What is the relationship between alternative medicine and overall health?

The current general consensus in academic and practical fields is that alternative therapies can be used as a supplement to modern mainstream medical care and play a synergistic role in the non-disease treatment and care dimension of overall health, but they can never replace standardized clinical intervention. The adaptive boundary between the two is also the core controversy in the current industry.

Last year, when I attended a salon in the holistic health industry in Hangzhou, I met a girl who works as an Internet operator. Migraines have been tormenting her for almost four years. She went to three tertiary hospitals for a full set of medical examinations, but no organic disease was found. She took too many painkillers and had acid reflux, so she dared not touch coffee. Later, she adjusted her schedule according to the doctor's instructions, and also did regular Baduanjin and auricular pressure bean conditioning. In more than three months, the frequency of migraines dropped by 60%, and even her sleep quality improved a lot. This scenario is actually the most typical positioning of alternative therapy in the overall health framework - it can just make up for the functional discomforts that mainstream medical treatment cannot solve and the conditioning needs during the recovery period of chronic diseases.

But we cannot exaggerate the effects of this individual case. In the past two years, we have seen too many institutions that promote alternative therapies as "panacea." They either say that moxibustion can eliminate malignant nodules, or that aromatherapy can cut off the roots of diabetes. Last year, a health center in Shenzhen was investigated and punished for deceiving diabetic patients into stopping their hypoglycemic drugs and doing so-called "essential oil detoxification massage." In the end, the patient was sent to the emergency room for ketoacidosis, which completely violated the original intention of "all-dimensional coordinated care" for overall health.

In fact, the core of overall health is to treat people as a complete living system. It is not about treating headaches and feet. In addition to normal physiological indicators, it also needs to take care of soft dimensions such as emotional state, living habits, and social adaptation. These are precisely the gaps that are difficult to cover in current clinical medicine. When you go to the outpatient clinic, the doctor cannot spend half an hour teaching you how to use abdominal breathing to relieve anxiety before exams, nor can he watch you adjust your posture every day to improve lumbar muscle strain. Alternative solutions such as mindfulness, massage, and traditional exercise can just fill these gaps. Of course, many scholars now have reservations. For example, the University of Oxford conducted a controlled trial on patients with chronic low back pain in the past two years. The difference in pain improvement rate between patients who received standard massage and those who only received soothing light massage was less than 10%. This shows that the boundary between the actual effect and the placebo effect of many alternative therapies has not been fully understood, and there is not enough clinical data with a large sample to support all claims of efficacy. The probability of consumers falling into the trap is indeed high.

I have been doing health management myself for almost six years. My advice to my clients has always been to go to a regular hospital to check out the problem first, to make sure there are no organic lesions that require emergency intervention, or when the chronic disease is in a stable recovery period, and then try an alternative plan that suits you as needed. To use an inappropriate analogy, mainstream medical treatment is a main meal that you must eat every day. Regardless of whether you are full and nutritious, alternative therapy is a small cold dish that goes with the meal. It can be refreshing and refreshing, and it can also supplement the trace elements that are missing from the meal. However, if you only eat cold dishes without meals, you will definitely have problems in the end.