Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine-Some modalities will garner sufficient support to become part of mainstream care and the next generation of physicians will never know they were once controversial.

The side picture to this post is indicative of all about the essential elements of the integrative medicine wheel to include Energy Medicine, Mind/Body Medicine, Manipulative Therapies, Herbal Medicine, Lifestyle and behaviour. Medicine and medical professional in the current generation is arguably a team of specialists and allied professionals—radiation physicists, cytologists, nurse practitioners, psychiatric social workers, dental hygienists, and many more.TA common man’s expectations of health and the nature of the health care system have been altered and is frequently guided by information, goods, and services ; regulations and laws that constrain medical practice on the one hand and rarely accelerating choice in health care on the other. 

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) refers to a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not considered part of conventional or allopathic medicine or that have historic origins outside mainstream medicine.

At present, six fields of CAM practice—osteopathic manipulation, chiropractic, acupuncture and traditional Asian medicine, massage therapy, naturopathy, and homeopathy—are subject to licensure requirements and some form of educational accreditation. Mind-body practices such as meditation and yoga are not licensed in any state, and training in those practices is not subject to national accreditation.

Because of the large number of compounds that alter drug metabolism and the large number of agents some patients are taking, identification of all potential interactions can be a daunting task. Several useful Web resources can ameliorate this problem (Check table sourced from Harrsions Internal Medicine bible) Clearly, attention to this problem is particularly important with drugs with a narrow therapeutic index, such as anticoagulants, antiseizure medications, immunosuppressants, and cancer chemotherapeutic agents.

An array of unproven modalities will always be used by the patients under physicians’ care. Physicians must approach each encounter as an opportunity to understand their patients’ beliefs and expectations and use those insights to help guide their personal health care practices in a constructive way. Many of these choices are entirely innocuous and can be accommodated in the context of the established diagnostic and therapeutic interventions. Some of these choices should be actively discouraged. Along the way, scientific evidence will drive many CAM approaches out of favor. Some modalities will garner sufficient support to become part of mainstream care and the next generation of physicians will never know they were once controversial.