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Alternative medicine consists of a wide range of health care practices, products, and therapies. The shared feature is a claim to heal that is not based on the scientific method. Alternative medicine practices are diverse in their foundations and methodologies. [22]
Alternative medicine is a term often used to describe medical practices where are untested or untestable.Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrated medicine or integrative medicine (IM), functional medicine, and holistic medicine are among many rebrandings of the same phenomenon.
In some cases, political issues, mainstream medicine and alternative medicine all collide, such as in cases where synthetic drugs are legal but the herbal sources of the same active chemical are banned. [4] In other cases, controversy over mainstream medicine causes questions about the nature of a treatment, such as water fluoridation. [5]
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"Unproven medicine" can be alternative, complementary, conventional, or traditional. This includes many old, "grandfathered" FDA-approved drugs and all experimental medicine. Bad medicine Any medicine that has been scientifically proven not to work, or to work very poorly compared to other options, or to be unreasonably unsafe.
Breast cancer patients choosing alternative medicine were 5.68 times more likely to die within five years of diagnosis. [10] Although they are more likely to die than non-users, some users of alternative treatments feel a greater sense of control over their destinies and report less anxiety and depression. [24]
The history of alternative medicine covers the history of a group of diverse medical practices that were collectively promoted as "alternative medicine" beginning in the 1970s, to the collection of individual histories of members of that group, or to the history of western medical practices that were labeled "irregular practices" by the western medical establishment.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80 percent of the population of some Asian and African countries presently uses herbal medicine for some aspect of primary health care. [15] Some prescription drugs have a basis as herbal remedies, including artemisinin, [16] digitalis, quinine and taxanes.