Most Americans use alternative medicine - report

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Nearly two-thirds of American adults use some form of complementary or alternative medicine ranging from prayer to herbs, a U.S. government survey showed on Thursday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted the survey of 31,000 U.S. adults, asking about 27 types of therapies such as acupuncture and chiropractic, the use of herbs or botanical products, special diets, and megavitamin therapy.

About 36 percent of those surveyed said they had used one or more of those approaches. When prayer was considered, the number rose to 62 percent.

Women, people with higher education, those who had been hospitalized within the past year and former smokers were all more likely to use complementary or alternative approaches, the survey found.

“These new findings confirm the extent to which Americans have turned to complementary and alternative approaches with the hope that they would help treat and prevent disease and enhance quality of life,” said Dr. Stephen Straus, director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

“The data not only assists us in understanding who is using CAM, what is being used, and why, but also in studying relationships between CAM use and other health characteristics, such chronic health conditions, insurance coverage, and health behaviors,” Straus added in a statement.

National Center for Health Statistics Director Edward Sondik said: “What we see is that a sizable percentage of the public puts their personal health into their own hands.”

Alternative approaches were most often used to treat back pain or problems, colds, neck pain or problems, joint pain or stiffness, and anxiety or depression.

Only about 12 percent of adults sought care from a licensed CAM practitioner, the survey found.

It found that 43 percent of adults pray for their own health, 24 percent pray for someone else, 19 percent use products such as herbs, 12 percent practice deep breathing and eight percent meditate.

Eight percent seek care from a chiropractor, five percent use massage therapeutically and four percent use diet-based therapies for health, including the Atkins, Pritikin, Ornish, and Zone diets. 

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