Alternative Medicine

You know you want to become a holistic or an alternative medical practitioner that can make people better or feel good about themselves. The review course and the board certification examination will begin to incorporate reasonable standards into American medical practice and education, health planning, and research, regarding the application of the body of knowledge which encompasses the field of holistic medicine.
The enduring challenge of reconciling CAM and biomedical ontological approaches highlights process and ideological barriers that undermine the integrity of different domains ( Mizrachi et al., 2005 ; Jagtenberg et al., 2006 ). Some scholars argue that CAM providers' knowledge and practice should inform how the CAM and biomedical models are integrated in patient care, while others suggest that patients should be the frame of reference.



She combines functional medicine, acupuncture, herbal medicine, nutraceutical supplementation, optimal nutrition, lifestyle counseling, as well as detoxification and injection therapy to assist her patients in recovering balance and reaching their fullest health potential.
In doing so, the researcher looked for instances of CAM providers' descriptions and explanations of the concepts of holistic, healing, and health in the different contexts explored in the study (e.g., in the providers' life, with respect to their religious beliefs, worldview, inter-, and intra-professional interaction with other CAM providers or biomedical providers), and an understanding of their own knowledge independently and in relationship with other models.

Phillip saw himself as setting an example for patient awareness, because: who is going to listen to a doctor who is overweight, smoking cigarettes, and having a martini at lunch time, and telling you that you need to eat right and exercise, obviously.” Phillip gave examples of thyroid diagnoses, where the typical allopathic approach is to receive synthetic T4, which, according to Phillip is problematic: for one, that synthetic T4 has to be converted by the body into T3,” as opposed to his approach to: high potency thyroid or an iodine-high diet supplement,” and then, test them again in 2 to 3 months to see whether or not that has helped in TSH levels to come down.” If they did not, Phillip sought to educate patients and refer them to an endocrinologist in this town, who will prescribe bio-identical hormones.” Phillip's discourse illustrates his ability to successfully network with biomedical colleagues such as neurosurgeons and endocrinologists.
The approach to health care is slowly changing and there is a growing interest in Natural Medicine There are various types of Alternative Healthcare Providers in addition to physicians who are adopting alternative, complementary therapies into their practices or partnering with Alternative Healthcare Practitioners who provide a more complete preventative care regimen to their patients.
According to the legislation creating NCCAM (P.L. 105-277), NCCAM's mandate is the conduct and support of basic and applied research (intramural and extramural), research training, and to disseminate health information and other programs with respect to identifying, investigating, and validating CAM treatments, diagnostic and prevention modalities, disciplines and systems.” To achieve its mandate, NCCAM focuses on four primary areas: research, research training and career development, outreach, and integration.

Complementary medicine (CM) is a broad domain of healing resources that encompasses all health systems, modalities, and practices and their accompanying theories Shamanism and beliefs, other than those intrinsic to the politically dominant health system of a particular society or culture in a given historical period.
Although national policies on integration of diverse medical models vary globally, the findings can contribute to informing CAM integration through supporting articulation of informed national policy, practitioner credentialing, and representation of CAM in consumer and patient communication ( World Health Organization, 2004 ). The integration of holistic health practices that constitute a fundamental part of local belief systems with biomedical care has the potential to help with provision of healthcare in rural and developing world contexts in seminal ways ( Flannery et al., 2006 ). For example, in India and China, where two whole systems approaches of Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), informal ways for integrating these in patient care have a long-standing and vibrant tradition in many health domains.

For example, look at the definition of Eisenberg and colleagues (1993), which states that CAM comprises inteventions that are neither taught widely in medical schools nor generally available in hospitals; however, more than half of all U.S. medical schools provide education about CAM, health care institutions are offering CAM services, and the numbers of insurers offering reimbursement for CAM therapies is growing (see Chapters 7 and 8 ).