Alternative Health Care - A Natural Way To Wellness

Alternative health care is rising in popularity as people shun traditional medicine for more natural ways of preventative medicine.

Here we will look at alternative health care in more detail and the benefits

A variety of therapeutic or preventive health care practices, such as homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic, and herbal medicine, that do not follow generally accepted medical methods and may not have a scientific explanation for their effectiveness.

Unconventional, unorthodox, unproven, or alternative, complementary, innovative, integrative therapies.

Others define it as medical interventions not taught at United States medical schools or not available at United States hospitals.

Alternative therapies include, but are not limited to the following disciplines: folk medicine, herbal medicine, diet fads, homeopathy, faith healing, new age healing, chiropractic, acupuncture, naturopathy, massage, and music therapy.

Folk medicine

Folk medicine refers collectively to procedures traditionally used for treatment of illness and injury, aid to childbirth, and maintenance of wellness.

It is a body of knowledge distinct from "scientific medicine" and may coexist in the same culture. It is usually unwritten and transmitted orally until someone "collects" it.

Within a given culture, elements of folk medicine knowledge may be diffusely known by many adults, or may be gathered and applied by those in a specific role of healer, shaman, midwife, witch, or dealer in herbs.

Elements in a specific culture are not necessarily integrated into a coherent system, and may be contradictory.

Herbal medicine

Herbal medicine is an aspect of folk medicine - the use of gathered plant parts to make teas, poultices, or powders that purportedly effect cures.

Many effective treatments adopted by physicians over the centuries were derived from plants (salicylate, digitalis, quinine), and botany was an important part of the materia medica of professional medical training before the 20th century.

In the last century, modern medicine has continued to seek effective botanical treatments among exotic places and peoples but tended to regard herbal medicine of Western societies negatively. Recently, controlled studies of some of the herbalists' cures have suggested some are effective.

Homeopathy

Homeopathy (also spelled hom?opathy or homoeopathy) from the Greek words ?Þ????, homoios (similar) and pathos (suffering), is a system of alternative medicine, notable for its controversial practice of prescribing water-based solutions that in many cases do not contain chemically active ingredients.

The model of homeopathy was developed by the Saxon physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) and first published in 1796. It is growing in popularity in some areas where it is practiced today, but neither its empirical nor its hypothetical foundation meets minimum scientific standards.

Homeopathy calls for treating "like with like", a doctrine referred to as the "Law of Similars". The practitioner considers the totality of symptoms of a given case, then chooses a remedy that has been reported in a homeopathic proving to produce a similar set of symptoms in healthy subjects.

This remedy is usually given in extremely low concentrations prepared according to a procedure known as potentisation, because it is held that this process gives higher dilutions more therapeutic power.

Faith healing

Faith healing is the use of solely spiritual means in treating disease, sometimes accompanied with the refusal of modern medical techniques.

Another term for this is spiritual healing. Faith healing is a form of alternative medicine.

New age healing

Acupuncture

Acupuncture (from Lat. acus, "needle" (noun), and pungere, "prick" (verb) or in Standard Mandarin, zhen jiu (??), is one of the main branches of Traditional Chinese Medicine (others being herbal medicine and tui na).

It is a therapeutic technique from that framework intended to restore health and well-being.

The term acupuncture is often used by Westerners to refer to Chinese medicine generally. The technique involves the insertion of needles into "acupuncture points" on the body by trained practitioners. The needles most commonly used in present-day practice are made of stainless steel and are of approximately the same diameter as a medium thickness guitar string (from approximately .01" to .02").

Although the clinical efficacy of this practice is debated, the traditional theory underlying its mechanisms has no basis in modern scientific conceptions of physiology and is therefore considered by its critics to be a pseudoscience.

While many of its practitioners and proponents promote it in a modern, clinical manner, acupuncture and related practices predate modern concepts of science.

Naturopathy

Naturopathic medicine is the practice of attempting to improve the health of patients through the application of natural remedies.

Most naturopaths consider their care complementary, not supplementary, to conventional Medicine.

Music therapy

Music therapy is the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program.

In other words, music therapy is the use of music by a trained professional to achieve therapeutic goals.

Goal areas may include, but are not limited to, motor skills, social/interpersonal development, cognitive development, self-awareness, and spiritual enhancement.

Music therapists are found in nearly every area of the helping professions.

Some commonly found practices include developmental work (communication, motor skills, etc.) with individuals with special needs, songwriting and listening in reminiscence/orientation work with the elderly, processing and relaxation work, and rhythmic entrainment for physical rehabilitation in stroke victims.

Alternative medicine is now becoming more accepted by the medical community as well as millions of people world wide as a natural way to wellness.

Discover Alternative health preventative and healing techniques and you may be glad you did