common ailments of daily living like indigestion, sleeplessness, or the common cold.

A resurgence in interest in herbal medicine has occurred in the United States as medical experts have begun to recognize the potential benefit of many herbal extracts. So popular has herbal medicine become that scientific clinical studies of the effectiveness and proper dosing of some herbal medicines are being investigated.

Herbal medicine recognizes the medicinal value of plants and plant structures such as roots, stems, bark, leaves, and reproductive structures like seeds and flowers. To some, herbal medicine may seem to be on the fringes of medical practice. In reality, herbal medicine has been in existence since prehistoric time and is far more prevalent in some countries than is modern healthcare. The use of herbs ground into powders, filtered into extracts, mixed into salves, and steeped into teas has provided the very foundation upon which modern medicine is derived. Indeed, herbal medicine is the history of modern medicine.

Source: Watkins, Terry. "Herbal medicine." The Gale Encyclopedia of Science, edited by K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, 5th ed., Gale, 2014. Gale In Context: Science, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CV2644031099/SCIC?u=west77775&sid=bookmark-SCIC&xid=05fbf7c7. Accessed 31 Oct. 2023.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

Definition

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an ancient and still very vital holistic system of health and healing, based on the notion of harmony and balance, and employing the ideas of moderation and prevention.

Purpose

TCM is a complete system of healthcare with its own unique theories of anatomy, health, and treatment. It emphasizes diet and prevention and using acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage, and exercise; and focuses on stimulating the body's natural curative powers.

Precautions

In situations of severe trauma, TCM should not be substituted for contemporary modern trauma practice; it is most useful as an adjunct to the healing regimen. TCM is not the first line of treatment for bacterial infection or cancer, but may usefully complement contemporary medical treatment for those conditions.

Description

In theory and practice, traditional Chinese medicine is completely different from Western medicine, both in terms of considering how the human body works and how illness occurs and should be treated. As part of a continuing system that has been in use for thousands of years, it is still employed to treat over one-quarter of the world's population. Since the earliest Chinese physicians were also philosophers, their ways of viewing the world and human beings role in it affected their medicine. In TCM, both philosophically and medically, moderation in all things is advocated, as is living in harmony with nature and striving for balance in all things. Prevention is also a key goal of Chinese medicine, and much emphasis is placed on educating the patient to live responsibly. The Chinese physician also is more of an advisor than an authority; he or she believes in treating every patient differently, based on the notion that one does not treat the disease or condition but rather the individual patient. Thus two people with the same complaint may be treated entirely differently, if their constitutions and life situations are dissimilar. Disease is also considered to be evidence of the failure of preventive healthcare and a falling out of balance or harmony.

Source: Bruno, Leonard C. "Traditional Chinese Medicine." The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, edited by Jacqueline L. Longe, 6th ed., vol. 9, Gale, 2020, pp. 5195-5197. Gale In Context: Science, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX7986601908/SCIC?u=west77775&sid=bookmark-SCIC&xid=b2bff1e2. Accessed 31 Oct. 2023.