New Age of Medicine: Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Hypnosis is another very common form of mind and body practices. Hypnosis focuses on the brain. It is used to mainly help addicts and people with mental health problems. This technique is used to help someone to begin using their unconscious mind. They are asked to relax at the beginning of the session, they are then drawn away from their surroundings to begin to focus on one object (Billitterl 57). Many people believe that during hypnosis the person undergoing it is asleep, but that is not the true. Actually the person is very much awake, and is very aware of what is going on in the setting around them. If the patient is uncomfortable with what the hypnotist is asking they will simply not reply (58).

Biofeedback is learning to manage functions like: brain waves, heart rate, body temperature and a few others. Biofeedback was created when two researchers were testing a woman’s skin temperature while she was undergoing relaxation techniques. While undergoing this her skin temperature rose about 10 degrees. After her temperature rose she noted that her migraine had dramatically went away. These researchers then went on to make a biofeedback device and taught many people how to ease pain by using relaxation techniques. A majority of people thought that if you could learn to manage certain functions, then many other diseases could be controlled. Biofeedback helps to treat problems such as: emotional problems, an arrhythmia and asthma (Billiterl 59).

Healing touch falls into the group that does not fit in mind and body or natural products. This group contains: chiropractic, acupuncture and acupressure. Many of the therapies included in the healing touch group are accepted very widely by the mainstream medicine field (Billitterl 72)

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... ago by a doctor named Samuel Hahnemann. He did not like how medical practices in his age were treating their patients. Homeopathy is basically giving an unhealthy person a small dose of medicine, that if it was given to a healthy person in a larger dose it would produce symptoms of the disease the unhealthy person has (Billitterl 37). Naturopathy is promoting health instead of trying to destroy the disease itself. Naturopathic professionals usually recommend: herbal remedies, homeopathy, acupuncture and a few other CAM techniques (Billitterl 39).

Complementary and alternative techniques are the new age of medicine. These techniques especially combined with mainstream medicine could create a medical revolution. Complementary and alternative medicine techniques are helping to solve medical problems for many people without the side effects of mainstream medicine.