Complementary and alternative medicine has existed for a long time now. Many people consider it to be a great way to ensure that your health is at its best or to give you alternatives to many expensive medicines that are difficult to get a hold of without a prescription. However, there’s a lot of skepticism because alternative medicines are rarely ever suggested by professionals. In fact, many family doctors would recommend that you avoid alternative medicines because there’s usually very little scientific evidence to support claims made by companies that offer them.

But what’s the truth? Is alternative medicine the ticket to a healthier lifestyle, or is it just an expensive scam that isn’t worth your money?

In this article, we’re going to be talking about alternative medicine and what the advantages are, what the disadvantages are, and ultimately conclude with an answer to the question.

What is Alternative Medicine?

Complementary and alternative medicine is a category of medicine that covers a wide variety of different treatments and medicines that aren’t offered by most general doctors. This is because there haven’t been enough tests to reach a conclusion regarding the medicine or treatment, meaning there’s no guarantee that it can work and, in some cases, could actually be dangerous to the patient. Complementary and alternative medicine includes treatments like acupuncture, various mental healing practices, herbal remedies and homeopathy.

Advantages of Alternative Medicine

Alternative medicine offers several unique advantages.

For starters, alternative medication could offer relief for conditions that you don’t feel are worth visiting your doctor for. For instance, drinking honey lemon tea with a bit of ginger could be considered an immune booster to help you beat common colds, as opposed to visiting your doctor and getting medication. This also means that you’re subjecting your body to fewer chemicals and synthetic ingredients which could offer a lot of peace of mind.

Complementary medicine also doesn’t interfere with the rest of your medicine. For example, acupuncture works great in conjunction with painkillers, and you can get double the benefit if you’re willing to try various forms of complementary medicine. Lastly, you also get access to unique health benefits with alternative medicine because it takes a long time for something to be approved and adopted by pharmaceutical companies.

A good example is Cannabidiol, also known as CBD. It’s often negatively associated with cannabis due to the name and its history, but it’s a fantastic alternative form of medication that has a range of benefits. If you use a site like CBD Dosage Calculator to measure the right amount to take, you could get advantages like natural pain relief and even fight against cancer.

Disadvantages of Alternative Medicine

The biggest disadvantage to mention is that alternative medicine is not proven or adopted for pharmaceutical use. This means that it doesn’t exactly offer you peace of mind and many people argue that some forms of alternative medicine might just be placebos. It’s difficult to gauge how useful alternative medication actually is due to limited research, and it’s something that you’ll need to try for yourself and experience on your own terms.

Alternative medicine is also a very cutthroat market. Some companies are more than happy to try and confuse you with marketing terms, and the prices you pay could be quite high compared to traditional medication. You also need to remember that although many forms of alternative medicine can be used in conjunction with your prescription drugs, there are some types of complementary medicine that could actually disrupt or interfere with your regular medication and create unwanted side effects.

We also need to remember that the effects of alternative medicine can change from person to person. It all depends on how effective the medicine is and this requires trial and error which could be very expensive depending on the medicine you purchase or obtain.

Conclusion

So to conclude, is alternative medicine really a good way to bolster your health, or is it just a scam?

Alternative medicine is definitely not a scam, but with more and more companies breaking into the industry, anything could happen. We might start seeing companies offering cheaper alternatives for medication that do nothing but confuse you with alluring marketing terms. In addition, many of the effects will require a bit of trial and error, so this could leave people feeling a bit cautious about trying alternative medicine.

The bottom line is that alternative medicine is legitimate, but due to a lack of safety because of a lack of tests and an unregulated industry, there are risks involved that you will need to accept.