HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Purchase Article View Shopping Cart Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Request Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Hirsch, I. B. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Hirsch, I. B. Social Bookmarking                What's this?

Unproven Therapies

Every Sunday morning, I have the opportunity to hear several "infomercials" on the radio. There used to be a single 1-hour program focusing on the virtues of a specific brand of food supplements, vitamins, and minerals. These days, I can listen for 3 hours on several different stations to hear about a much broader array of products that will supposedly help me lose weight, improve my libido, lower my cholesterol or blood pressure, decrease the size of my prostate gland, improve the function of my liver, or achieve numerous other health-related goals.

Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. In Germany, some form of alternative or complementary medicine is used by 65% of the population.1 Nine years ago, it was reported in the United States that 34% of one large survey used some form of unconventional therapy, and about a third of these people saw providers for these therapies.2 Extrapolated, this would include 425 million visits at a cost of $13.7 billion for these alternative therapies in the United States. Based on my experiences with my patients and the Sunday morning infomercials, I suspect this number has grown substantially during the past decade.

It is important to define alternative medicine. One definition simply states that it is any . . . [Full Text of this Article]

REFERENCES

CiteULike    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?