Complementary Therapy verses Mainstream Medicine

Sometimes I just feel like I want to shout at the radio, from time to time someone will go on the radio or the television and talk about complementary therapy. Invariably they get there facts wrong or they just do not have a very good understanding of what complementary therapy really is.

This morning I was listening to someone spout off about complementary therapy saying that it shouldn't be used to treat chronic diseases such as Parkinson's and Multiple Sclerosis that complementary therapists were praying  on people who were vulnerable and just taking there money for something that there was no scientific evidence for. (To start with this person clearly has no idea how difficult it is to make a living practising complementary therapy and the vast majority of people do not go into this line of work for the money.)  In one respect he was right anyone who claims a cure is clearly not ethical and is not practising good complementary therapy, like every profession there are good and bad practitioners. This gentleman also claimed that there was no hard evidence as to why complementary therapy worked, this is just not true there have been lots of studies in lots of areas as to regards complementary therapy and it's assistance with chronic diseases some of which have proven to be very good in managing symptoms. I am not denying that there should be more scientific studies. One of the problems is that for a lot of complementary therapy it is very hard to measure it in the same way that we would measure a drug  were one size fits all. Complementary therapy sees every case as unique and looks to balance the whole body including emotions and the physical body. This makes it very difficult to measure success in anything other than an anecdotal way.

For many people with a chronic disease complementary therapy can be used to support existing treatment both mentally and physically sometimes it does take a little while to find the right treatment for an individual. I absolutely agree that you should question any kind of treatment mainstream or complementary and anyone one that claims they can cure someone I would avoid with a very large barge pole. At our Well Being Clinic Nottingham we see large numbers of individuals with all sorts of chronic diseases who continue to come back to see us for years because they feel they are getting good treatment that supports them with their illness. 

Complementary therapy should be used in conjunction with other modes of medicine. At the Wellbeing Clinic Nottingham we are very keen on the idea of integrated medicine and are optimistic about the future.