Alternative medicine goes mainstream

[BridgeTheGap]

BALTIMORE – At one of the nation's top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient's bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.

They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields. The anesthesia chief, Dr. Richard Dutton, calls it "mystical mumbo jumbo." Still, he's a fan.

"It's self-hypnosis" that can help patients relax, he said. "If you tell yourself you have less pain, you actually do have less pain."

Alternative medicine has become mainstream. It is finding wider acceptance by doctors, insurers and hospitals like the shock trauma center at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Consumer spending on it in some cases rivals that of traditional health care.

People turn to unconventional therapies and herbal remedies for everything from hot flashes and trouble sleeping to cancer and heart disease. They crave more "care" in their health care. They distrust drug companies and the government. They want natural, safer remedies.

But often, that is not what they get. Government actions and powerful interest groups have left consumers vulnerable to flawed products and misleading marketing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090608/ap_on_he_me/us_med_unproven_remedies

[MineralMan]

1. And, I suppose, this comes up as a line item on the

bill, an item the insurance company won't pay, leaving it up to the patient to pay.

[peacetalksforall]

2. It's not mainstream at the Univ Hospital where I live. It is anathema.

[LuvNewcastle]

3. They need their own health care provider.

Woo Cross/Woo Shield anyone?

[eShirl]

4. "a nurse circles a patient's bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits."

FFS, if they're going to be doing that to me, give me a *real* freaking shaman (preferably one well-stocked with entheogens), not some nurse who took a weekend "new age healing" course. Bleh!

[xchrom]

6. at the prices hospitals charge anymore -- the nurses waving their arms

and shooing evil spirits seems like the least they could do.

[tridim]

5. JUST SAY NO! to big pharma. nt