Aging And Wellness: Complementary and Alternative services
Southern New Hampshire University
Short Paper
Joy Jordan
After reading the text this week I have read that CAM Complementary and Alternative
medicine consist of practices and remedies not traditional to modern medicine. There has not
been enough study on these CAM techniques to ensure they are safe for patients whom need
traditional medical help, and prescription medications. After reading many of these supplement
herbs and vitamins can affect a person on prescribed medication.
I will focus on Herbs and diet for this short paper. I see that the cam I am referring to started
in ancient China around 200 B.C. and is referred there as traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
Then American started using this practice of herbs, metals, diet, and even body manipulations
(Complementary and Alternative Medicine: History, n.d). In the late 1990's the use CAM has
risen over 8percent from 33.8 percent to 42.1 percent in seven years with the use of prayer being
number one in the United States in 2002. (Quartey, Ma, Chung, & Griffiths, 2012)
The use of herbs and diet back in the ancient times that the United States has adapted to using
is to help with things such as using melatonin to help with sleeping. A study was done with
melatonin and a placebos with twenty-five people and at the end of the study did not show that
the placebo helped with sleeping. According to meta-analysis (Buscemi et al., 2006)
According to Chandra in a journal in the American Medical Association in 1997 whom is a
physician and has been nominated for the noble prize two times that is shows that older adults
are lacking in the vitamins they need for bone strength, and encourage older adults to take
multivitamin daily
Because some natural herbs singly or combined can be dangerous mixed with prescribed
medications. It is wise according to Internal Journal of health sciences if you are on prescribed
medications to talk to your primary or specialty physicians about your use of the CAMs you are
interested in using. This will help with adverse reactions of current medications that could keep
your perception medicine from working or even cause them to become a dangerous cocktail,
which could cause death.
Most of the advocates for alternative medical treatment stand by the positive effects that
CAM does for the body old and young. But it is stressed in this journal that as long as
Complementary and alternative medicine is used in combination with traditional medicine that
most of CAM's are okay to use (Ernst, November, 2007). CDC says to talk to your physician
before starting any other treatment types which some CAM treatments make traditional medicine
not work as well for cancer treatment. They also go on to say the most chronic conditions people
have, show they use some sort of CAM. 2012 a National health interview done reported that over
half of them had one chronic condition and over one-third had two chronic conditions. It goe