What Is Alternative Medicine?
Alternative medicine may be defined as any form of medicine that does not fall within the realm of conventional or orthodox medicine. By this definition, we can safely say that alternative medicine is not based on scientific evidence. It is usually derived from cultural or historical practices. Many examples, come from eastern religion.
Why Alternative Medicine?
Now someone will ask, "if alternative medicine has no scientific basis, how then can it be effective?" To properly answer this question, we need to first understand the root cause of most illnesses.
There are four main types of diseases: pathogenic disease, deficiency disease, hereditary disease, and physiological disease. Pathogenic disease is caused by micro-organisms, deficiency disease, is as a result of a lack of one or more nutrient necessary for proper functioning of the body. Hereditary disease is passed down from generation to generation through the genes. Physiological disease is a kind of mental disorder, a pattern of behavioral or physiological symptoms that impact multiple life areas, and/or create distress for the person experiencing these symptoms. Quite a lecture, forgive me. I went into all these details, so to give you a proper understanding of disease ( in the conventional way). Now notice that in these four types of diseases, no mention was made of deep emotional issues, like loss of a loved one, problem in marriage, loss of job, etc. Why is this? Does it mean that these conditions are not life threatening? Are we saying that deep emotional problems do not cause disease.
Science loves facts, things that can be seen, touched or measured in some way. Beyond this, science is helpless. Facts are the strength and ironically, also the weakness of science. Once science cannot measure something or grasp it in an intellectual way, then it becomes helpless. A little research on the net, will make it clear that most illnesses actually have a deeper underlying cause... usually emotional. Take cancer for example, dig deep, and you will see a pattern of cause and effect emerging. certain kinds of cancer stem from emotional imbalance. Since conventional medicine cannot dissect the emotions, it had little solution to offer. This is where Alternative steps in.
Kinds of Alternative Medicine
Some examples are: Acupunture, Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Fasting, Vegetarianism, Yoga, Tai chi, Meditation, Hypnotherapy, self Hypnosis, etc. There are probably hundreds of practices all over the world. With such a large number of alternatives, abuse is inevitable. A lot of people have been abused in the name of alternatives. But one should not loose hope, because alternatives really works. As I stated in my bio, I personally had an experience that proved to me the efficacy of alternative medicine. Since then, I have seen many people cured from many so called "incurable" illnesses.
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