Essay on the relationship between alternative medicine and overall health

Existing research and clinical practice have confirmed that alternative therapies (more standardly expressed as "complementary and alternative medicine, CAM") cannot replace the first-line treatment options of evidence-based medicine, but they can be used as an effective supplement to meet the core needs of overall health from multiple dimensions of physiological regulation, emotional relief, and social support. The personalized collaboration of the two is the optimal path for current public health management. There is no right or wrong, only differences in adaptation scenarios.

In the past two years, I worked as a volunteer in the chronic disease management group of a community in Shenzhen. I met 57-year-old Aunt Zhang. She has had essential hypertension for 12 years. She has been taking amlodipine regularly and her blood pressure is basically controlled. However, after entering menopause in 2021, she suffered from insomnia and hot flashes all night, and her blood pressure fluctuated every time she measured it. The cardiology department adjusted the dosage twice and added oryzanol, which regulates nerves, but the effect was not obvious. Later, the traditional Chinese medicine doctor in the chronic disease management team arranged for her to use auricular acupoint pressure beans twice a week, and asked her to follow the official tutorial and do Baduanjin for 15 minutes every day without changing the medication plan. Three months later, her sleep quality score increased from 4 to 7, and the blood pressure fluctuation range dropped from the original 25mmHg to less than 10mmHg. Even she said, "I feel much better, not as comfortable as having normal blood pressure." You see, this is the most typical value of alternative therapy: conventional medical treatment is to "bring pathological indicators back to the normal range", while overall health requires "the whole person's state to be relaxed", and the latter happens to be a blank area that many clinical treatments cannot cover.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this conclusion. Many Western medicine clinicians I have contacted are very cautious or even completely negative about alternative therapies. This is not unreasonable. After all, most alternative therapies currently do not have evidence-based support from large-sample double-blind randomized controlled trials. For example, there is no unified conclusion on the analgesic mechanism of acupuncture, not to mention the large number of pseudo-health programs on the market under the banner of "alternative therapies". Last year, there were even new ones I heard that a type 2 diabetic patient stopped metformin and went to eat the "natural fasting meal" of a health care institution. He was admitted to the ICU for ketoacidosis in half a month. There are many such cases. It is no wonder that many people think that alternative therapy is an IQ tax or even harmful to people.

Interestingly, I talked about this matter with doctors from the Department of Integrated Medicine of a tertiary-level hospital, and their statement was very true: The WHO's definition of health is not "the absence of disease", but a triple complete state of physical, psychological, and social adaptation. The core of conventional medical treatment is "treating the disease," which is to bring the body that has deviated from the normal indicators back on track. However, many times the patient's pain does not come from abnormal indicators, but from "the discomfort even if the indicators are normal." For example, for patients with chronic migraine, no problems can be detected by CT or MRI, and long-term consumption of ibuprofen can easily induce damage to the gastric mucosa. At this time, formal acupuncture intervention can reduce the dosage of analgesics by more than 30%. This is supported by clinical data. The 2023 "American Headache Society Guidelines" has listed acupuncture as a Level A recommended intervention for chronic migraine. Do you think this counts as support for overall health?

Let me tell you about my own personal experience. I worked on a project for a week at the end of last year and my stiff neck was so painful that it was difficult to even turn my head. I went to the orthopedics department to take a X-ray to rule out cervical disc herniation. The doctor prescribed flurbiprofen gel patch. After applying it for two days, it still hurt so much that I could not sit down at my desk. My colleague took me to the massage department of the hospital for a regular massage, and the pain when I turned my head was gone that day. If you ask me to explain the principle clearly, I can't tell you, but it does work. Of course, the premise is that I did an examination first to rule out organic diseases. If I had gone directly to the massage parlor on the roadside and massaged blindly, I might have found a more serious problem.

In fact, many people’s misunderstandings about alternative therapies are largely due to their names. “Alternative therapies” sounds like they are meant to replace regular treatments, but its original English name is Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which literally translates to “complementary and alternative medicine.” The core is first and foremost “complementary”. Only when there is no good solution to conventional medical treatment, will “alternative” solutions be considered, and they must be used under the guidance of professionals. Nowadays, many businesses deliberately remove the word "supplement" and only advocate "replacement", just to deceive those who don't want to take medicine or undergo surgery. This kind of chaos is exactly what the regulatory authorities need to focus on, and the blame cannot be put on the alternative therapy itself.

Nowadays, people are paying more and more attention to overall health. Instead of just staring at the arrows on the physical examination report, they want to make their overall condition better. At this time, alternative therapies actually have a lot of room to play, but the premise is that you have to understand clearly: if you are diagnosed with serious emergencies such as pneumonia, fractures, and malignant tumors, you should seek evidence-based treatment from a regular hospital as soon as possible. Don't think that you can get better by relying on moxibustion or drinking folk prescriptions.； If you have chronic sub-health or uncomfortable symptoms associated with chronic diseases, and there is no good solution in conventional medical treatment, you can try regular alternative therapies under the advice of professionals. You don’t need to beat them to death with a stick, and you don’t need to treat them as a magic medicine that can cure all diseases. The best choice for your health is the one that suits you.