Although more research continues to be released, it’s overwhelmingly apparent that there is more research conducted on western medicine than alternative medicine. This raises the question: why aren’t there more clinical studies on alternative and complementary medicine?
There are five main reasons, including:
- Money
- Synergistic effects of complementary and alternative medicine
- Individualization
- Specificity
- Patterns
- Placebo trials
Money
Clinical trials aren’t cheap often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, or sometimes even into the millions. Since most complementary and alternative medicines can’t be patented, they are unable to find funding for clinical trials.
Synergistic Effects
Evidence-based medicine requires, in many cases, testing one standard against another. If you have studied alternative medicine, you know it’s not just one herb or one oil that is responsible for the positive health effects. Rather, it’s usually a combination working synergistically to produce a positive result. If you pull out only one to be tested, although it likely does possess beneficial qualities, it’s not sufficient for testing against an ailment.
Individualization
As we discussed briefly above, western medicine is ‘one’ drug that is able to be reproduced continuously with similar results. The treatment is consistent and effective for the majority of people. This is unlike alternative medicine in that alternative medicine is very individualized. It’s suited to one particular person. What works for one may not work for another and it’s a trial and error process.
Specificity
Unlike synthetic materials, not every plant or herb is the same. Some are more potent than others depending on how they were grown, where they were grown, etc.
Reproducibility
In a drug trial handling western medicine, a successful medication will produce the desired result nearly every time. With therapies like chiropractic or massage, can you say there is the same result on every person? Not exactly, because everybody is different.
Placebos
Placebo patients are provided a ‘fake’ version of the medication to evaluate whether or not the medication works and to take the ‘thought process’ out of the equation. If you think you’re getting the medication, you may have the power within yourself to feel like you’re actually taking the medication when you aren’t.
It’s not possible to “fake” a chiropractic session, but it may be possible as far as placebos go to do them with herbal remedies.
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