Across the country today, practitioners of alternative medicine are joining together in a grassroots effort to raise public awareness of the benefits of alternative healing techniques and natural remedies. They are setting up tables at gyms and shopping malls. They are taking to the neighborhoods and going door to door. Clinics are closed all over the country as thousands of agitated acupuncturists, energized energy healers, and incensed aromatherapists, not to mention chiropractors and devotees of additional unconventional therapies too numerous to mention take part in an unprecedented campaign.
Alternative medicine experts and supportive politicians are also petitioning state and local governments in every state to pass into law legislation to fund educational outreach and to support a broader recognition of these holistic modalities. It is an all out war on ignorance according to combined press releases from all the major alternative medicine organizations. Why the fuss? These efforts were inspired by a recently issued report by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) which revealed widespread unfamiliarity and a number of common misconceptions held by the public.
Despite a steady stream of published scientific evidence in prestigious journals like the Journal of Applied Kinesiology, Alternative Medicine-Singapore and Parade Magazine showing positive outcomes in a wide variety of conditions, the NCCAM report demonstrated that most people have very little understanding of alternative medicine. The authors state that 54 percent of the nearly 30,000 adult survey respondents reported that they have heard “nothing at all” about the concepts of meridians and stagnant chi that make up the core of acupuncture and acupuncture related sciences — perhaps the hottest and most heavily financed fields in alternative medicine today. Sixty percent “believe they have never had a chiropractic subluxation, even though chiropractic research has clearly demonstrated that 100% of people develop them, often during the birthing process. ” Thirty-five percent said they were “not clear at all” about the difference between the various locations and depths of radial artery pulse diagnosis in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine.
"These are basic concepts of alternative medicine that people just aren't being exposed to," Acupuncturist and author of "The Vicious Cycle that Your Doctor Won't Tell You About: Quantum Consciousness and Adrenal Fatigue, the Cause of All Human Disease" and "How to Lose Ten Pounds in the Next One to Fifteen Months with Magnets!" Steve Salpedro explains. "Not knowing which acupuncture point corresponds to the liver, or that Hegu (LI 4) plays a role in runny noses, deafness, dysentery and infantile convulsions is like not knowing that socks go on before shoes. It really just boggles the mind."
On the timely topic of science education in the classroom, the report summarizes a number of findings by observing that “many Americans are receptive to including nonscientific values in science classrooms,” adding that “more Americans approved than disapproved of instruction regarding the use of colors, patterns and other characteristics of the iris to diagnose medical problems in public school science classes. However, many were unsure about the process of ingesting a substance diluted in a sugar or alcohol solution to the point where any molecules of the original substance are no longer present as a means of initiating the body to heal itself .”
But all hope is not lost for these misunderstood holisticians. Many are finding a silver lining, if not in the NCCAM report itself, in the response to it.
"It is a truly amazing thing," Belvedere, NE chiropractor Frank Grimes reveals.
"To see so many alternative medicine practitioners coming together like this. It just goes to show that it doesn't matter that our training backgrounds and philosophies are so varied and often contradictory. What matters is that we can all come together, somehow ignore our many differences and focus on helping people. I also have student loans to pay off."
Grimes admits he yearns for a simpler time, before conventional medicine and its pharmaceutical industry supported monopoly on health bullied its way to the top. "In the past, people didn't get heart disease, prostate cancer, or Alzheimer's. You just didn't have millions of folks developing chronic illnesses associated with old age. Hundreds or thousands of years ago all you had was alternative medicine, except it wasn't called alternative. It was just called healing."
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