JAMA-Reiki site says that more and more Americans are
turning to Complementary and Alternate Medicine (CAM), because they are
disenchanted with mainstream medicine. It also states that people who use
CAM generally belong to the more educated and higher economic
strata.
A research study was done on homeless American youth using
alternate medicine. The research shows that approximately 66.2% of the
respondents reported chronic health problems including asthma, back pain,
stomach pain or headache. Moreover, 26% reported mental health issues
such as stress, anxiety or depression. A little more than 87% of the
youth reported that they were helped ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ by CAM.
Kathleen M.Fairfield, and colleagues have done original investigation on
180 HIV- infected patients. Among them 81(45%) visited CAM
providers. According to them HIV patients using CAM, make frequent
visits to CAM providers report considerable improvement.
Respondents reported receiving information about CAM from newsletters for
patients with HIV (62.2%), friends or family members (51%) and physicians
(47.2%).
The researchers also identified through medical chart review that three
patients chose alternative therapies instead of conventional
ones.
The researchers have concluded that patients with HIV seem to use CAM for
a variety of reasons, most importantly to relieve pain or neuropathy, to
relieve stress or to treat weight loss and nausea.