Alternative Healers Alarmed Over Lack of Public Awareness.....

Bethesda, MD - Across the country, practitioners of complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine are joining together in a grassroots effort to raise public awareness of the benefits of non-mainstream healing techniques and natural remedies. They are setting up tables at gyms and shopping malls, canvassing neighborhoods, and reaching out to community leaders. Thousands of agitated acupuncturists, energized energy healers, and incensed aromatherapists, not to mention concerned chiropractors and generally distressed devotees of a wide variety of additional unconventional therapies too numerous to mention are taking part in this unprecedented educational campaign.

Chiropractors from Optimum Spine & Wellness Center, shown here going door-to-door in a Peoria neighborhood to raise awareness of alternative medicine 

Alternative medicine experts and supportive politicians are also petitioning state and local governments in every state to pass legislation funding educational outreach and supporting 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 medical organizations. These efforts were inspired by a recently issued report from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) revealing widespread unfamiliarity, and a number of common misconceptions held by the public.

Despite a steady stream of published scientific evidence in prestigious healthcare publications, like the Journal of Applied Kinesiology, Alternative Medicine-Singapore, and Parade Magazine showing positive outcomes in a wide variety of conditions, the NCCIH report demonstrates that most people have very little understanding of alternative medicine. The authors of the paper state that 54% 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. And 60% believe that 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. 35% of respondents said that they were "not clear at all" about the differences 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," Steve Salpedro, an 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!, explained. "Not knowing which acupuncture point corresponds to the liver, or that Hegu 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 were no longer present as a means of encouraging 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 NCCIH report itself but in the response to it.

Chiropractor Frank Grimes, shown here patiently waiting to give the following quote, loves walks in the rain, the smell of kittens, and curling up on the couch with a hot bowl of sorghum porridge. And ladies...he's single!

"It is a truly amazing thing," Belvidere, NE chiropractor Frank Grimes revealed:

"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 even 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 that 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 distant past, people didn't get heart disease, prostate cancer, or Alzheimer's. You just didn't have millions of folks developing these chronic illnesses associated with old age. Thousands of years ago, all you had was alternative medicine, except it wasn't called alternative. It was just called healing."