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Why do people believe in alternative medicine?


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"actual medicine that works", by which you mean hospital care, surgery and pharmaceuticals, can work very well for acute problems.



Certain chronic conditions such as say lupus, eczema, hepatitis B, or even depression may be better served by Chinese, Ayurvedic (traditional Indian) or Naturopathic medicine. While Western medicine relies on isolated active chemicals in a particular drug, herbal remedies (whose actions are, to be sure, chemical as well) have more co-factors either inherent in a single herb, or arising from a prescribed blend of herbs. Concerns about contamination of herbal ingredients as well as the variation in the concentration of their active ingredients are valid, so it is important that the practitioner in question has a reliable source. You're looking at a choice between unpatentable (and thus relatively unprofitable) plants as a solution, some of which have a track record of hundreds or even thousands of years of efficacy, or a pharmaceutical that has admittedly gone through clinical trials. The current influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the FDA and the influence of its aggressive marketing on the decisions of physicians should lead one to take a single-pill solution with the proverbial grain of salt, though.



Herbs vs pills aside, though, a glaring weakness of the training of Western physicians is nutrition, a subject in which most M.D.s have an appalling lack of knowledge. Again we could look at the amount of money being made in drugs for high blood pressure or to treat Type 2 diabetes, conditions which are entirely preventable through a change in diet. All of the above "alternative" medicines put a strong emphasis on the role of food in shaping our over-all health.



That's not to say alternative medicine does not also include its share of quackery and placebo effects (I'm looking at you, homeopathy) but dismissing all of these traditions out of hand is ignorant.


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Why do people believe in alternative medicine when actual medicine that works already exists?

Because sometimes it doesn't.

I'm not really defending alternative medicine here, but conventional medicine fails in a lot of ways. Hospitals are soulless, depressing places where you're often left alone for hours. Many drugs have massive or awful side effects. Defensive medicine means your blood is drawn over, and over, and over again just to be sure. For chronic conditions, all of these problems are exacerbated significantly. I mean, by definition, a chronic problem hasn't been treated adequately by medicine. Sure, we're doing the best we can, but that doesn't mean we're doing well enough. Then, especially in some communities, there are histories of medical abuse or neglect that make people distrust hospital staff in general.

So in that setting, the idea that someone would supplement or replace conventional medical care with alternative medicine is wholly unsurprising.

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Why do people believe in alternative medicine when actual medicine that works already exists?

Not all medicine created in labs works for all the people would be my first answer.

'Alternate' medicine has been around for thousands of years. One well-known historical event is the 'cure' for scurvy brought to Jacques Cartier's attention by the natives ... ground up coniferous needles/bark in boiling water.

Whereas the 'vitamin C' cure wasn't realised by 'modern medicine' for another 300 years.

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There's all sorts of different types of "alternative medicine"





Not all medicine created in labs works for all the people would be my first answer.


'Alternate' medicine has been around for thousands of years. One well-known historical event is the 'cure' for scurvy brought to Jacques Cartier's attention by the natives ... ground up coniferous needles/bark in boiling water.


Whereas the 'vitamin C' cure wasn't realised by 'modern medicine' for another 300 years.




Err, the fact that certain types of food cured scurvy was known since 1497 at the very least, for citrus.



This actually shows one of the major problems with "alternative" medecine: Trial and error can show you what works, but not why, and often messes up the connections. Eg. eating fresh meat can cure scurvy, but preserved meat does not. Until the discovery of Vitamin C no one understood *why* this was.



That said, the most common reasons for believing in alternative medecine is not wanting to believe in the limits of medecine.


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There's all sorts of different types of "alternative medicine"

Err, the fact that certain types of food cured scurvy was known since 1497 at the very least, for citrus.

This actually shows one of the major problems with "alternative" medecine: Trial and error can show you what works, but not why, and often messes up the connections. Eg. eating fresh meat can cure scurvy, but preserved meat does not. Until the discovery of Vitamin C no one understood *why* this was.

That said, the most common reasons for believing in alternative medecine is not wanting to believe in the limits of medecine.

Vitamin C was discovered in 1828(38?) to be the 'cure' for scurvy, and though it was known that citrus fruits/vegetables kept the condition at bay, the foodstuffs that the sailors brought along for voyages didn't last long due to spoilage, where the natives had learned to make powders from coniferous tree parts that could be easily stored/transported by the navigators for long distance exploration.

Either way, history has shown that 'cures' for many types of illnesses were known and used long before modern medicine. The natives call it traditional medicine, non-natives call it 'alternative'.

As pointed out by others, sometimes the cure for a condition boils down to simply changing one's eating habits, but pharmaceutical companies don't make money off of those people. No money, no adverts, no press time.

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Why do people believe in alternative medicine when actual medicine that works already exists?

