This paper is going to educate the reader about Alternative and Complementary Medicine which is also known as CAM. The paper will define Alternative and Complementary Medicine or CAM and compare it to conventional medicine. The main focus of the paper will be examining the different types of CAM. The types of CAM will be broken into five different groups which are : Whole or Alternative Medical Systems, Mind-Body Medicine, Biologically Based Practices, Manipulative and Body-Based Practices, and Energy Medicine. The reader will read about many mainstream practices such as Chiropractic and Physical therapy as well as many less popular practices such as Color Therapy and Reiki. The paper will also briefly discuss my personal opinion and interest of CAM as well as CAM related to health insurance
CAM – Alternative and Complementary Medicine
Millions of people in the United States suffer from a chronic illness of some kind. A chronic illness is a long-term condition for which there seems to be no cure such as arthritis, allergies, high blood pressure, digestive problems and back pain. Most of the time people that live with chronic illness use conventional medicine, which is taught to medical students in medical schools throughout the world and is based on science and clinical research and most treatments have scientific evidence of their effectiveness but others use Alternative medicine. Alternative medicine has many different origins and philosophies, comes from many different cultures and involves many different practices. Alternative medicine is used for treatment, preventive health care, health maintenance or to enhance well being. There are several established alternative therapies that have earned respectability because they are effective. Methods such as chiropractic, physical therapy, acupuncture and homeopathy are well researched and their practitioners are well trained and have come to be widely accepted. There are
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