Well according NIH in 2007 about 33.3% of American adults had reported using CAM. With the rising in health care costs many people are trying to find other ways to stay healthy.
CAM ranges all over the place, from things as simple as Yoga and Tai Chi, to thing as complicated and esoteric as shamanic healing and holographic breathing.
Lets take a quick look at some of the divisions of CAM.
The first and most important ones are what does Complementary and Alternative medicine MEAN?
According to the Oxford American Dictionary Complementary means completing; forming a complement. Which is just what it is. In CAM Complementary means using tools such as massage to help someone who's going through physical therapy, or using aromatherapy to help someone deal with the affects of chemotherapy.
Alternative therapies are again just that something that is being used instead of a Traditional Western Medicine (TWM) technique. This can come in many forms from someone using Fish Oil (a dietary supplement) to deal with depression instead of a antidepressant drug to someone using Qigong or Reiki (both forms of energy healing) to treat cancer instead of chemotherapy.
In addition to individual techniques there are what NIH calls Whole Systems. These represent health techniques that have developed either in a separate culture from TWM and have their own ways to diagnose; or have grown up inside or along side TWM and have developed additional therapies. A couple examples of these are Traditional Chinese Medicine and homeopathic medicine.
As both a practitioner and a person who generally is interested increasing peoples understanding of what CAM is and what it is not, and where to be cautious when they're looking into CAM for the first time, I've created this blog.
We will be exploring different techniques as well as I hope things go on answer your questions.
Sources:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/whatiscam/overview.htm
http://nccam.nih.gov/news/camstats/2007/camsurvey_fs1.htm
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