Western Views of Non-Traditional Medicines Essay -- Exploratory Essays

If you walk into any pharmacy, grocery store, or natural foods store, you cannot avoid the shelves and displays of utility(a) remedies and treatments. Promises of fewer aches and pains, clearer skin, slower aging, better digestion, and more harmonious body functions are plastered on store w altogethers and across bottle labels with many, often green, pills and liquids. Ginseng, Echinacea, acupuncture, reflexology, antioxidants, Vitamin A, B, C, E... have all become a familiar part of our cultures vocabulary, and for many, a part of their health regime. The allure of treatments that are as simple as a collection of plants or are based on a well-loved substance like garlic are obvious, particularly in an cultural environment where not only medical exam labels but most food labels seem to be written in a different language, and where people are taught that science and medicine know more somewhat them than they could ever know or understand about themselves(Beinfield, 24). A full-page advertisement in the New York Times for the Oxford HMO is an insightful illustration of two public demand of alternative treatments and its current misgivings about Western medical care. In the number one paragraph, Oxford says it has redesigned its program to take on a more physician-responsive, patient-centered approach. other section begins with the heading, Alternative Medicine. The Choice is Yours. It goes on to state, A third of the people we serve already use alternative therapies. Now they have access to the first credentialed network of alternative care practitioners. It includes acupuncturists, chiropractors, massage therapists and nutritionists, to name a few... In traditional health care, specialty care has been focused more on isolated treatmen... ... New York Times. Tuesday, April 1, 1997. * Website on Chinese Medicine www.hanwei.com/culture/medic.htm * Stix, Gary. Probing Medicines Outer Reaches. Scientific American. October 1996. * Website on Alternative Med icine www.chinaplus.com * Marshall, Eliot. The Politics of Alternative Medicine. Science. Vol. 265. Sept. 30, 1994. * Website on Chinese Medicine www.europa.com * Finkelstein, Katherine Eban. Insuring Children Health Care Reform Writ Small. The Nation. March 3, 1997. * Eisenberg, M.D., David, with Thomas Lee Wright. Encounters with Qi Exploring Chinese Medicine. 1985, New York, W.W. Norton and Company. * Caudill, M.D., Ph.D., Margaret A.. Foreward, The Web that has No Weaver discretion Chinese Medicine. Ted Kaptchuk, O.M.D.. 1983, New York, Congdon and Weed. * Website on Chinese Medicinewww.ccchome.com