Yesica Ortez, 10th Grade

How can traditional/alternative forms of medical treatment be integrated into modern medicine?

In recent years, there have been many significant and crucial medical developments made around the world. However, there has also been a rapidly growing interest in combining alternative and traditional forms of treatment with the more widely accepted modern medical practices. It has been shown that the definition of alternative medicine does vary depending on culture but, a lot of these practices mostly focus and concentrate on stimulating the body’s ability to heal by energy management, herbal supplementation, and other balancing techniques. The most common alternative medicine practices are acupuncture, ayurveda, homeopathy, and naturopathy. All of these practices do come and vary from different customs and cultures. There are multiple causes as to why there has been a growing interest in combining alternative forms of treatment into modern medical practices.

The main reason that is often more commonly heard is simply that it would help create a healthcare system that is more efficient and cost-effective. This statement can be supported in the article “Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Current Medical Practice” because it states “It aims to combine conventional medicine with alternative therapies to create a more efficient and cost-effective health care delivery system.” The action to combine both modern medicine and alternative practice is easier said than done. It is harder to accomplish this action because of the stigma that surrounds alternative and traditional medicine. There happens to be such an extremely large amount of stigma surrounding these practices specifically in the Western side of the hemisphere because of the availability of modern medicine. There is such a great amount of daily research and testing that goes into modern medicine that overpowers the need and wants to research into alternative medicine.

There is not much research about herbal, alternative, and traditional medicine because large labs do not provide the enough and correct funding for testing to be done to be able to collect information that could genuinely be highly useful. This claim can be supported by a statement in “The Stigma Surrounding Herbal Medicine”, which states “Herbal medicine is not researched to the same degree as modern medicine because large labs aren’t providing the enough funding, as a byproduct of the lack of research creates a slew of misinformation and also extreme lack of information surrounding herbal medicine, which adds to the sigma.” Besides the stigma that surrounds the combining of both modern and alternative, there are other challenges and diffculties that would be needed to overcome for the integration of modern medicine and traditional medicine to not only occur but also be able to work well. For example, there have been multiple studies that have been done that show certain herbs can intervene with the metabolism of pharmaceutical drugs leading to unwanted and unsafe effects.

As a result of these dangers, there would have to be a need for healthcare workers to be well-versed in both modern and alternative treatments of medicines to ensure the patient’s safety and well-being. Despite all the stigma and challenges that would have to be overcome there is great hope and a large possibility that integrating modern medicine and alternative/traditional practices could have a positive outlook on the world around us. To begin successfully integrating modern medicine with alternative/traditional practices there would first have to be more rigorous research to establish the efficiency and safety of alternative therapies. The testing needed for this to happen should be well designed, and organized and have methodical reviews to provide healthcare workers with the most reliable and trustworthy evidence. Once that has been worked on, more medical education and training for healthcare providers should occur. This step would lead to more informed healthcare workers that could provide improved patient care.

In conclusion the integration and combination of alternative and traditional practices with modern medicine would conclude to be very difficult but very possible and it would turn out to be extremely rewarding. As established the first step would have to be doing an extreme amount of new research and testing to help debunk and clear up all the stigma that surrounds alternative and traditional practices. After that has been somewhat cleared out there would need to be educational training to ensure the needs of patients are being meet as a whole person, not just in some ways. Finally the positive outcomes that could occur consist of less invasive treatments whenever, fewer medications having to be taken, and fewer visits to the doctor being made. All this would serve to be very beneficial.

Work Cited

Six Benefits of Integrative Medicine

Eman M Mortada : Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Current Medical Practice

Lisa A. Kidling; Regan A. Stiegmann : Alternative Medicine