Essay on the relationship between alternative medicine and overall health

In essence, alternative therapies are not "substitutes" for modern mainstream medical care, but rather serve as a complementary medical dimension. By covering the whole person's health needs of physical, psychological, and social connections, they form a complementary relationship with conventional medical care and jointly serve the realization of overall health goals. This is also the current general consensus in the field of integrative medicine in the world.

I worked in the integrative medicine position at a community health service center for eight months. The first typical case I came into contact with was 52-year-old Aunt Zhang. She had been taking antihypertensive drugs for six years, but her blood pressure fluctuated all the time. She had insomnia all night long, and her tongue coating was so thick and greasy that it was painful to speak. After a checkup at a tertiary hospital, it was found that there were no organic problems with the organs. The doctor could only repeatedly adjust the dosage of antihypertensive drugs and told her not to be anxious. Later, on the basis of her taking medicine as prescribed by the doctor, we added auricular bean pressure twice a week and 15 minutes of mindful breathing exercises every day. In less than three months, her sleep duration increased from 3 hours to 6 hours a day, and her blood pressure stabilized at around 130/80. Now she is practicing Baduanjin with more than a dozen old sisters in the community, and she can become a semi-volunteer teacher herself.

Of course, the controversy never ends. Researchers from the evidence-based medicine school have always emphasized that most alternative therapies currently do not have enough large-sample double-blind randomized controlled trials to support their efficacy. The Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) under the National Institutes of Health has only identified a few therapies such as acupuncture, mindfulness-based stress reduction, and yoga on their intervention effects on specific symptoms such as chronic pain, mild to moderate anxiety, and postoperative nausea and vomiting. Others, such as aromatherapy and crystal therapy, have not yet been supported by clear evidence-based evidence. Many of the so-called "curative effects" are essentially placebo effects. Some clinicians directly criticized: Many people deify alternative therapies, which in turn delays regular treatment - I met a 32-year-old patient with breast nodules. Hearing a health blogger say that massage can "detoxify and dissipate clumps," he stopped taking the medicine prescribed by the doctor and went for chest massage three times a week. After half a year, the nodules were reviewed and found to have become malignant, missing the best opportunity for minimally invasive treatment. This kind of chaos is also the core reason why many people scorn alternative therapies.

However, we cannot deny that in the gaps that are not covered by mainstream medical treatment, many standardized alternative therapies can indeed solve real problems. The WHO's definition of health has long since been updated to "a state of complete physical, psychological, and social adaptability, not just the absence of disease or weakness." However, the current mainstream medical system focuses more on "treating diseases": if you have high blood pressure, you will be prescribed antihypertensive drugs, if you have high blood sugar, you will be prescribed antihyperglycemic drugs, and if you have cervical spine pain, you will be prescribed painkillers after an MRI and there is no protrusion. However, many times the patient's pain is "the discomfort of not being able to find out the problem": for example, chronic fatigue syndrome, a dozen tubes of blood were drawn and all the indicators were normal, but they were too tired to get up every day. ； For example, if you have functional indigestion, you have had gastroscopy three times and there are no problems, but if you eat something cold, you will feel so bloated that you can't sleep. ； There are also cancer patients who feel pain all over after chemotherapy and mothers who feel depressed after giving birth. These problems cannot be completely solved by taking medicine.

I had previously contacted a 27-year-old programmer from an Internet company. His cervical spine had straightened and the physiological curvature was so painful that he could not lift his arms. After taking painkillers for two weeks, he still felt dizzy as soon as he went to work. Later, we asked him to take 10 minutes every day to do cervical spine rehabilitation exercises during work breaks, and he went for regular Chinese massage once a week. In less than two months, his pain score dropped from 7 points to 2 points, and even the migraines he had frequently suffered before were mostly cured. Do you think this is metaphysics? No, massage relaxes tense muscles, and rehabilitation exercises adjust the bad posture of sitting at a desk for a long time. You don’t have to be in pain every day, and your anxiety is reduced. Once the positive physiological and psychological cycle is established, your condition will naturally improve.

Many tertiary hospitals in China now have integrated medicine departments. The oncology department will use mindfulness therapy to help patients relieve anxiety and vomiting after chemotherapy. The obstetrics department will use acupoint massage and Lamaze breathing to help reduce the pain of postpartum women. The rehabilitation department will include Baduanjin and Tai Chi in the postoperative rehabilitation plan. No one would say that these should be used to replace chemotherapy or surgery. On the basis of conventional treatment, patients will suffer less and recover faster. This is what overall health should be.

To be honest, the current misunderstandings about alternative therapies have little to do with the therapies themselves. Either some people boast that they are omnipotent and can cure all diseases, or some people treat them as worthless and are all liars. It has never been a "life-saving miracle drug", let alone a substitute for formal medical intervention. Only by drawing a clear boundary: seeking mainstream medical treatment as soon as possible for acute and severe cases, and using it in a standardized manner under the guidance of professionals in chronic disease management, sub-health conditioning, and postoperative rehabilitation, will it become a useful supplementary tool for maintaining our overall health. After all, health is not a black-and-white multiple-choice question. Making yourself more comfortable and in better shape is better than anything else.