Popular Non-Traditional Health Care Practices

Popular Non-Traditional Health Care Practices
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Popular Non-Traditional Health Care Practices
Introduction
Non-traditional health care practices provide healing and many benefits to the body, which has resulted in different communities and cultures around the world to embrace the approaches. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) are non-traditional approaches to healing diseases and maintaining wellness. CAM is described as an approach to disease diagnosis, treatment, and/or prevention that complements the traditional or mainstream medical practice by contributing to a common whole, diversifying the medical theoretical framework, or satisfying some of the demands orthodox medicine fails to provide (Shirwaikar, Govindarajan, & Rawat, 2013). For these reasons, CAM is increasingly being used in many societies around the world due to the benefits it offers. For instance, acupuncture is often used in traditional or conventional medicine in the United States today with 38% of adults and 12% of children seeking this kind of treatment approach to cure different diseases (The Johns Hopkins University, 2019). Today, besides acupuncture, there are several non-traditional practices that have been accepted as mainstream forms of therapy, including homeopathy Ayurveda, yoga, herbal medicine, qigong, meditation, and sense therapy. This paper will describe non-traditional health practices: Chinese medicine, Japanese Kampo, and Indian Ayurveda, and explain how such approaches contribute to the wellness and prevention of diseases. The paper will then identify non-traditional health care options in my area and the number of people opting for the approaches over conventional medical practices and propose the reasons why increasing numbers of people today choose non-traditional health care options in modern societies.
The most ancient, yet surviving traditions in medicine are the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and traditional Indian medicine (TIM) (Patwardhan, Warude, Pushpangadan, & Bhatt, 2005). Renewed medical interests in these great traditions that sound experiential, philosophical, and experimental have been as a result of lack of curative approaches to a number of chronic illnesses, increased side effects of orthodox medicine, microbial resistance, high cost of drugs and emergence of new diseases. TCM and Ayurveda share common principles in practice. For instance, both practices focus on the patient instead on the disease and they both aim to promote human health and enhance the quality of life in a holistic fashion. In addition, most of the botanical sources in Ayurveda and TCM are similar and the systems have common philosophies aimed towards classifying materials, diseases, and individuals. Japanese Kampo has also been proven to be effective in the treatment of a number of inflammatory diseases, including dermatitis colitis, cardiomyopathy, hepatitis, and nephritis (Arumugam & Watanabe, 2017). Kampo medicines refer to Japanese herbal medicines that have a Chinese origin. However, such approaches were adapted in the Japanese culture and many health care practitioners in Japan have integrated the approach into modern health care practices. Within the Japanese national health insu...