The recent study that found praying for the health of strangers did not help - and sometimes was associated with a worse outcome - had plenty of detractors.
Some objected that the study was undertaken without the input of theologians. Others attacked the very idea of trying to validate the supernatural with science. And some simply dismissed the results as inconsistent with what they believe.
Pitting religious faith against science may be risky business. But the broader effort under way to put widely used non-traditional healing practices to the scientific test is reaping some valuable benefits.
Thirty-six percent of U.S. adults use some form of complementary or alternative medicine, or CAM. CAM is a catch-all term that includes a diverse array of health practices, such as massage therapy, meditation and acupuncture, that are outside of conventional medicine. If you include megavitamin therapy and prayer for health reasons in the definition of CAM, that figure jumps to 62%, according to the 2002 National Health Interview Survey, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Various CAM therapies have their true believers, driven largely by personal belief and anecdotal experience. Even without scientific data, many are convinced that a practice works and is harmless.
Sometimes - with meditation or acupuncture, for instance - a CAM technique is backed by hundreds, even thousands of years of experience.
Sometimes, much less is known.
Many consumers swear by various herbal and dietary supplements that are marketed without scientific evidence of their safety and effectiveness. Consumers can't even be sure that what is in the bottle matches what the label says.
Congress received the most mail on any subject to date in the early 1990s when it considered regulating dietary supplements more tightly.
There is a dangerous, misguided notion out there that because something is dubbed "natural" it is safe.
And then there are the skeptics about many forms of CAM, some of them health care providers who aren't ready to stray from their orthodox training that defines good medical practice. Never mind that many widely used practices in your doctor's office also lack a solid scientific basis. (Remember how tonsils were commonly removed from children for decades until research showed it didn't help most of them?)
Since the late 1990s, the highly charged field of CAM has been getting a serious dose of science and with that, says Stephen E. Straus, greater legitimacy.
Straus heads the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health.
"We have created the world's first substantive research enterprise dedicated solely to CAM, using contemporary scientific methodology," Straus told me with obvious pride in a recent interview.
With support from the NIH center, dozens of universities across the country are engaged in studies ranging from herbal remedies in transplantation to qigong therapy for osteoarthritis of the knees to the effects of yoga.
The Medical College of Wisconsin has a multi-year meditation study in the works.
David Rakel, director of the University of Wisconsin Integrative Medicine Program, says the NIH funding provides an opportunity to study non-commercial healing practices and products. Drug companies sponsor research on products that can bring profits, he notes, but no one is going to make money by showing that emotion journaling can help a patient heal or cope with disease.
Rakel and his colleagues have an NIH center grant to study how rapport with a provider affects patient wellness.
Straus points to many important CAM research findings in recent years, such as the effectiveness of acupuncture in degenerative arthritis of the knee or dangerous interactions between Saint John's wort and lifesaving AIDS drugs.
In addition to a greater understanding of what works and why, Straus says that rigorous CAM research, education and training is helping to "de-stigmatize" the field. Many researchers can now pursue studies that were once not taken seriously in academia.
As we all know, research results don't always drive individual behavior.
But CAM research can help consumers and practitioners make more informed choices. The NIH center's Web site, nccam.nih.gov, has a wealth of useful information about scientific findings and other helpful information about using CAM.
"The American consumer needs to be informed by data, not pushed by rumor, marketing and anecdote," says Straus.
That's good advice whether you are talking about traditional or non-traditional health practices.
Source: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=415846
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