Alternative Medicines

Although the treatments linked here may call themselves Medicines, they're not. Medicines have to undergo extensive trialling to acquire approval of the FDA or MHRA etc.

So Called Alternative Medicine may be a SCAM.

Minchin's Law says:
"By definition, Alternative Medicine" has either not been proved to work or been proved not to work.
You know what they call "alternative medicine" that’s been proved to work? Medicine." 

Types of Alternative remedies. Links open in new pages.

Holistic

Naturopathic

Chiropractic

Homeopathic

Ayurvedic

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)

Acupuncture

Allopathic This isn't actually an alternative medicine. The term “allopathic medicine” was invented by homeopaths in the 19th century as a disparaging term for [real] medicine. 

From Edzard Ernst. See EdzardErnst.com

Edzard Ernst is a retired British-German academic physician and researcher specializing in the study of complementary and alternative medicine. He was Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, the world's first such academic position in complementary and alternative medicine. (Wikipedia)

Advocates of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) almost uniformly stress the importance of prevention and pride themselves to make much use of SCAM for the purpose of prevention. SCAM, they often claim, is effective for prevention, while conventional medicine tends to neglect it. Therefore, it seems timely to ponder a bit about the subject.

It makes sense to differentiate three types of prevention:

Here I will includes all three and I will ask what SCAM has to offer in any form of prevention. I will do this by looking at what we have previously discussed on this blog in relation to several specific SCAM and add in each case a very brief evaluation of the evidence.

Acupuncture

Chiropractic

Herbal medicine

Homeopathy

Mind-body therapies

Osteopathy

Does Osteopathy Prevent Motion Sickness? – NO CONVINCING EVIDENCE

Supplements

Yoga

I hope you agree: this list is impressive!

Of course, this is merely based on posts that were published on my blog. Some will argue that I missed out on some effective SCAMs for prevention. Others might claim that I judged some of the the above cited articles too harshly. If you share such sentiments, I invite you to show me the evidence – and I promise to look at it and evaluate it critically.

Meanwhile, I will draw the following conclusion:

Despite the prominent place prevention assumes in discussions about SCAM, the actual evidence fails to show that it has an important role to play in primary, secondary or tertiary prevention.

Page updated 2 October 2024