Because "actual medicine" is only available in the form of a profit-driven industry whose primary focus is to collect what it can from your miserly insurance provider and thus faces a conflict of interest that demotivates actually curing you (as doing so removes you from the customer base/revenue stream).

A certain amount of cynicism and desire to find other options is quite understandable.

Disillusion with the latter part of your question, perhaps, more so than confidence in the former.

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Many prescription medicines are terrible on your liver and the side effects of which are worse than the problem being treated.


My mother in law owns a natural foods store (alternative medicine) and I have seen the solution to many problems that people get treated with traditional medicine are treatable through dietary supplements and proper diet. You could take some Prilosec for your heartburn, take it every day, or you could take a papaya enzyme instead. The Papaya enzyme wont dissolve your liver. Of course, you could always stop eating the processed shit that is giving you heartburn, but that is another argument.


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Why not use both? Herbs for general health and preventative measures, and real medicine to treat illnesses and symptoms that actually manifest themselves. Both can be used during treatment as well. I've never understood why people are polarized on everything. Personally I'd rather try as many options as possible.

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A few reasons:

- Anecdotal evidence: anecdotal, lived experience is very compelling to most people, even if "real" evidence contradicts it, because people are kind of dumb. If they use a homeopathic cure and then get better, they'll often attribute it to that cure even if they would have gotten better anyway.

- Placebo effect: never underestimate the placebo effect.

- Desire for mysticism: People often want to believe in ancient Chinese secrets or whatever . Compare to the mystique surrounding, say, kung fu.

- Actual efficacy: Some things, like acupuncture, seem to have efficacy even if we don't buy the traditional explanations for their mechanics.

- Conspiracy theory: a staggering number of people seem to believe the pharmaceutical industry is a diabolical conspiracy. Their worldview requires the "little guy" to root for even if he's peddling snake oil.

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- Conspiracy theory: a staggering number of people seem to believe the pharmaceutical industry is a diabolical conspiracy. Their worldview requires the "little guy" to root for even if he's peddling snake oil.

The pharmaceutical industry is there to make money. They make money off of sick people. Therefore it is in their benefit to keep their customer base sick, or at the very least dependent on the industry. This isn't a conspiracy, this is their business model. There's a reason the cancer industry is a $10 billion per year industry and it isn't because they are curing people.

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I for one have found that taking astragalus every day prevents me from ever getting a cold. To be fair that's an anecdotal correlation, but with a 4 year old bringing a lot of germs into the household, it still seems to have worked.


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Because sometimes traditional medicine drops the ball. And lets not forget that the pharmaceutical industry is there to make money - their primary interest lies in making profit. It serves their purposes to keep as large a section of the population as they can manage dependant on them.



Personally, I see no reason not to use both.


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Because "actual medicine" is only available in the form of a profit-driven industry whose primary focus is to collect what it can from your miserly insurance provider and thus faces a conflict of interest that demotivates actually curing you (as doing so removes you from the customer base/revenue stream).

A certain amount of cynicism and desire to find other options is quite understandable.

Disillusion with the latter part of your question, perhaps, more so than confidence in the former.

The same is true for alternative medecine though, so that's not really a reason.

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I've always like the bit in Tim Minchin's storm. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U:

You know what they call alternative medicine
That's been proved to work?
Medicine.

Can't say I've ever really had to try "alternative" medicine - so can't pass judgement on its effectiveness, but I'd rather put my eggs in the "science basket".

And with regards to the profit comments on the pharmaceutical industry - you're right. But the alternative medicine market is huuuuuge.

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- Anecdotal evidence: anecdotal, lived experience is very compelling to most people, even if "real" evidence contradicts it, because people are kind of dumb. If they use a homeopathic cure and then get better, they'll often attribute it to that cure even if they would have gotten better anyway.

There's a dearth of "real" evidence for the efficacy of herbal remedies because no one is funding clinical trials. If you spend millions proving that Ashwagandha treats depression more reliably than SSRIs, there's nothing to stop any other company from capitalizing on your research by simply packaging and selling the natural botanical. You can't patent the plant to protect your investment in research.

(I am pretty skeptical of homeopathic medicine, which you mention. There's little reason to think that botanicals can't be effective, though, as most pharmaceuticals are just isolates of active chemicals found in rainforest botanicals)

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A lot of "actual medicine" have many side effects that are not widely publicised. For example, paracetamol, a common pain killer and fever reducer, can damage the liver. It also stays in your liver for up to 3 months, long after taking it. It takes the body so long to get rid of it. And I used to pop it every after week as it's so convenient and it works for headaches. I changed my methods to stop triggering the pain and using other methods like using cold pack rather than to wait for it to happen and then pop a pill. I'd rather avoid accumulating drugs in my body.



One more thing is that such drugs often only treats the symptoms, they don't solve the root of the problem. They only help temporarily. So it makes sense to go deeper and seek alternative methods.


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